The faculty lounge A novel

The Faculty Lounge opens dramatically, with the dead body of an octogenarian substitute teacher found on the ratty couch in the teachers' lounge, but the focus of Mathieu's adult debut is on the small and large ways that people touch one another's lives. The book explores the aftermath of this event--a group of staff members scatters the teacher's ashes at his request, with disastrous results--through the eyes of a large cast of high-school faculty members. Each chapter is told from a different point of view. Some chapters focus on a character filled with grief or having a drinking problem, one chapter shows the beginnings of young love. Even though the cast is wide, the illustrative vignettes go deeply into the background and circumstances of the characters, and this sentimental and funny book will appeal to readers of character-driven narratives. Told with the wry sense of humor and pragmatism exhibited by seasoned teachers themselves, this knowing commentary on trying to shape young minds while having to concede to parent demands and school-district expectations is unsurprisingly written by an author who has been a teacher for 20 years.

YA author Mathieu (Bad Girls) makes her adult debut with a satisfying ode to the faculty and staff of a Houston public high school. After the death of Mr. Lehrer, a beloved math teacher who continued on as a substitute after his retirement, Baldwin High officials plan to carry out his final wish and spread his ashes in the school's courtyard. Disaster occurs at the ceremony, as Lehrer's ashes blow into the face of the school's contentious PTO president. Mathieu then alternates perspectives between school employees as tensions are heightened by the PTO president. Major plot points revolve around a nurse who defies school policy by distributing pregnancy tests and an English teacher accused of advocating racism against white people by assigning The Autobiography of Malcolm X. There's also a charming story line involving a make-out session between two teachers locked in a room together during a gun scare. Taken together, the characters' stories cohere into a moving portrait of the teachers' and staff members' humanity and their dedication to the students. This is a winner. Agent: Kerry Sparks, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (July)