Saying Grace

Beth Gutcheon’s novel Saying Grace (1995) follows two narrative tracks: the dissolving public and private lives of its main character, the middle-aged head of a private school. Professionally, the progressive educational institution she runs is under increased pressure to embrace a more competition-driven philosophy. Privately, her happy marriage collapses after a tragedy befalls her daughter. Many readers complain that although these parallel stories are both told in well-observed and interesting ways, the humorous tone of the first doesn’t jibe with the shocking and devastating tone of the second—the effect is “as if you're reading two different books squashed together and neither one finished,” in the words of one critic.

Rue Shaw has led a wonderfully fulfilling life in suburban Southern California. Professionally, she is the head of a progressive private school—a child-led model of exploratory learning that promotes multidisciplinary research projects rather than rote learning and standardized tests. She loves this job and has been with the school for 20 years. Personally, she has been married for 25 years to Henry, a driven brain surgeon, with whom she has one daughter—Georgia, a talented budding opera singer who has just finished high school and been accepted to Julliard. Rue’s problems are the standard ones of midlife: feeling a little bit of empty-nest syndrome, worrying about the decreasing health of her aging parents, and discussing early retirement options with Henry, who is increasingly interested in leaving his job to join the Peace Corps.

The first part of the novel is a lighthearted look at the day-to-day challenges facing a head of school. Rue is a beloved fixture and has a good working relationship with her assistant head, Mike. Deeply committed to meeting each child where they are and keeping discipline and policy flexible, Rue finds herself butting heads with the school’s new board chairman, Chandler Kip. Chandler is all about a completely different approach to education, which he believes should prepare kids to compete, care mostly about winning, and emphasize traditional measures of success over individualized learning. He wants to introduce stringent testing requirements, which in Rue’s view would ruin the carefully curated dynamic of empathy and sensitivity she has worked hard to create.



At the same time, Rue has to manage the many smaller problems that come up with faculty, students, and parents. Catherine, a veteran teacher who has had a standout career suddenly seems on the brink of mental collapse over the death of her husband, Norman. Another teacher may have developed a drinking problem, while a third is being difficult about scheduling meetings with her students’ parents. Rue makes a spur of the moment decision to hire Emily, a woman fleeing an abusive husband who has some teaching experience but hasn’t worked for 20 years, and to enroll Emily’s two children in the school. As far as students go, Rue worries about a promising, bright student who is constantly involved in dangerous misbehavior. She has to decide how to handle the growing suspicion that the parents of Lyndie, another student, might be abusing her. Rue also has to carefully handle the variety of concerns and complaints coming her way from parents, many of whom are difficult, demanding, and entitled.

At this point, the tenor and thrust of the novel changes entirely. Henry and Rue are excited when Georgia comes home from Julliard for Christmas, but they are blindsided by her announcement that she has decided to drop out after only a semester. Together with her new boyfriend, a graduate student studying conducting, Georgia plans to live in Manhattan and pursue rock music. Readers point out the improbability of this happening—Georgia is smart enough to know that her operatically trained voice would be deeply unsuited to rock music, and a man who has put himself through college and graduate school would be unlikely to suddenly chuck it all for something he could pursue in his spare time. In any case, Rue and Henry are dismayed and do their best to dissuade Georgia from this plan.

They are unsuccessful, and Henry blames Rue for Georgia’s nonsensical approach to her life. A marriage that had seemed rock-solid starts to come apart at the seams. Henry is increasingly unhappy at his incredibly demanding job, but Rue can’t connect fully with his burnout and, instead, just leaves him alone. This prompts Henry to get inappropriately close to Emily, whose scary husband turns up a few times to menace her. Henry and Emily seemingly have an affair, although the novel never makes this clear.



The next thing Henry and Rue know, Georgia has been gruesomely killed by a car, which hit her and then dragged her down the road, mangling her dead body. To try to recover from this and to rebuild their marriage, Henry and Rue go on a romantic getaway that seems both to gloss over the emotional fallout of Georgia’s death and to be yet another wild shift in tone. The vacation doesn’t reconnect them: Henry confesses that he has feelings for Emily, so he and Rue break up for good.

Rue returns to school, where Chandler stages a coup, disempowering Rue so much with Mike’s help that Rue quits. Her replacement as head, Chip, is willing to run the school on a business model according to Chandler’s wishes. Chip fires many of the old teachers, destroying the institution Rue built.

The novel ends inconclusively, as Rue and Henry sit down for a meal that opens with a moving and meaningful saying of grace. It’s not clear exactly where their relationship will go from here, or how any of the various plot threads in the novel will be resolved. Still, many readers praise this last scene as very beautiful.