The four mothers at the centre of this story could have walked off the set of Huffman’s long-running hit series Desperate Housewives: brainy doctor Rose, warmhearted divorcee Azra, tense and touchy widow Lauren and lustrous, well-heeled Sam with her grand house and philanthropist city councillor husband. How to make fiction more jaw-dropping than fact? Bruce Holsinger’s The Gifted School, published shortly after Huffman’s conviction, carries a weighty burden. Huffman started a short prison sentence earlier this month for buying into a sophisticated scheme that fiddled entry test scores and added nonexistent sporting accolades to students’ application portfolios. It's a humorous, keenly observed, timely take on ambitious parents, willful kids, and the pursuit of prestige, no matter the cost.T he revelation that Hollywood star Felicity Huffman was willing to cheat her child’s way into a top American university suggested that, when it comes to the 21st-century parental arms race, fact really is stranger than fiction. Seen through the lens of four families who've been a part of one another's lives since their kids were born over a decade ago, the story reveals not only the lengths that some adults are willing to go to get ahead, but the effect on the group's children, sibling relationships, marriages, and careers, as simmering resentments come to a boil and long-buried, explosive secrets surface and detonate.
Set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, The Gifted School is a keenly entertaining novel that observes the drama within a community of friends and parents as good intentions and high ambitions collide in a pile-up with long-held secrets and lies. This deliciously sharp novel captures the relentless ambitions and fears that animate parents and their children in modern America, exploring the conflicts between achievement and potential, talent and privilege.
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