Book Review - Goodbye Mr. Chips

Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hilton (1934) When I realized how much I had enjoyed "Lost Horizon" I kept my eyes open for his other work.  This is one that I had heard about for years but never got around to reading.  So when I finally got a copy for my Nook Color my first surprise was learning that the book only runs about 40 pages!  A friend who taught at a private school at one point in his life said this book was pivotal in making the decision to do it.

This is a warm and charming look at an English Public school Brookfield (what we would think of as private schools) and a modestly talented instructor named Mr. Chipping.  His tenure at Brookfield runs from 1870 into the mid-1920s or so.  Chipping is nicknamed Mr. Chips and becomes a beloved fixture at the school.  It takes us through his brief but very happy marriage to a younger woman, his relationship with generation after generation of boys and his struggles with the changing world outside the school's grounds.

There is a certain sentimentality to this story, one that probably struck a very strong chord in the English readers when the story was first published in a magazine.  The years following Queen Victoria's death including two World Wars and the abdication of a King tore at the fabric of the English people's understanding of themselves.  Chips expresses that longing for the order of a different age even as he defies the social norm during the first World War by insisting on including the name of a former German instructor who died fighting for the Germans when the list of alumni who had died in the war was read.

You could easily come away feeling that this is a rather sad book.  At the same time it is a story of a man who learns to live with his own shortcomings, who found true unqualified love and who did what most of  us hope we will do in our lives, he made a difference.  He knows that no one may remember him just a few years after he dies but he continues to do what he is gifted to do for as long as he can.

In the end I found myself to be one more of Mr. Chip's "boys" who have been touched by his gentle charm.

Rating - **** Reccommended Read