Rating: 
Summary: Quality writing
Review: .
'Stand before your God' by Paul Watkins (1993)
This is an enjoyable book, particularly as it is so well-written. Language is powerfully used, rich, textured, poetic. The book has been well-polished. The writer has made the effort to avoid merely mudane humdrum ways of expressing what he wants to say, and has gone out of his way instead to look for more exciting and innovative clever ways to get his ideas across and make his points instead. It is a good example of a book to hand to someone who wants to see how writing looks and sounds to the ear when it has been done properly.
The writer has observed life well in this book. He expresses many things in ways that make the reader want to say: 'That's exactly it. You hit the nail on the head there. That's exactly right, and couldn't have been put better than the way you have said it.'
The book itself is about the permutations and combinations of school life of an American lad being educated at some of the 'best' schools in England, from age 7 to 18, with the boy flying home to the USA during school holidays.
As respects content, the book tends slightly towards the mundane in places, slightly towards the contrived in other places, but that's only to be expected and it's no less of a book for that. It is a little thin in places on events which are sufficiently out of the ordinary to grip the reader's attention.
The silly capital letters thing was annoying. There was no reason to capitalise particular things in the book in the way they have been capitalised. The writer doing that reminded me of Iain Banks' 'The Wasp Factory'. The technique worked there because the lad there was eccentric, but it doesn't really work with a person from Eton.
Overall: An excellent book. 5/5.
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent, Witty, Heart-Breaking, Honest, Captivating
Review: Any boy and any man can find some of their own life experience in this pleasurable and sometimes haunting book. Immensely rich in personal emotion -- and lends equal balance to both the humor and tradgedy of life.
Rating:
Summary: I laughed out loud
Review: As a reader who was educated in exactly the same way as Watkins ("prep" school followed by Eton) this back brought back memories that made me both laugh and cry. The Dragon has changed a bit since Watkins' days, I hear -- it now takes girls and is seen as a progressive school. Reading about Eton was like reminiscing with friends. Eton provided me with friends for life (unlike Watkins) -- my comrades there are now my closest adult friends. My children's Godfathers are all Old Etonians.
Rating:
Summary: A boarding-school staple
Review: Every boarding school kid should read this. At my school, the entire community, faculty and students, was required to read this. And though being at the Dragon School isnt exactly a RI co-ed prep school, so many of the things ring true. Even boys riding mattresses down stairs in their dorms at night, lol. Its a superb read.
Rating:
Summary: A boarding-school staple
Review: Every boarding school kid should read this. At my school, the entire community, faculty and students, was required to read this. And though being at the Dragon School isnt exactly a RI co-ed prep school, so many of the things ring true. Even boys riding mattresses down stairs in their dorms at night, lol. Its a superb read.
Rating: 
Summary: A charming and very amusing nostalgia-trip
Review: I bought this book on a whim, without knowing much about Watkins or his novels. I ended enjoying the book a great deal. It is difficult to write memoirs that steer away from off-putting pretension while being interesting and humorous, but Watkins has done just that. He succeeds largely by making the book more about his perception of his surroundings than about himself. But I am afraid the book is bound to have a somewhat limited appeal. At the very end Watkins tries to give the nostalgia for his schooldays existential meaning, but he is forced to admit he does not quite know how to go about that. Yet the story as a whole is very enjoyable, and we shouldn't demand that every book be an epiphany.
Rating:
Summary: How has this books remained such a secret!
Review: I first read this book my senior year of high school when it was recommended to me by my English teacher. At the time, Watkins was the writer in residence at another boarding school in the area. I was captivated from the moment I opened the cover until I put the book down. Watkins' shameless honesty about the awkward moments of childhood makes it easy to laugh not at him, but at similar events in your own embarassing past. From his mischevious antics at the Dragon School to his studies at Eton, Watkins helps us all to remember the silly things we once did and of which we are now ridiculously ashamed. His utter familiarity with the reader allows the reader to open up and re-expose her memories to herself! While hilariously funny at times, this book also takes on the task of embracing nostalgia as memories seem to slip away. As the young Watkins ages and changes schools and confronts more "serious" issues, any reader can see how growing up happens to us. There is no avoiding it. As much as we might like to live as Peter Pan and daydream about pleasant memories, we are changed by the people we encounter and the places we go, and we just can't help it. And why should we?Watkins allows the reader to confront the bittersweet loss of childish innocence while smiling and embracing what has gone and what will come. This is not a sentimental journey, but one that is pleasantly real in a non-sappy or melodramatic way. Watkins shows the reader how to laugh at life and love all that it can throw at you.On a side note, check out Roald Dahl's "Boy". It may be a children's book, but it is well worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: How has this books remained such a secret!
Review: I first read this book my senior year of high school when it was recommended to me by my English teacher. At the time, Watkins was the writer in residence at another boarding school in the area. I was captivated from the moment I opened the cover until I put the book down. Watkins' shameless honesty about the awkward moments of childhood makes it easy to laugh not at him, but at similar events in your own embarassing past. From his mischevious antics at the Dragon School to his studies at Eton, Watkins helps us all to remember the silly things we once did and of which we are now ridiculously ashamed. His utter familiarity with the reader allows the reader to open up and re-expose her memories to herself! While hilariously funny at times, this book also takes on the task of embracing nostalgia as memories seem to slip away. As the young Watkins ages and changes schools and confronts more "serious" issues, any reader can see how growing up happens to us. There is no avoiding it. As much as we might like to live as Peter Pan and daydream about pleasant memories, we are changed by the people we encounter and the places we go, and we just can't help it. And why should we?Watkins allows the reader to confront the bittersweet loss of childish innocence while smiling and embracing what has gone and what will come. This is not a sentimental journey, but one that is pleasantly real in a non-sappy or melodramatic way. Watkins shows the reader how to laugh at life and love all that it can throw at you. On a side note, check out Roald Dahl's "Boy". It may be a children's book, but it is well worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: An unalloyed masterpiece!!!!!
Review: I have read few books in my eleven years as a bookseller that have moved me as much as Paul Watkins' coming-of-age memoir. There are only three that I have read more than once: THE SECRET HISTORY, A SEPARATE PEACE (which I have read twice a year ever since high school), AND STAND BEFORE YOUR GOD. Watkins' ability to take everyday events and anxieties and turn them into the stuff of revelation is a rare gift. His writing is clear, incisive, and, in spite of the unusual circumstance of an American attending the most exclusive of British prep schools, universally telling. I read the book thinking of my numerous perusals of A SEPARATE PEACE and my own cherished memories of attending a small private college in the rural midwest. I read the book with a pen in hand, underlining his most illuminating thoughts about Eton, and writing "Yes! YES!!!!!" in the margins when his own epiphanies bespoke my own. I read the book wide-eyed, knowing that, alone in my living room, I was in the company of genius. I have recommended the book to many of my customers over the years, employing both of my most heartfelt evaluations: "Oh, but you MUST!" and "Trust me on this one!" They have, all, thanked me profusely for the recommendation. In this extraordinary collection of tales that make up a short time in a still remarkably short life, we find images of ourselves, and marvel that a stranger can know so much about us. Seek it out. Read it. Cherish it. Oh, but you must! Trust me on this one!
Rating: 
Summary: The path to manhood
Review: I think I would have responded to this book in a very different way if I had read it while a teenager or college student. I would have identified with the adolescent pressures and the adolescent attachments. However I was less impressed by the adolescent angst of the first 80% of the book as I was by the reflection in the final 20% of the book. In this section Watkins identifies 3 themes. First, Watkins describes his growth and movement from the body of a boy to the body of a man through the story of learning to throw the javelin. He describes beautifully and simply the first time he became aware that he had control of his muscles and strength and was leaving the awkwardness of childhood behind. Second, Watkins simply and clearly describes the discovery of his inner reservoir of strength that he develops first as a survivor and observer and finally as a writer. Third, through non-accusational reflection he realizes he was sent to the Dragon School and Eton to fulfill a perceived weakness and vulnerability that Paul's father felt toward the elite uppper class. Thus he sends his child to the best schools to protect him from the barbs of aristocracy. Why do father's do this to their sons? Each man must wrestle with his own vulnerabilities and make peace with his inadequacies. I was also left wondering whether he forgave his mother in the same way he seemed to forgive his father for sending him into this elite and cold experience while still a small child?
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