Review: For Your Own Good by Samatha Downing (2021)

View on Amazon

First sentences: 

Entitlement has a particular stench. Pungent, bitter. Almost brutal.

Teddy smells it coming.

This tells you what you need to know about our protagonist, Teddy Crutcher, an English teacher at the elite Belmont Academy. Teaching the children of very wealthy parents means that Teddy doesn’t have to look far to find entitlement and, if there is one thing that offends him, it’s people who don’t meet his standards. Any exhibition of what Teddy perceives as entitlement — such as asking for extra credit —and someone, including fellow teachers, will have to be humbled. For Their Own Good. Ending up on Teddy’s legendary “shit list” can doom a student as we see. Teddy is supremely confident that he knows what’s  best for the students and the school and if a few bodies fall along the way, well, needs must. 

Teddy has his own personal issue with entitlement. He thinks he is entitled to more recognition. He resents the status afforded faculty who were also students at Belmont, a status to which he isn’t entitled. He does find some solace in his Teacher of the Year plaque that he displays prominently in his classroom and makes sure that it can’t be overlooked during a parent-teacher conference. As Teacher of the Year, Teddy will be delivering the main address at the annual memorial celebration, where he is certain he will shine in front of all the important people.

I didn’t care for Downing’s first book, My Lovely Wife; for me, it doesn’t live up to the promise and hype. With this, her third  book, Downing is firmly on my “watch for” list of authors. Her talent for delivering dark themes is really brought home for me in For Your Own Good. It is a darkly fun read and her depiction of the acerbic and snarky Teddy Crutcher is delicious. He is the teacher you love to hate. I’m wondering if “Crutcher” is a sort of Dickensian name but haven’t yet decided if it works on that level.

Besides Teddy, the story mainly follows three characters: Zach Ward, a student, whose parents got him on Crutcher’s shit list though Zach is quite a good student; bubbly Sonia Benjamin, teacher and Belmont alumna who violates one of Teddy’s sins of entitlement; and Courtney Ross who is actually a favored student but has her own problems because of Crutcher and whose lot is not helped by her overbearing mother. The action shifts mostly among these characters. There are two other characters that I would rather not mention because of possible spoilers.

I enjoyed the way Downing structured For Your Own Good. I’d say it’s propelled by “cascading events”. Something happens that causes something else to happen then that something has to be fixed. Teddy finds himself making adjustments so that the events he sets in motion meet his desired goals. She paces out her revelations well and also plants a clue that appears so minor at the time but has a lovely payoff.

I enjoyed everything about this book: the characters, the plot, the structure, the dark humor, the setting, the shifts in perspective. Oh, and you learn a bit about botany along the way. It was just the kind of book I needed to read.

I’ve just started reading Downing’s second book, He Started It, and it already promises to deliver another well plotted dark story.

Keywords: dark humor, crime fiction, academic fiction