By Jane Davis
Special to THE DAILY

Emily Hamilton is a thrice-married theology teacher in a California Catholic high school. She knows lots of trivia about saints and church history but very little about who she is or who she wants to be. Despite this she is very narcissistic, so it’s no surprise the book is written in the first person since her opinions alone are worthy — as she sees things.

Although she works with youths every day, she remains unobservant and tells the reader only what she deems important, meaning she omits a great deal.

We learn Emily is in love with one of the priests on the faculty even though he sees the relationship in a different way. They share cigarettes confiscated from students as they stand on the rooftop and gaze at the ocean. Their friendship is tested when Emily begins a relationship with one of her students. The author casts the student at age 18, perhaps hoping to mollify the readers’ outrage at such a violation of student-teacher connections.

Emily is unremorseful and unrepentant as she tries to justify her actions, knowing there is no excuse for her behavior. We learn of her own past — shallow and devoid of love. She fails to discover how to overcome her shortcomings and improve her world. When students genuinely reach out to her, she ignores their efforts and substitutes her own fantasies for reality. In some ways she never matured past adolescence and therefore is incapable of giving young people the assistance they so desperately desire.

Terminal illness, suicide, premature death — nothing is as important as how Emily chooses to see the world. What a disappointment. The first chapters held promise but then it was apparent the “world of Emily Hamilton” is a fallen and hopeless one.

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