Scotland - Advanced Higher English - book choices advice please.

Harold Pinter - the caretaker

Compared / linked to restraint of beasts Magnus mills

DH teaches at outstanding Glasgow school!

DS1 did his diss on attitudes to race and their portrayal in literature (can't remember the actual title). He used Heart of Darkness, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and To Kill a Mocking bird, with supporting stuff from other novels.

The 2 other kids in his year did Tess (Hardy) and something to do with Jane Austen. These ones were popular when I did my CSYS English almost 30 years ago and are a bit done to death.

I did my dissertation on the changing attitudes to war as depicted through poetry from antiquity to the Vietnam War. (I was a fairly up myself pacifist )

Texts have to be fairly advanced and have a bit of depth to them. DS1's alternative would have been Dr. Faustus or Samuel Beckett and the theatre of the absurd, but both of those were set texts for his AH.

That use of narrative question re. Amis' works would be fascinating if one of the works was Time's Arrow. The novel is told in reverse. Interestingly, Time's Arrow was Amis' original considered title for London Fields so the dissertation could start from that point.

From the gurus in my dept: To be avoided: Sylvia Plath; Margaret Atwood; Catcher in the Rye; One Flew over the Cuckoo?s Nest; The Wasp Factory; Jane Austen and 19th Century heroines in general; Carol Anne Duffy.

Some authors that tend to be done well include Evelyn Waugh; Ernest Hemingway; RL Stevenson; Albert Camus; TS Eliot; John Fowles; Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Some tasks over the years:

The influence of Raymond Chandler on contemporary crime fiction.

Recreations of Childhood: ?Angela?s Ashes? by Frank McCourt; Paddy Clark ha ha ha by Roddy Doyle; Frank O?Connor- a selection.

The use of narrative in the works of Martin Amis. Analysis of techniques by used to create narrative ?voices?, and an evaluation of the effect, and effectiveness, of these: ?Dark Secrets?; ?Money?; ?London Fields"

Depictions of life in autocratic societies. A comparative analysis of themes and techniques used by three writers living in and writing about absolutist states: ?Shanghai Baby? by Wei Hui ( China ); ?The Unbearable Lightness of Being? by Milan Kundera ( Czechoslovakia ); ?The First Circle? by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (USSR).

An examination of the thematic and symbolic significance of Dopplegangers in literature: James Hogg: ?The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner?; Dostoevsky: ?The Double?; Stevenson: ?Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?.

HTH!

I am not familiar with The Historian so couldn't say. I know that Muriel Spark is quite popular round our way and have also been aware of Confessions of a Justified Sinner a couple of times which pairs up well with the Testament of Gideon Mack. Have seen one on the use of the Unreliable Narrator in Lolita and the Talented Mr Ripley. There's been a bit of James Kelman too, Tolstoy Anna Karenina, EM Forster, Kazuo Ishiguro ...

Definitely not A Thousand Splendid Suns - I loved it but it's definitely not Advanced Higher Material. Stay away from Sylvia Plath too (although being male I'm sure he will) Will be back with a more comprehensive list. (If I remember when I'm at work ...)

I don't teach in Scotland and don't want to offer bad advice therefore, but I am an English teacher and in the course I teach, students have to write a 3,000 word essay comparing three texts. We have found dystopian fiction works very well. You might also want to look at novels which have a distinctive narrative style - Martin Amis' Time's Arrow is fascinating in that sense - or, say, Remains of the Day with the central concept of the unreliable narrator.

Oh, and I did it on those books because they were on my grandparents' bookshelves (along with MR James' Tales of an Antiquary shiver) and I used to just love them - not because they were on a list or suggested by anyone. I dug them out myself.

What has ds1 dug out for himself, like that?

I did a version of this 1000 years ago and I wrote about Christie's Old Organ, Froggy's Little Brother, plus one other, can't remember name - pious weepies from about 1870, used to get given out as Sunday School attendance prizes to one's grandparents, all about poverty, humility, early death and heaven, and the most fascinating insight into a whole landscape of Victorian assumptions and norms. It lasted me very well, that thesis - got me into university, set me up for extended writing in all sorts of ways.

So, my fundamental recommendation would be - choose something he really loves & is interested in, so that he can immerse himself in it and take the ideas somewhere truly interesting. What inspires him is what you want.

I used to teach the old version of this course and the best dissertation I saw was on Wilkie Collins "The Woman In White" and one other by him (I have forgotten).

It is really important that he enjoys the books he chooses as he will have to read them a few times and immerse himself in them.

Terry Pratchett wouldn't be enough in my classroom tbh or Arthur C Clarke. Ray Bradbury would be ok (that is who I did myself when I did it) but he would have to really really get in deep with it to get a good mark so he would have to be careful.

I also think Lewis Grassic Gibbon would be risky as it used to be taught regularly as part of the course work so most teachers know it inside out which would make them more likely to pick holes in his ideas. It is also really difficult if you are not a Doric speaker yourself which I suspect he is not!

Bram Stoker would be weighty enough certainly but he would have to be very careful to choose a sufficiently weighty accomplice. I haven't read "The Historian" so I don't know if that would be sufficient.

Sorry if this is a bit negative. I am tired and not very inspired but I will keep thinking about it.

I studied sunset song by lewis Grassic gibbon for my higher english and I loved the book but unless your son is Scottish or can read old scots don't bother with it cos he'll struggle to read the scots its written it.
It took me several chapters to grasp the language and I grew up in Scotland!
Iain banks is fantastic. And if he's into sci fi iain banks writes sci fi under the name Iain m banks.
I'm not sure if this book would be right but A Thousand Splendid Suns is an incredible book and very informative about life in afghanistan.

For mine, I did an Scottish author called Neil M Gunn. I don't know how they would appeal to a teenage boy these days but they are mainly based on Scottish fishing communities round the time of the Highland Clearances. I found the characterisation in them brilliant with plenty of scope for topics for dissertation. If I remember correctly (it was a while ago!) my title was 'The imagery of the sea and how it drives the storylines in the novels of Neil M Gunn with special reference to Morning Glory and The Silver Darlings'. I got an a if that helps!

PS am loving the idea of The Haynes Manual and Zen and the Art of Motorbike Maintenance being used for this study

Thinking about the choices boys have made before: Camus' 'The Outsider' and Primo Levi's 'If this is a Man'; Stevenson's 'Dr Jeykll and Mr Hyde' and Hogg's 'Confessions of a Justified Sinner'; Orwell: 'Journey to Catalonia', 'The Road to Wigan Pier' and 'Burmese Days'; and various things by authors like Iain Banks, Oscar Wilde and Umberto Eco.

What does he like reading? If he's in to Science Fiction / fantasy, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C Clarke and Terry Pratchett may be possibles?

Not To Kill a Mockingbird- ou are right that is done to death!

What about Brave New World or Animal Farm or a Scottish Classic like one of Robert Louis Stevenson/ Walter Scott or Lewis Grassic Gibbon's books?

Many thanks for the link!

You're more than welcome. Let us know what texts he chooses - I'm sure we can muster up appropriate background reading between us. And I'll wait till I've fed both the cat and myself before answering next time

Thanks for that Angus - tough but useful. This is the first time we've come up against this, and as we grew up with O and A levels and hadn't met the Scottish curriculum until we moved up here, this is utterly unknown territory.

Sorry, that wasn't meant to be as brusque as it seemed when I read it back - been a long day!

Your son should have been given a copy of this:

www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/NQEnglishCircular090403.pdf

it's a bit offensive to suggest, on little evidence, that we intend to do the work for him.

As said, no offence intended but you did say you were not aware of this exam or what it consists of, hence me saying it has to be his work and why.

Anyway, this guidance should give you an idea of what his teacher will be expecting from him.

You could always do Paddy Clarke (which won the booker prize so has literary merit) and is very funny, with something more current, perhaps looking at the effect of poverty on childhood/ neglect etc. There will be plenty of novels on those themes.

he has to choose two books for a piece of extended written work (he said dissertation), and I would like to pick the brains of Scottish mumsnetters and teachers about the choice of books for this.

He is correct; he will be doing a disseration on substantial novels (not generally o level texts) and his teachers will give him the AH guidance and point him to the nearest uni library for the lit crit sources to read. He then has to formulate his dissertation title, do his reading and produce a 5000 word essay, which is sent to the exam board along with his NAB results, before he takes his final exam.

Are there any books or topics that get done to death, and will make the examiner yawn when they see them again?

This is a matter for discussion by your son and his teacher. You may not be aware that an Advanced Higher is equal to the first year of undergraduate study in a Scottish uni and, should he continue to read English at university, an AH will allow him to begin in the second year, if he wishes.

Discussing this with dh last night, he came up with one suggestion - The Historian by Victoria Kostova, and Bram Stoker's Dracula - we wondered if it would be interesting to compare and contrast the treatments of the Dracula story, and vampire stories in general.

This is not a family piece of work! Your son is studying at undergraduate level - he needs to do this himself, with the guidance of his teacher, to produce a scholarly dissertation that would be acceptable from a 1st Year undergrad. Your suggested task is more appropriate to GCSE, I'm afraid.

what is actually required in this piece of work

That it is all the candidates own work. He will be supervised during this time and any hint of cheating (ie mum and dad) will disqualify him.

I was thinking Dickens, Austin and Bronte (and To Kill A Mockingbird, because I did that for O level and it ruined it for me).

The best advice I could give you would be to leave your son and his school to it - from what you say here, you might be in danger of disadvantaging him, albeit with the best intentions. After all, you won't be following him around at uni next year.