Good Night, Prof, Dear by John Rowe Townsend

First published: 1970, illustrated (in Great Britain as Good-night, Prof, Love, 1971)

Type of work: Social realism

Themes: Coming-of-age, love and romance, and sexual issues

Time of work: 1970

Recommended Ages: 13-18

Locale: The suburbs of Crimley, a town on the Southern coast of England

Principal Characters:

• Graham Hollis, an intelligent, overprotected sixteen-year-old boy
• Lynn, an attractive, warmhearted, sexually experienced eighteen-year-old waitress
• Mr. Hollis, Graham’s father, who is jocular, protective of both his wife and his son, and remembers his own coming-of-age trauma
• Mrs. Hollis, Graham’s mother, who is immersed in her small family and is afraid of change, especially a change that could mean losing Graham
• Jeff, the owner of the cafe in which Lynn works, Lynn’s disagreeable present lover
• Alice, an older woman who serves as cook and odd-job worker who dispenses advice and cynicism
• Sam Bell, a truck driver and customer at the cafe who, in his attempts at dalliance with Lynn, precipitates a crisis

The Story

Graham is a studious boy of sixteen who attempts to begin making his own decisions when he refuses to go with his parents for a week’s holiday in Ireland. He sweetens his refusal by his insistence that he needs the time to study for examinations. Inwardly he delights at the freedom that will be his during the week. Yet he finds that being alone palls, so he walks through town looking for something interesting to do. He finds activity and a variety of emotional situations when he goes into Jeff’s dingy cafe for a bite to eat. There he meets Lynn, the good-natured waitress who is not much older than he but who is of a different social class and has had a wide range of sexual experiences. He accepts a job as busboy and develops a warm relationship with Alice, the maid of all work.

In a bewildered feeling of altruism, Graham aids Lynn in her escape from the strange relationship she has with Jeff, the cafe owner, by allowing her to come home with him. Unfortunately, his parents, who have been worried about not hearing from him, return unexpectedly. There is a scene of denouement in which the mother exhibits distaste and cold anger to mask her fright; the father portrays a laissez-faire attitude of “boys will be boys.” Grudgingly, Lynn is allowed to stay the night.

The next day, Graham escorts Lynn to the train station for a trip to London and her parents. Encouraged by his growing sense of independence, Graham succeeds in persuading Lynn to run away with him toward his ultimate goal of Scotland and marriage. Lynn circumvents Graham’s plans by detouring their trip through a visit to an out-of-the-way seaside town. In an act of betrayal, Lynn turns Graham back over to his father and the life that he is not yet ready to give up for any sort of love.

Although the plot of Good Night, Prof, Dear resembles a sparsely drawn pencil sketch, the outline of the design is sharp and clear. It gives a vivid picture of the seaside town in which Graham is suffering the pangs that come with the first attempts to sort out conflicting feelings, wishes, and desires. Although the story follows the traditional boy meets girl, loves girl, loses girl pattern, it is sparsely told through the eyes of the boy with distinctive differences. The protagonists meet because Graham deliberately takes actions of which he knows his parents would disapprove. It is told almost entirely in dialogue, both conversation and Graham’s own internal dialogue.

The selection of such a technique eliminates distracting consideration from the impact of the story, which depends entirely upon the character traits of both protagonists: Graham and Lynn. The interplay of Graham’s eager need and innocent chivalry with Lynn’s tired experience and own need for gentleness is a catalyst that guides the action to its logical conclusion.

Context

Good Night, Prof, Dear is neither the best-known nor the most accomplished of Townsend’s writings, although it is interesting for the terseness of its experimental style. Townsend has created children’s novels in a variety of genres. One of his first concerns was to write books that reflected the lives, actions, speech, and needs of working-class children and not merely those of children of the upper classes in England. After a series of these stories and at the publication of Hell’s Edge (1969), he became a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal. Thereafter, he wrote his two stories of first love, Good Night, Prof, Dear and The Summer People (1972).

Good Night, Prof, Dear was written as one of the early novels of social realism in British modern fiction for children. Although it concerns a transition from innocence to reality, it tells of events as they could have really happened. This is evident not only in the realistic portrayal of Graham’s respectable family, who live a placid life with quiet holidays in which every member of the family participates, but also in the actions of Graham, who is alone for the first time. It is intensified by his readiness to reach out to first love. Unconsciously he has been preparing for this as he has walked the seaside cliffs that are a part of his hometown landscape.

Townsend has written successfully in a variety of other genres, including mystery, historical fiction, and parody. Although he is one of Great Britain’s outstanding writers for young people, he may be better known outside Great Britain for his own criticism of children’s books and for his articles and books on criticism of modern children’s literature. Nevertheless, Good Night, Prof, Dear remains a first in its presentation, from the viewpoint of the young male protagonist, of the bewildering entanglement of love, sexual urges, and chivalry that are part of the strong need to become one’s own person.