The Topeka School

Jane, Adam’s mother, is a psychologist at the Foundation. After publishing a successful self-help book geared towards women, she becomes a nationally known figure, appearing on Oprah. Jane’s success leads to struggles in her everyday life. Jane’s husband and her closest friend and confidant Sima become alienated by Jane’s success. These relationships disintegrate following a trip to New York, where Jane has asked Sima to interview her for a speaking event.

The novel explores the physical and verbal misogynistic violence that has affected Jane throughout her life. Jane’s father sexually assaulted her when she was a child. However, Jane represses the incident until adulthood, only coming to remember it through informal therapy with Sima. When Jane is finally recalls the assault, it is so traumatic that she cannot verbalize what exactly happened to her: “my speech started breaking down, fragmenting under the emotional pressure, became a litany of non sequiturs” (88). Jane suffers further abuse as an adult, as her success leads to her receiving numerous threatening phone calls from anonymous men who resent her achievements as a woman and a feminist.

Jonathan, Adam’s father, is also a psychologist at the Foundation. However, unlike Jane, Jonathan “lack[s] ambition” and has “no real desire to publish” or seek out national acclaim (51). Instead, Jonathan focuses on treating his patients, mostly teenage boys in Topeka, whom Jonathan describes as “the lost boys of privilege” (55). These boys are often withdrawn and resist opening up about their emotions with Jonathan. Jonathan, who has an amateur interest in filmmaking, creates a video department at the Foundation, where he and his patients make films to bond.

The Topeka School explores Jonathan’s relationships with women. When he is a teenager, Jonathan’s family moves to Taipei, where his father is a diplomat. While there, Jonathan loses his virginity to a Taiwanese prostitute, an act that later makes Jonathan feel an immense amount of guilt. As an adult, Jonathan cheats on his first wife Rachel with Jane, eventually leaving Rachel to be with Jane. Though Jonathan hopes that such infidelity is an isolated incident, he eventually cheats on Jane with Sima. Though Jonathan recognizes the wrongness of his behavior, he is ultimately unable to resist, and fears that he might be a “man who sought substitute mothers, then left them like my father” (172).

Darren, Adam’s schoolmate, is an intellectually disabled teenager. Darren’s story is narrated in short untitled sections, befitting his secondary character status.

Darren’s mental disability disturbs his classmates, who bully and ostracize him as a result. Darren, who struggles to assimilate into daily life, attends therapy sessions with Jonathan. One night, Darren’s neighbor Ron Williams invites Darren to drink with Ron and his son Cody, a classmate of Darren’s. The night develops into a party, and Darren’s classmates invite him to join them as they drink by a lake. Though they abandon Darren by the lake afterwards, they subsequently invite him to more parties, and he slowly integrates into school social life. At one party, Darren attacks a drunken girl named Mandy Owen after she calls him a homophobic slur. Darren picks up a cue ball from a nearby billiard table and throws it at her face, causing permanent damage. During his attack, Darren feels the cue ball “had been there all his life,” waiting for him to throw it at Mandy—Darren feels his assault was fated to occur and thus outside of his control (4).