Adam Gordon, a high-school debate champion in 1990s Topeka, Kansas, grows up among his parents' psychiatric community at the Foundation while navigating masculinity, speech and the threat of violence. The novel shifts among the perspectives of Adam, his psychologist mother Jane and his father Jonathan, and later returns to Adam as an adult and father.
Books mentioned in The Topeka School (5)
A Man by the Name of Ziegler by Hermann Hesse: “'I first read A Man by the Name of Ziegler on the 4 train'; Ziegler takes a pill and understands the animals at the zoo”
The Purple Cow by Gelett Burgess: “'I never saw a Purple Cow, I never hope to see one' recited at bedtime”
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton: “'There was rumored to be a copy of The Anatomy of Melancholy bound in human skin.'”
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Seuss: “'Mrs. Lewis demands he read aloud from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in fourth grade'”
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce: “'Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow... In the opening of Joyce's Portrait'”