feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2015-05-25 07:43 am
feather_ghyll) wrote2015-05-25 07:43 am
REVIEW: Kits at Clynton Court School
Kits at Clynton Court School: May Wynne. Warne. (I’m presuming it’s a reprint, the picture on the dust jacket has an accidental (?) 3D effect.
Kits arrives, or rather makes her entrance, at her new school on a grocer’s cart. She arrived a week late and, with no-one to meet her at the station, had to make her own way there, shocking the first two girls she meets. Fortunately, the rest of the school are nothing like ‘the Prims’ and Kits, the only sister of four boys and previously educated by a governess, is taken up by the Crew, a gang of five girls who like fun and adventures, although they have a definite code of honour, which appeals to Kits. However, the much quieter Joyce, with whom she is to share a dorm appeals to her too, and Kits’s friendliness draws out the reserved girl who hadn’t quite found her place at school before. But the friendship will be tested.
The driving force of the Crew, although its members are quite lively as a bunch, is Crystal, a bright girl with high spirits if not the physical strength of Kits – for the latter is a brilliant batswoman, which will come in handy, as, in a new one on me, the girls school is going to play a match against a boys’ college. Crystal is going in for a scholarship, which will bring its own troubles over the term, although Clynton Court school seemed to be having half-holidays left right and centre and I was never clear what the scholarship was for or what it meant beyond the accolade of winning for young Crystal and her older rival Gwenda.
Apart from the Crew’s attempts to make their own fun, there’s a strict Mademoiselle, nearby ponds, mines and moors for people to have adventures in and gypsies (who are thieving gypsies to boot.) Meanwhile, a rivalry makes one girl act out of spite, putting an innocent girl in a horrible position as Kits’s strict sense of honour makes her act unkindly.
It’s a lively read, although slapdash at points – one character changes name in a few paragraphs, although he isn’t a schoolgirl, so who cares!? More seriously, it seems like two characters reconcile in one chapter, and then one of them goes back on it for no good reason the next. Kits gets into a bundle of scrapes, although the headmistress is very understanding, and the latter few are about plot manoeuvrings.
Kits and Crystal have the makings of being really interesting characters, especially playing off Joyce, who is more of a noble sufferer type, but never quite get developed enough, and Kits falls into the Remarkable New Girl territory, with her heroine tendencies, her cricketing and acting prowess, not to mention a quick temper. The dialogue had a little too much punctuation going on for my taste too. I feel like it was a little rushed and I’d be interested to know when it was first published, because it felt as though the writer still felt obliged to write some elements of the pre-school-story type of girls’ story, as if she was working her way into this genre, when some things that would become staples had yet to be codified. I tried to look up a date, but all I learned was that May Wynne was the penname of Mabel Winifred Knowles.
Kits arrives, or rather makes her entrance, at her new school on a grocer’s cart. She arrived a week late and, with no-one to meet her at the station, had to make her own way there, shocking the first two girls she meets. Fortunately, the rest of the school are nothing like ‘the Prims’ and Kits, the only sister of four boys and previously educated by a governess, is taken up by the Crew, a gang of five girls who like fun and adventures, although they have a definite code of honour, which appeals to Kits. However, the much quieter Joyce, with whom she is to share a dorm appeals to her too, and Kits’s friendliness draws out the reserved girl who hadn’t quite found her place at school before. But the friendship will be tested.
The driving force of the Crew, although its members are quite lively as a bunch, is Crystal, a bright girl with high spirits if not the physical strength of Kits – for the latter is a brilliant batswoman, which will come in handy, as, in a new one on me, the girls school is going to play a match against a boys’ college. Crystal is going in for a scholarship, which will bring its own troubles over the term, although Clynton Court school seemed to be having half-holidays left right and centre and I was never clear what the scholarship was for or what it meant beyond the accolade of winning for young Crystal and her older rival Gwenda.
Apart from the Crew’s attempts to make their own fun, there’s a strict Mademoiselle, nearby ponds, mines and moors for people to have adventures in and gypsies (who are thieving gypsies to boot.) Meanwhile, a rivalry makes one girl act out of spite, putting an innocent girl in a horrible position as Kits’s strict sense of honour makes her act unkindly.
It’s a lively read, although slapdash at points – one character changes name in a few paragraphs, although he isn’t a schoolgirl, so who cares!? More seriously, it seems like two characters reconcile in one chapter, and then one of them goes back on it for no good reason the next. Kits gets into a bundle of scrapes, although the headmistress is very understanding, and the latter few are about plot manoeuvrings.
Kits and Crystal have the makings of being really interesting characters, especially playing off Joyce, who is more of a noble sufferer type, but never quite get developed enough, and Kits falls into the Remarkable New Girl territory, with her heroine tendencies, her cricketing and acting prowess, not to mention a quick temper. The dialogue had a little too much punctuation going on for my taste too. I feel like it was a little rushed and I’d be interested to know when it was first published, because it felt as though the writer still felt obliged to write some elements of the pre-school-story type of girls’ story, as if she was working her way into this genre, when some things that would become staples had yet to be codified. I tried to look up a date, but all I learned was that May Wynne was the penname of Mabel Winifred Knowles.