REVIEW: Sally's Summer Term
Jun. 11th, 2015 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllSally’s Summer Term: Dorita Fairlie Bruce. Blackie 1961.
You mustn’t grumble when you get what you wished for! This is a moral for me, not from the story. After reading quite a few girls own books where the main character is a new girl, remarkable in some way, I wanted a story about an established schoolgirl. Here is one – the third, I believe, in the Sally series, which I haven’t come across before, although I have Springdale and Dimsie books, and, indeed, the one where they cross over.
So, I shouldn’t grumble at the opening characters, where it took me a while to sort out who Sally and co. at the charming-sounding Cherrybrae House are. Like Springdale School, the boarders live in separate houses that really are separate buildings. Sally’s school is St Michael’s, a popular school for boarders and townies. So, when pipes burst in Cherrybrae House, the housemistress is in quite a pickle. There’s an annex of a cottage that can house a small number of the girls and the only empty space in one of the other houses will take Celia, who is appointed head prefect – but Sally and her friend Vivien, Syliva-Jill and Isobel, who are all sixth formers, are to go stay at a local hotel, the Hydro.
It gives them an opportunity to get to know Lennox Kirkbride, who started at the school at the end of the previous term. Sally, in particular, takes to her, seeing that she’s lonely, and as she learns she’s lived an itinerant life with her (unpleasant) father, and longs to be able to stay at St Mike’s, Sally’s glad of the chance to befriend her and help make her feel she belongs to the school. For although she’s no prefect, Sally is quite an influential character, partly because she is more perceptive than some prefects.
I warmed to the book when Sally was put in charge of a scratch team of possible second eleven players to play against the possible first eleven at cricket at the start of term. Unlike her chum V.V., Sally doesn’t believe that the cricket grounds are THE place to defend the school’s honour or that all one’s time is best spent there. However, she has a knack of getting the girls to shine, by frankly telling them they haven’t got a hope, so why not just do the best they can.
This cricket business, however, leads to trouble from Beatrix Austin, formerly the vice-captain at games (one wonders what the school authorities were thinking), who thought more of her own credit and isn’t as good at cricket as hockey and lacrosse. She certainly isn’t good enough for the first eleven and so loses her position to Vivien. In her attempt to gain revenge, the ‘vindictive little cat’ causes a lot of trouble for the school, the prefects and Sally.
Sally has quite a busy term with riding, getting to know Lennox, living in the Hydro and, her special passion, painting animals. She’s in the Dimsie mould, fair-minded and capable of seeing more than most – a little incredibly so. Her nickname is Sally Scatterbrain, because her name is Sally Brayne, but she seems very much on the spot. There are references to her previous adventures that I didn’t get (but I’ve always read DFB’s books in the order I came across them!) and it was only halfway or more through that I realised she was Canadian.
There is one silly passage purporting to be from a cat’s point of view, and the out-of-the-school plot is a bit hard to swallow, although its emotional ramification are well done, while the school business was the most interesting to me, even though I obviously would have got more out of it had I read the previous books.
You mustn’t grumble when you get what you wished for! This is a moral for me, not from the story. After reading quite a few girls own books where the main character is a new girl, remarkable in some way, I wanted a story about an established schoolgirl. Here is one – the third, I believe, in the Sally series, which I haven’t come across before, although I have Springdale and Dimsie books, and, indeed, the one where they cross over.
So, I shouldn’t grumble at the opening characters, where it took me a while to sort out who Sally and co. at the charming-sounding Cherrybrae House are. Like Springdale School, the boarders live in separate houses that really are separate buildings. Sally’s school is St Michael’s, a popular school for boarders and townies. So, when pipes burst in Cherrybrae House, the housemistress is in quite a pickle. There’s an annex of a cottage that can house a small number of the girls and the only empty space in one of the other houses will take Celia, who is appointed head prefect – but Sally and her friend Vivien, Syliva-Jill and Isobel, who are all sixth formers, are to go stay at a local hotel, the Hydro.
It gives them an opportunity to get to know Lennox Kirkbride, who started at the school at the end of the previous term. Sally, in particular, takes to her, seeing that she’s lonely, and as she learns she’s lived an itinerant life with her (unpleasant) father, and longs to be able to stay at St Mike’s, Sally’s glad of the chance to befriend her and help make her feel she belongs to the school. For although she’s no prefect, Sally is quite an influential character, partly because she is more perceptive than some prefects.
I warmed to the book when Sally was put in charge of a scratch team of possible second eleven players to play against the possible first eleven at cricket at the start of term. Unlike her chum V.V., Sally doesn’t believe that the cricket grounds are THE place to defend the school’s honour or that all one’s time is best spent there. However, she has a knack of getting the girls to shine, by frankly telling them they haven’t got a hope, so why not just do the best they can.
This cricket business, however, leads to trouble from Beatrix Austin, formerly the vice-captain at games (one wonders what the school authorities were thinking), who thought more of her own credit and isn’t as good at cricket as hockey and lacrosse. She certainly isn’t good enough for the first eleven and so loses her position to Vivien. In her attempt to gain revenge, the ‘vindictive little cat’ causes a lot of trouble for the school, the prefects and Sally.
Sally has quite a busy term with riding, getting to know Lennox, living in the Hydro and, her special passion, painting animals. She’s in the Dimsie mould, fair-minded and capable of seeing more than most – a little incredibly so. Her nickname is Sally Scatterbrain, because her name is Sally Brayne, but she seems very much on the spot. There are references to her previous adventures that I didn’t get (but I’ve always read DFB’s books in the order I came across them!) and it was only halfway or more through that I realised she was Canadian.
There is one silly passage purporting to be from a cat’s point of view, and the out-of-the-school plot is a bit hard to swallow, although its emotional ramification are well done, while the school business was the most interesting to me, even though I obviously would have got more out of it had I read the previous books.
