REVIEW: Beswitched
Aug. 13th, 2015 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllBeswitched: Kate Saunders (Marion Lloyd Books – Scholastic) 2013 edition
This is the story of Flora Fox, who, when we first meet her, is having a tantrum because she is being sent away to boarding school for two terms. Her grandmother has injured her hip in Italy and Flora’s parents are going out there to her to help her recuperate. The plan is that by the time Flora’s stint at Penrice Hall will come to an end, her grandmother will be ensconced in a granny flat in their Wimbledon home. Flora is eleven, going on seventeen, while also having a larger sense of entitlement than some toddlers. She doesn’t like the way her life has been reordered at all.
It was quite a relief to meet Flora, knowing the premise of the book and sensing from the writing that the author knew perfectly well that her heroine was an entitled little madam, the only child of older parents, used to twenty-first century conveniences and getting her own way. For, of course, she gains uncomfortable insight into how she has behaved by undergoing quite an extreme experience: that of being Summoned by a magic spell back to 1935, exchanging places with another Flora Fox who’d left India for St Winifred’s school.
What struck me was the description of the textures that girls own writers didn’t much feel the need to write about (although some are greater sensualists than others). From Flora’s point of view, her clothes are restrictive, it is a surprise that women wear hats and that everyone smokes. It’s a thoroughly alien world. Modern readers, especially those who have read boarding school stories, which Flora really hasn’t, she’s more of a Jacqueline Wilson fan, have a sort of double vision, sharing some of her viewpoints, but enjoying watching Flora follow a similar trajectory to that of any Remarkable New Girl who needs reformation. This was heightened for me as an adult reader. Saunders makes hay of her modern-day heroine experiencing a past her reader will know something about.
In the midst of her disorientation, Flora becomes chums with the girls of Bluebell Dorm: lively Pete, clever Pogo and sweet Dulcie. There’s a stately headmistress and a kind form mistress, neither of which take kindly to the new girl’s ramblings about being from the future. There’s a sarcastic but nice prefect, a class bully whom Flora approaches differently to the other girls and the wonderfully drawn battle-axe, Miss Harbottle, who teaches Latin. Fortunately for Flora, the magic allows her to access some of the memories of the Flora from the thirties, which cushions her. In fact, the rules of magic in this book continue to have a softening effect. Flora quite quickly settles into being mostly okay with her new life, although extreme homesickness strikes her occasionally when she remembers she’s not separated by continents from her parents, but by decades. If Saunders were really to examine what it must feel like to be sundered from your parents and much of the life you know, it would become a heavy read for a children’s book, of course.
Magic is also a handy excuse for how some of Flora’s knowledge of the future and the other Flora’s past worked – I thought Flora shockingly ignorant about the second world war, which is only a few years away, but that’s explained away by the magic, thus avoiding some of the problems of time travel.
So, within certain confines, Saunders gets to write an old-fashioned school story with a touch of fantasy/magic and comment on modern childhood. Flora is very much a spoiled brat, but she’s also growing up in a world where girls are conditioned to be obsessed with their appearance, and even pre-teens are used to much greater independence – Flora is indignant at being treated like a child, being ordered about and fed stodge. However, she’s shown to thrive in the environment she’s thrust into, benefiting from set bedtimes and strict rules, and having an increased appetite from her regulated new life. She learns to take responsibility for herself and consider others. These are boundaries and expectations that she wouldn’t have got from Penrice Hall according to what we learn about it.
Most of all, she benefits from being in close quarters with her peers, although having to share a dormitory and bathrooms shocks her at first. But seeing other girls who live in a different era and by a distinctive code makes her see her past behaviour in a new light, particularly the failings of Pete (really Daphne) who likes to think of herself as the boss and the centre of everything. The final developments regarding Pete and how Flora is brought back to the twenty-first century felt a bit as if the requirements of the plot overrode some of what had been suggested might develop more organically earlier – to give examples might give too much away. In addition, I didn’t always feel Saunders had a tight enough grasp of the language that Flora (and others) would use when, even though she used the peculiar-to-the-school slang and Flora’s swearwords cleverly and wittily, particularly at the beginning of the story. It would be interesting to read the other Flora Fox’s companion story.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun to read, and really, after Schoolgirl Reporter (and Jess of the Juniors by Elizabeth Morley, which I recently read, but couldn’t bring myself to review here) it was so satisfying to read about a brat learning to be nicer. However, perhaps that’s to be expected in a book where the heroine learns to love The Secret Garden.
This is the story of Flora Fox, who, when we first meet her, is having a tantrum because she is being sent away to boarding school for two terms. Her grandmother has injured her hip in Italy and Flora’s parents are going out there to her to help her recuperate. The plan is that by the time Flora’s stint at Penrice Hall will come to an end, her grandmother will be ensconced in a granny flat in their Wimbledon home. Flora is eleven, going on seventeen, while also having a larger sense of entitlement than some toddlers. She doesn’t like the way her life has been reordered at all.
It was quite a relief to meet Flora, knowing the premise of the book and sensing from the writing that the author knew perfectly well that her heroine was an entitled little madam, the only child of older parents, used to twenty-first century conveniences and getting her own way. For, of course, she gains uncomfortable insight into how she has behaved by undergoing quite an extreme experience: that of being Summoned by a magic spell back to 1935, exchanging places with another Flora Fox who’d left India for St Winifred’s school.
What struck me was the description of the textures that girls own writers didn’t much feel the need to write about (although some are greater sensualists than others). From Flora’s point of view, her clothes are restrictive, it is a surprise that women wear hats and that everyone smokes. It’s a thoroughly alien world. Modern readers, especially those who have read boarding school stories, which Flora really hasn’t, she’s more of a Jacqueline Wilson fan, have a sort of double vision, sharing some of her viewpoints, but enjoying watching Flora follow a similar trajectory to that of any Remarkable New Girl who needs reformation. This was heightened for me as an adult reader. Saunders makes hay of her modern-day heroine experiencing a past her reader will know something about.
In the midst of her disorientation, Flora becomes chums with the girls of Bluebell Dorm: lively Pete, clever Pogo and sweet Dulcie. There’s a stately headmistress and a kind form mistress, neither of which take kindly to the new girl’s ramblings about being from the future. There’s a sarcastic but nice prefect, a class bully whom Flora approaches differently to the other girls and the wonderfully drawn battle-axe, Miss Harbottle, who teaches Latin. Fortunately for Flora, the magic allows her to access some of the memories of the Flora from the thirties, which cushions her. In fact, the rules of magic in this book continue to have a softening effect. Flora quite quickly settles into being mostly okay with her new life, although extreme homesickness strikes her occasionally when she remembers she’s not separated by continents from her parents, but by decades. If Saunders were really to examine what it must feel like to be sundered from your parents and much of the life you know, it would become a heavy read for a children’s book, of course.
Magic is also a handy excuse for how some of Flora’s knowledge of the future and the other Flora’s past worked – I thought Flora shockingly ignorant about the second world war, which is only a few years away, but that’s explained away by the magic, thus avoiding some of the problems of time travel.
So, within certain confines, Saunders gets to write an old-fashioned school story with a touch of fantasy/magic and comment on modern childhood. Flora is very much a spoiled brat, but she’s also growing up in a world where girls are conditioned to be obsessed with their appearance, and even pre-teens are used to much greater independence – Flora is indignant at being treated like a child, being ordered about and fed stodge. However, she’s shown to thrive in the environment she’s thrust into, benefiting from set bedtimes and strict rules, and having an increased appetite from her regulated new life. She learns to take responsibility for herself and consider others. These are boundaries and expectations that she wouldn’t have got from Penrice Hall according to what we learn about it.
Most of all, she benefits from being in close quarters with her peers, although having to share a dormitory and bathrooms shocks her at first. But seeing other girls who live in a different era and by a distinctive code makes her see her past behaviour in a new light, particularly the failings of Pete (really Daphne) who likes to think of herself as the boss and the centre of everything. The final developments regarding Pete and how Flora is brought back to the twenty-first century felt a bit as if the requirements of the plot overrode some of what had been suggested might develop more organically earlier – to give examples might give too much away. In addition, I didn’t always feel Saunders had a tight enough grasp of the language that Flora (and others) would use when, even though she used the peculiar-to-the-school slang and Flora’s swearwords cleverly and wittily, particularly at the beginning of the story. It would be interesting to read the other Flora Fox’s companion story.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun to read, and really, after Schoolgirl Reporter (and Jess of the Juniors by Elizabeth Morley, which I recently read, but couldn’t bring myself to review here) it was so satisfying to read about a brat learning to be nicer. However, perhaps that’s to be expected in a book where the heroine learns to love The Secret Garden.
