REVIEW: Abbey Turns the Tables
Oct. 9th, 2016 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Abbey Turns the Tables: Eric Leyland, Nelson 1959
I bought this thinking it would be about a mixed-gender school, but, set at a boys’ boarding school, it’s solely a boys own adventure. I see I’ve never written a review of a boys own book before, but then I haven’t read many and most of those involved Billy Bunter. When I see boys own books in shops, I tend to wish they were girls own and move on.
The most striking feature of this book is how clearly the author/narrator holds his schoolboy protagonists in contempt. Potson and Myers – no idea what their first names are - are Middles of Abbey House at Brancome School. Poston expends most of his brains and energy on rule-breaking schemes. Myers has the glimmers of a conscience, but is much the weaker character and so yields to Poston. When they overhear a mysterious conversation a little before term starts, Sherlock Poston emerges.
However, Poston and Myers have counterparts, and thus rivals, at School House: Dobson and Morton (I don’t know why Leyland didn’t make Myers an –on) and both pairs of boys are easily distracted by a chance to score in a long-running series of pranks and paybacks. Never mind that they always seem to go awry because there are aspects that the instigators have failed to consider, because they are, as the author rarely fails to point out sarcastically, idiots.
Running Abbey House are Bill Forbes, a decent chap, who is good at sports, and his deputy, Henry Carter, who is the brains of the operation and the son of a Scotland Yard detective. He comes across as many clues as Poston and Myers, but adds them up more successfully. However, Leyland is perfectly willing to tweak at Henry’s conceit, too.
It is a busy term – an American new boy fails to turn up, repeating a similar mystery at the end of the nineteenth century. There’s a new master who seems off. In fact, there are lots of new people (by which I mean men, it’s as homosocial a world as its distaff counterparts) like a stand-in doctor and a gardening boy. The suspicious schoolboys keep crossing paths with a movie scout, while hearing talk of the Bishop, a criminal mastermind, who may be in the area.
I got a bit confused about who all the adults were and what they were up to, apart from the unfortunate, nervy School House housemaster Brayshaw, who keeps being the butt of Poston and Myers’ (mis)adventures. There’s also an evil-tempered donkey who is a house mascot and gets pulled into many of the antics of middles and others.
Leyland has a ‘throw everything into the pot’ approach to plotting. Characters keep crossing paths or nearly crossing paths.
The up-to-no-good Middles end up being beaten by masters for their nefarious deeds, which certainly doesn’t happen in girls own. There was a little bit of novelty value to reading boys own, and I did chortle at the narrative voice – we learn that Poston’s mother has a rather extreme coping mechanism for living with her son and his ways in holiday time.
I bought this thinking it would be about a mixed-gender school, but, set at a boys’ boarding school, it’s solely a boys own adventure. I see I’ve never written a review of a boys own book before, but then I haven’t read many and most of those involved Billy Bunter. When I see boys own books in shops, I tend to wish they were girls own and move on.
The most striking feature of this book is how clearly the author/narrator holds his schoolboy protagonists in contempt. Potson and Myers – no idea what their first names are - are Middles of Abbey House at Brancome School. Poston expends most of his brains and energy on rule-breaking schemes. Myers has the glimmers of a conscience, but is much the weaker character and so yields to Poston. When they overhear a mysterious conversation a little before term starts, Sherlock Poston emerges.
However, Poston and Myers have counterparts, and thus rivals, at School House: Dobson and Morton (I don’t know why Leyland didn’t make Myers an –on) and both pairs of boys are easily distracted by a chance to score in a long-running series of pranks and paybacks. Never mind that they always seem to go awry because there are aspects that the instigators have failed to consider, because they are, as the author rarely fails to point out sarcastically, idiots.
Running Abbey House are Bill Forbes, a decent chap, who is good at sports, and his deputy, Henry Carter, who is the brains of the operation and the son of a Scotland Yard detective. He comes across as many clues as Poston and Myers, but adds them up more successfully. However, Leyland is perfectly willing to tweak at Henry’s conceit, too.
It is a busy term – an American new boy fails to turn up, repeating a similar mystery at the end of the nineteenth century. There’s a new master who seems off. In fact, there are lots of new people (by which I mean men, it’s as homosocial a world as its distaff counterparts) like a stand-in doctor and a gardening boy. The suspicious schoolboys keep crossing paths with a movie scout, while hearing talk of the Bishop, a criminal mastermind, who may be in the area.
I got a bit confused about who all the adults were and what they were up to, apart from the unfortunate, nervy School House housemaster Brayshaw, who keeps being the butt of Poston and Myers’ (mis)adventures. There’s also an evil-tempered donkey who is a house mascot and gets pulled into many of the antics of middles and others.
Leyland has a ‘throw everything into the pot’ approach to plotting. Characters keep crossing paths or nearly crossing paths.
The up-to-no-good Middles end up being beaten by masters for their nefarious deeds, which certainly doesn’t happen in girls own. There was a little bit of novelty value to reading boys own, and I did chortle at the narrative voice – we learn that Poston’s mother has a rather extreme coping mechanism for living with her son and his ways in holiday time.