OVERVIEW: September reading

[feather_ghyll]

In Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth, Miss Silver goes to stay with an old schoolfriend, who usefully lives in the same village as the Yard is interested in. Said schoolfriend refers to some things they did in their school days, and I cannot express how much I would love to read Maud Silver—Schoolgirl! I liked the book more than I have the last few Miss Silver mysteries I’ve read.

I’m not going to review it here and I don’t remember if I moaned about it when I first bought the book, but I just read a hardback, girls own, and it was missing its last page. I don’t think I missed much except the characters ruminating on all that had happened, but when I did realise the book was missing its last page (of all pages), I vowed to check, always, if a book had all its pages before buying it. It’s not a vow I’ve managed to keep. In a way, it’s a surprise, given the age and occasional condition of the books that I buy that it hasn’t happened oftener.

Binkie of IIIB by Evelyn Smith does the sort of thing other writers try to do so much better. Elizabeth ‘Binkie’ Seymour is to share her first term at St Helen’s school with her older sister Rose whose last term it is. Rose is the head girl of the school and has always been in the A forms, so she’s dismayed that Binkie is going to be in IIIB, which has only distinguished itself by being a dud form.

Its leader is strong-willed Susan, who at first makes Binkie feel far from welcome, but Binkie’s good nature and loyalty to the form lead to unexpected developments. There’s an interest in psychology – the similarities between the very different sisters, how and why Susan is difficult and how Binkie influences others. We have fallible prefects, but although the focus is on a limited number of characters, we get an overall sense of the school and the type of behaviour it deems appropriate. There were a few rough edges about it.

I wanted to mention Zoe Marriot’s Shadow on the Moon because it has another different fantasy setting to the usual, as per The Lives of Elves. This is an adaptation of the Cinderella story set in a version of historical Japan with magic (it’s got less going on than in Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori). It’s a YA novel, and so the question of identity is an important one. The book is in three parts, with its heroine taking on three different names in each of them. I liked the translation of the ball to fit with very specific traditions, and, in hindsight, how the social conventions affected the characters’ behaviour.

I do hope that the writer consulted with a mental health professional, though, when writing this, because one of Suzume’s coping mechanisms to trauma, survivors guilt and scarce means of expressing her feelings is self-harm. It isn’t glorified – one of the few characters who finds out is horrified. Perhaps it is more credible that a character would respond to loss and betrayal in this way, but given the levels of self-harm among the likely readership, I occasionally felt uncomfortable. For instance, the love interests comes from a society where scarring is a visible part of their traditions (it’s clearly based on some African country), and while, yes, it is good to have someone see beyond the fake beauty Suzume puts on as a disguise and accept the scars, I would have felt more reassured if there had been some signposting to helplines or something. (I don’t know if I’d have reacted this way if there had been alcohol abuse or some other abuse.)