REREAD: Lone Star
Apr. 29th, 2018 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllLone Star: Jean Vaughan Nelson 1955 (first published May 1940)
This is a reread because I picked up the sequel recently. Jean Vaughan has long been a presence in my life, because ‘Elizabeth’s Green Way’ was one of the first girls own books bequeathed to me by my mother. I got this after, but so long ago that I didn’t remember much about it (and I think I paid 35p for it. When did you last get a book for 35p at a charity shop?)
What struck me rereading it as an adult was how indebted Vaughan is to L. M. Montgomery. Etoile ‘Star’ Henderson has an aunt Emily and there are Canadian references as well as the similarity between the overall story to the adventures of Anne and Emily. It’s a touch less rich, but a good read, and more enjoyable in the second half, as our heroine’s situation improves.
Star has been brought up by her collier-poet father, who dies heroically in a pit accident but manages to have a dying conversation with his daughter, imparting a few words that stay with her all for the rest of the book. Yes, this was a bit convenient. However, the focus of the first chapter is Star’s feeling of loss, loss of her father, her home and the life she has known.
She first goes to live with her Aunt Kate and family. Although Star’s grandpa is there, too, and he is loving, and Aunt Kate’s husband, no blood relation to Star, is more understanding, Aunt Kate and Star are temperamentally incompatible. Star is sensitive, and soon bleakly realises Aunt Kate doesn’t want her there. Her aunt is a complainer, with conventional views, expressed very loudly, although she has little idea of how unkind she’s being. She finds Star difficult with her ideas above her station. Her daughter, Lena, is shaped in Kate’s mould, and although Star is her contemporary and shares her room, they don’t get on.
Aunt Kate’s plan to fob Star off to her brother Collin and his wife May seems like an escape for Star, but – and this is bleaker than thirteen year old Star overhearing her aunt saying she should have been sent to ‘the workhouse’ – Aunt May sees her as an unpaid skivvy. Star is still going to school, but being asked to do this, that and everything at home. Losing her appetite, when she finally breaks, Aunt May blames the child for her outburst and sends her back.
But there is another sister, Emily, who is unmarried and more like Star’s dead mother than her living siblings, Grandpa – about to return to sea – decides she ought to look after Star. Finally, unexpectedly, Star finds kindness, tempered with a no-nonsense attitude. Not only does she get a chance to mend healthwise, for Aunt Emily lives in the country, she gets to be a child again and a happy one, with an adult who has a better understanding of her nature. Star and new best friend Sylvia get into scrapes, partly because of Star’s enthusiasm and lack of sense, but it feels like a different book.
It's interesting that Vaughan put in so much of the unhappiness that is hinted at for Anne with an ‘e’. Reading about a grieving, sensitive child, who wants to be wanted, be misunderstood and abused is a bit grim, so it’s a relief when her adventures become a bit more comic. Vaughan puts in quite a few interjections about the fallibility of adults, such as how Kate has no idea of some of the harm she is doing Star, how Grandpa’s love is true, but he too lets the child down, and Emily is an idiosyncratic figure. But it drew me in.
This is a reread because I picked up the sequel recently. Jean Vaughan has long been a presence in my life, because ‘Elizabeth’s Green Way’ was one of the first girls own books bequeathed to me by my mother. I got this after, but so long ago that I didn’t remember much about it (and I think I paid 35p for it. When did you last get a book for 35p at a charity shop?)
What struck me rereading it as an adult was how indebted Vaughan is to L. M. Montgomery. Etoile ‘Star’ Henderson has an aunt Emily and there are Canadian references as well as the similarity between the overall story to the adventures of Anne and Emily. It’s a touch less rich, but a good read, and more enjoyable in the second half, as our heroine’s situation improves.
Star has been brought up by her collier-poet father, who dies heroically in a pit accident but manages to have a dying conversation with his daughter, imparting a few words that stay with her all for the rest of the book. Yes, this was a bit convenient. However, the focus of the first chapter is Star’s feeling of loss, loss of her father, her home and the life she has known.
She first goes to live with her Aunt Kate and family. Although Star’s grandpa is there, too, and he is loving, and Aunt Kate’s husband, no blood relation to Star, is more understanding, Aunt Kate and Star are temperamentally incompatible. Star is sensitive, and soon bleakly realises Aunt Kate doesn’t want her there. Her aunt is a complainer, with conventional views, expressed very loudly, although she has little idea of how unkind she’s being. She finds Star difficult with her ideas above her station. Her daughter, Lena, is shaped in Kate’s mould, and although Star is her contemporary and shares her room, they don’t get on.
Aunt Kate’s plan to fob Star off to her brother Collin and his wife May seems like an escape for Star, but – and this is bleaker than thirteen year old Star overhearing her aunt saying she should have been sent to ‘the workhouse’ – Aunt May sees her as an unpaid skivvy. Star is still going to school, but being asked to do this, that and everything at home. Losing her appetite, when she finally breaks, Aunt May blames the child for her outburst and sends her back.
But there is another sister, Emily, who is unmarried and more like Star’s dead mother than her living siblings, Grandpa – about to return to sea – decides she ought to look after Star. Finally, unexpectedly, Star finds kindness, tempered with a no-nonsense attitude. Not only does she get a chance to mend healthwise, for Aunt Emily lives in the country, she gets to be a child again and a happy one, with an adult who has a better understanding of her nature. Star and new best friend Sylvia get into scrapes, partly because of Star’s enthusiasm and lack of sense, but it feels like a different book.
It's interesting that Vaughan put in so much of the unhappiness that is hinted at for Anne with an ‘e’. Reading about a grieving, sensitive child, who wants to be wanted, be misunderstood and abused is a bit grim, so it’s a relief when her adventures become a bit more comic. Vaughan puts in quite a few interjections about the fallibility of adults, such as how Kate has no idea of some of the harm she is doing Star, how Grandpa’s love is true, but he too lets the child down, and Emily is an idiosyncratic figure. But it drew me in.
