REVIEW: A Pair of Red Polls
Nov. 9th, 2019 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllA Pair of Red Polls: Mabel Quiller-Couch. Melson
I felt swindled out of the book that I expected this to be, if that's not putting it too strongly. Subtitled ‘A Story for Girls’, there’s an oval illustration of two teenage girls talking on the front cover. I thought they’d be the two ‘red polls’ of the title, perhaps two redheads named ‘Polly’.
In fact, this book’s heroine, Theodosia Mary (yes, really) is about seven years old and spending her summer holidays at her grandparents’ farm, along with her brother Roger, two years older than her. After grasping that, I thought we’d zip through the years and she’d befriend another redheaded girl, but instead, this is the story of that summer vacation.
Like her, Roger is a redhead, too, and the appellation ‘red polls’ is given to both by a repellent boy they come across. Roger is less fussed about his hair than Theodosia.
All the events in the book are realistic, and it brings to life a period when people’s main mode of travel involved horses or steam trains. I liked how, as the story unfolded, we got increasing details about the family, their world and lives. It’s a privileged life, Grandpa Thorne is a gentleman farmer and there are two maids who wait on Theodosia at different points.
Theo is a soft-hearted girl, particularly when it comes to animals. She likes things to be just so, but is also imaginative. In a world where girls are held to an even higher standard than ‘oh, boys will be…’ boys (violent, thoughtless, vengeful and inconsistent on this showing) even if they’ve been on this earth for fewer years (a respected authority figure says so!), Theodosia’s biggest fault is her hero-worshipping of Roger. This reader was very exasperated by Master Roger, and hopes that, over the years, the girls reading this learned to question whether their big brother was always right, as I suspect the author wanted them to.
So, to conclude, this book was definitely not the one I expected it to be, and is for younger readers, but it has its own charm.
I felt swindled out of the book that I expected this to be, if that's not putting it too strongly. Subtitled ‘A Story for Girls’, there’s an oval illustration of two teenage girls talking on the front cover. I thought they’d be the two ‘red polls’ of the title, perhaps two redheads named ‘Polly’.
In fact, this book’s heroine, Theodosia Mary (yes, really) is about seven years old and spending her summer holidays at her grandparents’ farm, along with her brother Roger, two years older than her. After grasping that, I thought we’d zip through the years and she’d befriend another redheaded girl, but instead, this is the story of that summer vacation.
Like her, Roger is a redhead, too, and the appellation ‘red polls’ is given to both by a repellent boy they come across. Roger is less fussed about his hair than Theodosia.
All the events in the book are realistic, and it brings to life a period when people’s main mode of travel involved horses or steam trains. I liked how, as the story unfolded, we got increasing details about the family, their world and lives. It’s a privileged life, Grandpa Thorne is a gentleman farmer and there are two maids who wait on Theodosia at different points.
Theo is a soft-hearted girl, particularly when it comes to animals. She likes things to be just so, but is also imaginative. In a world where girls are held to an even higher standard than ‘oh, boys will be…’ boys (violent, thoughtless, vengeful and inconsistent on this showing) even if they’ve been on this earth for fewer years (a respected authority figure says so!), Theodosia’s biggest fault is her hero-worshipping of Roger. This reader was very exasperated by Master Roger, and hopes that, over the years, the girls reading this learned to question whether their big brother was always right, as I suspect the author wanted them to.
So, to conclude, this book was definitely not the one I expected it to be, and is for younger readers, but it has its own charm.
