REVIEW: Strawberry Girls
Nov. 30th, 2019 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllStrawberry Girls: Helen Milecete Duffus Jarrold’s
I’m always interested to read an American Girls Own book. This is set when ‘auto motors’ were just coming in for rich people. The girls of the title are sisters Nan and Lil Addlington, aged 15 and 17. They’ve gained their title because they help their mother run a commercial vegetable and strawberry garden in ‘Happy Valley’ on the Atlantic coast. The rest of the household is their young brother Billy, a mixture of soulful and mischievous, his dogs and cook/maid Rose, who they can’t really afford.
But they need her, because with no warning, Cousin Adelaide Sinclair has invited herself to stay with them. Posh, rich and unknown to them, she’s a figure of dread to Lil, who is not only being a teenager, but unduly influenced by their rich neighbours. The Yelvertons know the price of everything but the value of very little, or that is true of Tony Yelverton, ‘college man’, who has turned Lil’s head.
The rest of the Addlingtons believe that Cousin Adelaide will just have to take them as she finds them, and after an inauspicious beginning and moments of froideur, she does.
The book is chiefly about the growing pains of the girls and Nan is the heroine. For a long while, the balance is so heavily in Nan’s favour that it’s a relief to find out that she can be careless and does have a temper. There are shades of Jo March and Marmee there, and ‘Little Women’ is in no doubt an influence, with Lil acting like Meg at that ball, only much worse, and in the influence of the rich relative on the girls’ lives etc.
The question hanging over the book for me was how come Mr Addlington was so improvident? It’s clear that he and his wife belonged to the old money set of New York, but when he died, she had to set up a vegetable farm to provide for her and her three children, and the hard work and lack of support involved has its cost. (Although I don’t think appendicitis works like it does in this book.)
Anyway, Lil, Nan and Billy make friends, have scrapes and come through, with both Lil and Nan growing up. The attitude towards recognising gentility smacks of English attitudes brought over the Atlantic, and its references to religion are wishy-washy.
I’m always interested to read an American Girls Own book. This is set when ‘auto motors’ were just coming in for rich people. The girls of the title are sisters Nan and Lil Addlington, aged 15 and 17. They’ve gained their title because they help their mother run a commercial vegetable and strawberry garden in ‘Happy Valley’ on the Atlantic coast. The rest of the household is their young brother Billy, a mixture of soulful and mischievous, his dogs and cook/maid Rose, who they can’t really afford.
But they need her, because with no warning, Cousin Adelaide Sinclair has invited herself to stay with them. Posh, rich and unknown to them, she’s a figure of dread to Lil, who is not only being a teenager, but unduly influenced by their rich neighbours. The Yelvertons know the price of everything but the value of very little, or that is true of Tony Yelverton, ‘college man’, who has turned Lil’s head.
The rest of the Addlingtons believe that Cousin Adelaide will just have to take them as she finds them, and after an inauspicious beginning and moments of froideur, she does.
The book is chiefly about the growing pains of the girls and Nan is the heroine. For a long while, the balance is so heavily in Nan’s favour that it’s a relief to find out that she can be careless and does have a temper. There are shades of Jo March and Marmee there, and ‘Little Women’ is in no doubt an influence, with Lil acting like Meg at that ball, only much worse, and in the influence of the rich relative on the girls’ lives etc.
The question hanging over the book for me was how come Mr Addlington was so improvident? It’s clear that he and his wife belonged to the old money set of New York, but when he died, she had to set up a vegetable farm to provide for her and her three children, and the hard work and lack of support involved has its cost. (Although I don’t think appendicitis works like it does in this book.)
Anyway, Lil, Nan and Billy make friends, have scrapes and come through, with both Lil and Nan growing up. The attitude towards recognising gentility smacks of English attitudes brought over the Atlantic, and its references to religion are wishy-washy.
