REVIEW: A Term to Remember
Nov. 21st, 2009 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllA Term to Remember: May Wynne. Aldine.
For an allegedly 'top-hole' school, Bexford House School is full of the most avaricious, arrant snobs, with transient loyalties (also known as schoolgirls). It also lacks a form system or a prefecture, with the leader of ths school not gaining that position from experience and seniority. And even I, unsporty as I am, know enough to know that the school cricket team, which is ambitious enough to challenge a boys' school, would do better if they practised instead of holding numerous meetings to try to vote in a captain.
It's not 'a term to remember' so much either, as the plotline is extremely familiar. Clare is in tears at the beginning of the book. She's returning to her beloved school, where she's been Queen Bee and Lady Bountiful due to the charity of the headmistress, Mrs Levall. Her father has lost his fortune and his health, so it is quite likely that this term will be her last term, and a difficult term, at that, because her position was underwritten as much by the Bank of Daddy as her personality. During the term, she discovers that the average schoolgirl is a wayward creature, she has two or three enemies (one is more of a rival who recants, and at least one of the others is expelled for meanness on top of breaking bounds). Clare also has staunch friends in Brenda and Susie (my favourite characters, as they weren't failing to be nobly tragic or Pannish, they just were schoolgirls, fiery in defence of their friends, curious and hungry by turns). The trio becomes a quartette with the addition of new girl Ray (Raymonde), another charity girl, who's a bit of a Luna Lovegood, and loves animals and nature, but doesn't care for smart clothes.
The term is crammed full of 'larums and excursions - the most original being Ray rescuing the animals in a pet shop from a fire started by hoodlums who'd taken against the half-French owner. This newsworthy behaviour reaches her long-lost uncle in South America, which brings him back to restore orphaned Ray's family fortunes and Clare's in time for the end of the book! But Ray and Clare also rescue the headmistress's daughter and school baby from a delusional woman who's own daughter died due to diptheria. Clare and Susie miss a picnic because the begged a lift in a plane from passing airmen! They rescue their enemies in a riverboating accident. Oh, and the trope I loathe, where Clare meets the brother of the French mistress, Mads. Rumour has it that he is accused of a crime at his place of work. But having looked him in the eye, honourable and wise Clare just knows he's innocent and uses her precious shillings to buy food for him, forgetting she's not allowed to go into town alone, which leads to other trouble for her. He lives in a nearby cave until his sister comes back to school after tending to their invalid mother. There's an interesting pro-French slant to this book, but otherwise it's guilty of telling not showing and of being a bit feeble all round, really.
For an allegedly 'top-hole' school, Bexford House School is full of the most avaricious, arrant snobs, with transient loyalties (also known as schoolgirls). It also lacks a form system or a prefecture, with the leader of ths school not gaining that position from experience and seniority. And even I, unsporty as I am, know enough to know that the school cricket team, which is ambitious enough to challenge a boys' school, would do better if they practised instead of holding numerous meetings to try to vote in a captain.
It's not 'a term to remember' so much either, as the plotline is extremely familiar. Clare is in tears at the beginning of the book. She's returning to her beloved school, where she's been Queen Bee and Lady Bountiful due to the charity of the headmistress, Mrs Levall. Her father has lost his fortune and his health, so it is quite likely that this term will be her last term, and a difficult term, at that, because her position was underwritten as much by the Bank of Daddy as her personality. During the term, she discovers that the average schoolgirl is a wayward creature, she has two or three enemies (one is more of a rival who recants, and at least one of the others is expelled for meanness on top of breaking bounds). Clare also has staunch friends in Brenda and Susie (my favourite characters, as they weren't failing to be nobly tragic or Pannish, they just were schoolgirls, fiery in defence of their friends, curious and hungry by turns). The trio becomes a quartette with the addition of new girl Ray (Raymonde), another charity girl, who's a bit of a Luna Lovegood, and loves animals and nature, but doesn't care for smart clothes.
The term is crammed full of 'larums and excursions - the most original being Ray rescuing the animals in a pet shop from a fire started by hoodlums who'd taken against the half-French owner. This newsworthy behaviour reaches her long-lost uncle in South America, which brings him back to restore orphaned Ray's family fortunes and Clare's in time for the end of the book! But Ray and Clare also rescue the headmistress's daughter and school baby from a delusional woman who's own daughter died due to diptheria. Clare and Susie miss a picnic because the begged a lift in a plane from passing airmen! They rescue their enemies in a riverboating accident. Oh, and the trope I loathe, where Clare meets the brother of the French mistress, Mads. Rumour has it that he is accused of a crime at his place of work. But having looked him in the eye, honourable and wise Clare just knows he's innocent and uses her precious shillings to buy food for him, forgetting she's not allowed to go into town alone, which leads to other trouble for her. He lives in a nearby cave until his sister comes back to school after tending to their invalid mother. There's an interesting pro-French slant to this book, but otherwise it's guilty of telling not showing and of being a bit feeble all round, really.
