Selected Christmas reading

[feather_ghyll]

The Morning Gift: Eva Ibbotson
The Venetian Affair: Helen MacInnes
At Risk: Stella Rimington
Junior Captain: Nancy Breary
Sally Baxter, Girl Reporter - Hong Kong Deadline
They Called it World's End: Nan Chauncy

It was very much a Christmas for snuggling up with a good (or even a not good) book and reading. I began by treating myself with Eva Ibbotson’s The Morning Gift. It’s the second book by Ibbotson that I’ve read, and I suspect I’ll have to read her sparingly, because it struck me that there was some strong similarities between her decisive, honourable hero Quin and A Company of Swans’ Rom (down to the unusual first names) and intelligent, passionate Ruth and Harriet. Thst doesn’t mean to say that I don’t like these types or what she does with them - the obstacles to the romance felt like they arose organically from the characters and their situation.

The book begins in early 1930s Vienna, where an Austrian Dean’s family opens their doors to an up-and-coming English paelontologist. Several years later, their kindness is more than repaid when the Anschluss takes place and their half-remembered Jewish blood means that they have to flee the country, but due to misunderstandings, the daughter, Ruth, is left behind, where Quin, on his way back from an excursion, finds her. It seems that the only way he can get her out safely is to marry her and give her the protection of a British passport, a marriage he assures her they can get out of, which is a relief to her, as she’s been devoted all her life to her musical cousin-of-sorts, Heini. But once they’re in England, the unconsumated marriage, which Ruth insists be kept a secret, is not so easy to undo, especially as Ruth is to become one of Professor Quinton Sommerfield’s students.

The romance has that wish fulfillment thing going, Ruth falls for Quin’s home and no wonder as it’s by the sea and has a walled garden, while the vividly described backdrop of cultured and kind refugees trying to re-establish themselves in a not-always-hospitable London is deeply interesting. Ibbotson even plays around with us a little, letting us and Ruth think for a while that Heini is in a concentration camp. He is, in fact, held in England and kicking up a selfish tantrum, essentially, because his priceless pianist's hands are being asked to peel vegetables. If the hero and heroine are brave and true, the rivals really aren’t. I found this unputdownable.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Helen Macinnes’s The Venetian Affair; it isn't the book that I read next, but in my mind it follows on from Ibbotson, because, again, this was the second book that I read by the author. I like her mix of plot and character. Most of the characters – even the amateurs pressed into becoming professionals for the sake of democracy during the Cold War – were smart and paranoid enough and it was an interesting glimpse into the geo-political situation, as it was set quite soon after the Berlin wall was raised. I read another spy book over Christmas, Stella Rimington's At Risk, which does have that ace of being written by someone in the know. I thought that she was extremely pointed about the way that most men treated her heroine, Liz Carlyle, and other women and how it was Liz and her instincts, brains and work that Saved The Day, but the thought that Rimington was writing from experience pulled me back from thinking that she had a chip on her shoulder. Although not always deft at writing all her characters naturally, I am going to keep an eye out for the sequels.

And then, for something completely different and mirthful, I read Nancy Breary’s delightful Junior Captain. Nick (Nicola) Ferguson of the Upper Fourth is starting the summer term worried instead of excited. She’s worried because she was voted junior captain over bossy and resentful Monica, who she suspects may be trouble, although Nick tries to squash the thought with the better nature that got her elected over the more officious girl. Indeed, when Nick hears that her sister Gay is going to join her at school, although it strikes everyone else as sudden and strange that she’s arriving in the middle of term, she thinks it’s going to be the best term yet. But the elder sister who Nick hasn’t seen for several years, as she’s been living in India, is not the girl Nick idealised her as being. In fact, she’s spoilt, show-offy and very silly, not helping Nick much in her attempt to control her form, which has a growing faction that is willing to carry on a feud against the least popular prefect, while Nick is discovering that the very popular senior prefect, Natalie, while sound and inventive in the face of a crisis, is rather lax in the day-to-day running of the school, which tends to lead to crises happening.

This was one of those intentionally funny school stories that also believes in the honour of the school that you want to treasure, rather. Nick and co’s views of what should and shouldn’t be done is a treat, their mistresses expect them to work for goodness’ sake! Gay is a one-off, shocking her more conservative fellows (and coming off as a big baby). I also liked that she wasn't the main character. The well-meaning Nick is very endearing and the flawed senior prefect Natalie is very well done. There’s a mystery to solve, although it takes some hard times for the upper fourth before all is cleared up – all beloved hallmarks of a proper girls school story, but with wit and irony nicely undercutting any sentimentality. A joy (note to self: dig up your other Nancy Brearys).

Less good (in fact quite awful) was Sally Baxter, Girl Reporter - Hong Kong Deadline, although Sally did come across a potentially interesting character, a Scottish girl captaining a junk and involved in people smuggling in the sixties, the writing was so bad and the demands of the ludicrous plot too much.

Nan Chauncy's World's End Was Home hurried too much to be Swiss Family Tasmanian, with orphaned Dallie tagging along when a family of six (four children, including lively young twins) moved to the south of Tasmania to begin potato farming, when the ending turned all Jane Eyre, and elements that had been hurried past in the beginning seemed rather more important. That is to say, the story should have begun before the grandmother rescued Dallie from her money-grabbing, neglectful aunt. It tickled me that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End was one of the films on telly.

[Partially edited for spelling, punctuation and grammar on 2/11/18.]