REVIEW: The Denehurst Secret Service
Apr. 27th, 2011 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllI hope everyone had a happy Easter! I had a chance to catch up on some reading and quite a few were Girls Ownish-type books, so I have a backlog of reviews to post. First, a tale of an intra-school feud, spy hunting, a dash of hockey and alarm clocks under pillows.
The Denehurst Secret Service: Gwendoline Courtney Girls Gone By 2005.
Two sisters, Elaine and Moira, are sent to a Cornish boarding school, or as they realise, evacuated from London. But when their cousin Deryk, a captain in the military, asks them to stay sharp and hide the fact that they can speak German, they may be safe from bombs, but are thrown into a thrilling adventure. Well, it is for them.
Denehurst is not quite what they expect: a silly feud between houses means that some girls ban them from speaking to each other, as they have been put in different houses; an assistant house mistress, non-affectionately known as the Dumpling, is unreasonably strict and sharp; and Elaine, at least, finds it quite frustrating to have to hide the fact that she speaks German, as there is a German refugee in her form. But, as Deryk asks for their help and that of Avice, Elaine’s chum, what she learns as a result may be crucial in their secret mission – to hunt down a spy who is signalling to a German u-boat from the school at night!
That’s the gist of the story in this book. Published in 1940, it is very much a wartime book – although the realities of the war are only lightly touched upon as background detail. The schoolgirls as spy-hunters plot is tied in with the patriotic theme, where the feud between the two boarding houses is overcome by patriotic fervour reminding the girls that the school, like the country, needs to stand together in the age that they are living in.
This is the first non family Courtney book that I’ve read (as per the way that Girls Gone By grouped them), and I have to say that it’s a bit disappointing. The wartime plot didn’t do much for me – partly because I’ve read several variants on it, I worked out who the spy was very quickly. The school feud was more interesting, but both prefects and mistresses were observers dependent on new girls and their respective influence in the Elizabethan Fifth and the Victorian Fourth (the houses are named after the Queens). Elaine and Moira’s arrival at Denehurst is hardly propitious, with the headmistress having sent the least friendly mistress who has a thing against soldiers and chastises the Sherbourne sisters for talking to one at the station, although if she’d been where she should have been to great them, they wouldn’t have needed to. Then the headmistress passes them on to the head girl who is in Elaine’s house who asks a girl from Victoria house to take care of Moira and is treated very rudely. The sisters discover that the feud began after the previous head girl left. The head girl of Victoria house expected to take her place, but Miss Howard, the headmistress – who is meant to be in the all-wise mould, but actually didn’t impress me as such – chose the head girl of Elizabeth house, Clare. Esmee then proved her right by sulking just enough to let her house develop a grudge. The feud is mainly carried out by girls from each house cutting each other, which means no school societies and trouble for the games prefect, as only girls from her house will turn up to practices, making only half the pool of talent available for the school team. Fortunately, there are a pair of remarkable new girls in Elaine and Moira to sort it out!
I knew that I was reading sixty years on, knowing more about the war than the writer did or felt able to write about in a story for girls, but the jokey way that the characters talked about concentration camps stuck out, while German Anna claims that the Nazis were lying when they said that her father had Jewish heritage, and indeed, it turns out that she’s a quarter English! Although the heroines’ spy-hunting is extraordinary (but they are more thrilled by news of a schoolmistress getting engaged and the hated Dumpling leaving) the story does show the girls of the school helping the national effort by knitting for evacuees, learning first aid and Morse code and putting on fund-raising concerts. As ever, it’s Courtney characters managing to entertain themselves in healthy, fun ways. But in the school setting, Courtney’s writing doesn’t sparkle. Her thoughtfulness about character isn't as apparent, perhaps because there are too many characters: Elaine, Moira and Avice are the secret service of the title, but their form mates and the prefects, not to mention the mistresses get attention. She comes across as an ordinary school story writer with an OTT plot. Perhaps that’s harsh – the plot does hold together and she manages to juggle the girls getting to know the school, the feud and the spy story, but it’s not that impressive.
Edited on 5/9/11 for typos etc.
The Denehurst Secret Service: Gwendoline Courtney Girls Gone By 2005.
Two sisters, Elaine and Moira, are sent to a Cornish boarding school, or as they realise, evacuated from London. But when their cousin Deryk, a captain in the military, asks them to stay sharp and hide the fact that they can speak German, they may be safe from bombs, but are thrown into a thrilling adventure. Well, it is for them.
Denehurst is not quite what they expect: a silly feud between houses means that some girls ban them from speaking to each other, as they have been put in different houses; an assistant house mistress, non-affectionately known as the Dumpling, is unreasonably strict and sharp; and Elaine, at least, finds it quite frustrating to have to hide the fact that she speaks German, as there is a German refugee in her form. But, as Deryk asks for their help and that of Avice, Elaine’s chum, what she learns as a result may be crucial in their secret mission – to hunt down a spy who is signalling to a German u-boat from the school at night!
That’s the gist of the story in this book. Published in 1940, it is very much a wartime book – although the realities of the war are only lightly touched upon as background detail. The schoolgirls as spy-hunters plot is tied in with the patriotic theme, where the feud between the two boarding houses is overcome by patriotic fervour reminding the girls that the school, like the country, needs to stand together in the age that they are living in.
This is the first non family Courtney book that I’ve read (as per the way that Girls Gone By grouped them), and I have to say that it’s a bit disappointing. The wartime plot didn’t do much for me – partly because I’ve read several variants on it, I worked out who the spy was very quickly. The school feud was more interesting, but both prefects and mistresses were observers dependent on new girls and their respective influence in the Elizabethan Fifth and the Victorian Fourth (the houses are named after the Queens). Elaine and Moira’s arrival at Denehurst is hardly propitious, with the headmistress having sent the least friendly mistress who has a thing against soldiers and chastises the Sherbourne sisters for talking to one at the station, although if she’d been where she should have been to great them, they wouldn’t have needed to. Then the headmistress passes them on to the head girl who is in Elaine’s house who asks a girl from Victoria house to take care of Moira and is treated very rudely. The sisters discover that the feud began after the previous head girl left. The head girl of Victoria house expected to take her place, but Miss Howard, the headmistress – who is meant to be in the all-wise mould, but actually didn’t impress me as such – chose the head girl of Elizabeth house, Clare. Esmee then proved her right by sulking just enough to let her house develop a grudge. The feud is mainly carried out by girls from each house cutting each other, which means no school societies and trouble for the games prefect, as only girls from her house will turn up to practices, making only half the pool of talent available for the school team. Fortunately, there are a pair of remarkable new girls in Elaine and Moira to sort it out!
I knew that I was reading sixty years on, knowing more about the war than the writer did or felt able to write about in a story for girls, but the jokey way that the characters talked about concentration camps stuck out, while German Anna claims that the Nazis were lying when they said that her father had Jewish heritage, and indeed, it turns out that she’s a quarter English! Although the heroines’ spy-hunting is extraordinary (but they are more thrilled by news of a schoolmistress getting engaged and the hated Dumpling leaving) the story does show the girls of the school helping the national effort by knitting for evacuees, learning first aid and Morse code and putting on fund-raising concerts. As ever, it’s Courtney characters managing to entertain themselves in healthy, fun ways. But in the school setting, Courtney’s writing doesn’t sparkle. Her thoughtfulness about character isn't as apparent, perhaps because there are too many characters: Elaine, Moira and Avice are the secret service of the title, but their form mates and the prefects, not to mention the mistresses get attention. She comes across as an ordinary school story writer with an OTT plot. Perhaps that’s harsh – the plot does hold together and she manages to juggle the girls getting to know the school, the feud and the spy story, but it’s not that impressive.
Edited on 5/9/11 for typos etc.
