REVIEW: Class
Jan. 22nd, 2012 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllClass: Jane Beaton Sphere 2008
I came across this book in a charity shop. It’s a chick-litty, modern day take on the boarding school genre, written for girls who wanted to go to Mallory Towers, whether that was a few years ago or, as in my case, quite a few years ago.
We follow four characters over the course of a school year at a Cornish castle, transformed since many years into a boarding school for girls, Downey House. Two are new girls – one a scholarship girl and the other the younger sister of a prefect who really doesn’t want to leave home. The others are the headmistress and a new mistress, Maggie Adair, who decided to apply ‘for a change’ from the life that was mapped out for her at Glasgow.
While it’s not a perfect book, the attitude of the authoress didn’t rub me up the wrong way as the St Jude’s book did. It’s not setting out to be a comedy, although funny things happen, including a classic prank, and you feel (confirmed in an author’s note at the end of the book) that Beaton loves her school stories – at least one of the names is a blazing shout-out. The book doesn’t shirk the class issues, by having several characters not come from the traditional wealthy set that send their children to boarding school, and doesn’t brush aside how unnatural it seems to most people in Britain to send their children away for so long to be educated. But it’s not strident about it, as you might fear from the title, only acknowledging the difficulties.
I’d hesitate over describing it as a light read – the theme of loneliness, heightened in a communal life, is present – but it’s hopeful about education and opportunities. It’s very much set in the here and now, but the school’s traditions are valued, and there’s a nice jab at new-fangled jargon-heavy ideas about how to teach as the school undergoes an inspection. The girls clearly respond better to good old-fashioned discipline!
My favourite characters were Fliss (Felicity), who is a beautifully observed self-absorbed teenage girl not so far away from the little girl feeling rejected by her parents and so willing to rebel. I also liked Dr Devrell, the headmistress, who felt like a more humanised version of the paragon types of headmistresses found in boarding school stories. Her intelligence and experience at her job shone through her sections, and while the way her past secrets came into her present was a little hackneyed, it gave her more emotional depth. It’s not that I didn’t like Simone or Maggie (although the latter’s lack of self-awareness, at times, got a bit much. Her attempts to handle her romantic dilemmas and ambitions were a bit like you’d find from a Marion Keyes heroine who needs to Learn Stuff). Maggie-as-teacher was fun.
My biggest complaint was that while the members of Middle Form 1 seemed to have come to a happy end of the school year, with the formerly miserable new girls looking forward to their holidays and then their return, the adults’ situations weren’t at all resolved. But it turns out that there’s to be a sequel. (I refuse to read the taster chapter until I own a copy of the whole.)
I thoroughly recommend this for boarding school story fans who want to read an affectionate, contemporary twist that also tells the story of the mistresses. It’s not something you’d mind precocious readers reading (as Simone reads Daphne du Maurier and her heiresses); it should leave you with a smile on your face.
I came across this book in a charity shop. It’s a chick-litty, modern day take on the boarding school genre, written for girls who wanted to go to Mallory Towers, whether that was a few years ago or, as in my case, quite a few years ago.
We follow four characters over the course of a school year at a Cornish castle, transformed since many years into a boarding school for girls, Downey House. Two are new girls – one a scholarship girl and the other the younger sister of a prefect who really doesn’t want to leave home. The others are the headmistress and a new mistress, Maggie Adair, who decided to apply ‘for a change’ from the life that was mapped out for her at Glasgow.
While it’s not a perfect book, the attitude of the authoress didn’t rub me up the wrong way as the St Jude’s book did. It’s not setting out to be a comedy, although funny things happen, including a classic prank, and you feel (confirmed in an author’s note at the end of the book) that Beaton loves her school stories – at least one of the names is a blazing shout-out. The book doesn’t shirk the class issues, by having several characters not come from the traditional wealthy set that send their children to boarding school, and doesn’t brush aside how unnatural it seems to most people in Britain to send their children away for so long to be educated. But it’s not strident about it, as you might fear from the title, only acknowledging the difficulties.
I’d hesitate over describing it as a light read – the theme of loneliness, heightened in a communal life, is present – but it’s hopeful about education and opportunities. It’s very much set in the here and now, but the school’s traditions are valued, and there’s a nice jab at new-fangled jargon-heavy ideas about how to teach as the school undergoes an inspection. The girls clearly respond better to good old-fashioned discipline!
My favourite characters were Fliss (Felicity), who is a beautifully observed self-absorbed teenage girl not so far away from the little girl feeling rejected by her parents and so willing to rebel. I also liked Dr Devrell, the headmistress, who felt like a more humanised version of the paragon types of headmistresses found in boarding school stories. Her intelligence and experience at her job shone through her sections, and while the way her past secrets came into her present was a little hackneyed, it gave her more emotional depth. It’s not that I didn’t like Simone or Maggie (although the latter’s lack of self-awareness, at times, got a bit much. Her attempts to handle her romantic dilemmas and ambitions were a bit like you’d find from a Marion Keyes heroine who needs to Learn Stuff). Maggie-as-teacher was fun.
My biggest complaint was that while the members of Middle Form 1 seemed to have come to a happy end of the school year, with the formerly miserable new girls looking forward to their holidays and then their return, the adults’ situations weren’t at all resolved. But it turns out that there’s to be a sequel. (I refuse to read the taster chapter until I own a copy of the whole.)
I thoroughly recommend this for boarding school story fans who want to read an affectionate, contemporary twist that also tells the story of the mistresses. It’s not something you’d mind precocious readers reading (as Simone reads Daphne du Maurier and her heiresses); it should leave you with a smile on your face.
