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feather_ghyll) wrote2013-07-30 08:35 am
feather_ghyll) wrote2013-07-30 08:35 am
REVIEW: The School at the Turrets
The School at the Turrets: Angela Brazil
Blackie (Reprint from the 1954 or earlier)
This is familiar territory and would be even if this wasn’t a reread – this hardback copy was an upgrade from an Armada paperback for me. St Githa’s* School has recently moved to The Turrets, which used to be Eve Harrison’s family home. Eve is in the Transition, essentially, a class of Middles, aged between eleven and thirteen – the school is something of a preparatory – who are agreeing on how to get up their own stunts, mainly the end-of-term performance. They decide to set up a society, and as there are twelve of them, are about to link it to the months of the year until Eve tells them that her cousin will be joining them once she’s no longer infectious with measles. (Chicken pox also features in the story, which was written in the inter-war period**).
Despite initial reservations, the form takes to Stella Sullivan – who is related to Eve because their mothers were half sisters. They decide that their club can be the Zodiac club, with the cousins representing Aries, the Heavenly Twins. The club does very little, actually, but the nickname emphasises everyone’s expectations that the two cousins will be friends. This only really happens after both go on holiday with their shared godmother – visiting France, Italy and Switzerland on a whirlwind tour over Easter.
The other main character in the book is Susie Martin, also in the Transition, but a boarder unlike Stella and Eve – apart from an eventful month after the girls’ brothers catch the aforementioned chicken pox, when they have to join the small band of girls who have to deal with ‘ghosts’ at night and meet gypsies on a Bluebell Picnic. Susie is also the strict headmistress’ niece and a far from model pupil. The more her aunt scolds her, the worse she gets, and although Stella and Eve are kind, Susie shows a shocking lack of honour that makes them reluctant to be too friendly. But once they learn that motherless Susie has been kept apart from her father by the relatives who are bringing her up very properly but not affectionately, both girls do feel sorry enough for her that they make promises that they really shouldn’t have made.
As I said, it’s familiar territory. One of these three girls runs away, but doesn’t get very far. The cousins’ connection to The Turrets is a plot point, but, for once, the happy ending isn’t for Stella to find a will so that she and her brother and widowed mother can get the inheritance that it seems that Doris Sullivan was denied when her father died – this was never really on the table as the people who run the school bought the property. Rather, Brazil makes the point that England at that time was full of women, but not men, and that too many were being trained for the same jobs. Adventurous Stella, after a chance encounter in Italy, will end up in the Colonies, and even difficult Susie will get her happy ending.
Stella is probably the main character, and she’s a good mixture of liveliness and sensitivity. She does hasty things, has beliveable flaws but they mainly come from her age and wanting the best for the people she cares for. Eve is more restrained and, perhaps a goody-two-shoes, while Susie is written quite sympathetically, because Brazil is always sympathetic and perhaps not objective enough about her characters. A girl who behaved like she did written by most other authoresses would be reformed rather more thoroughly, perhaps.
You can tell it’s a Brazil book because her enthusiasm for natural history is prevalent. The girls’ mementoes of their Mediterranean holiday are mainly flora and fauna and, for them, seeking out reserves etc are as important as seeing the well-known sights. There was the dread ‘chapter’ in which the girls of the Transition are each meant to read each other compositions of things that have happened to them, NOT something from off the wireless. I had more fun with the time that they wrote doggerel about what careers they wanted to undertake, which seems about right for girls of that age charged with writing short essays – Susie writes a prim and proper essay about being a respectable mistress (like her aunt) which is the exact opposite of what she wants to do.
There’s more of an overall plot than is often the case in Brazil’s books, in that clearly something must be done about/for Susie and, to a lesser degree, the Sullivans. Stella spends only a couple of terms at St Githa and the book is mainly concerned about what happens to her there, at home and on holiday, but, as ever, there’s little interest in character development, and a sense that Brazil is rushing through all the episodes.
*The only example of an outlandish name that Brazil allows herself, apart, perhaps, from an American girl cousin names Sidney.
**There’s an ‘oh, Angela’ moment when one of the characters praises Mussolini for cutting down on beggars getting in tourists’ way in Italy.
Blackie (Reprint from the 1954 or earlier)
This is familiar territory and would be even if this wasn’t a reread – this hardback copy was an upgrade from an Armada paperback for me. St Githa’s* School has recently moved to The Turrets, which used to be Eve Harrison’s family home. Eve is in the Transition, essentially, a class of Middles, aged between eleven and thirteen – the school is something of a preparatory – who are agreeing on how to get up their own stunts, mainly the end-of-term performance. They decide to set up a society, and as there are twelve of them, are about to link it to the months of the year until Eve tells them that her cousin will be joining them once she’s no longer infectious with measles. (Chicken pox also features in the story, which was written in the inter-war period**).
Despite initial reservations, the form takes to Stella Sullivan – who is related to Eve because their mothers were half sisters. They decide that their club can be the Zodiac club, with the cousins representing Aries, the Heavenly Twins. The club does very little, actually, but the nickname emphasises everyone’s expectations that the two cousins will be friends. This only really happens after both go on holiday with their shared godmother – visiting France, Italy and Switzerland on a whirlwind tour over Easter.
The other main character in the book is Susie Martin, also in the Transition, but a boarder unlike Stella and Eve – apart from an eventful month after the girls’ brothers catch the aforementioned chicken pox, when they have to join the small band of girls who have to deal with ‘ghosts’ at night and meet gypsies on a Bluebell Picnic. Susie is also the strict headmistress’ niece and a far from model pupil. The more her aunt scolds her, the worse she gets, and although Stella and Eve are kind, Susie shows a shocking lack of honour that makes them reluctant to be too friendly. But once they learn that motherless Susie has been kept apart from her father by the relatives who are bringing her up very properly but not affectionately, both girls do feel sorry enough for her that they make promises that they really shouldn’t have made.
As I said, it’s familiar territory. One of these three girls runs away, but doesn’t get very far. The cousins’ connection to The Turrets is a plot point, but, for once, the happy ending isn’t for Stella to find a will so that she and her brother and widowed mother can get the inheritance that it seems that Doris Sullivan was denied when her father died – this was never really on the table as the people who run the school bought the property. Rather, Brazil makes the point that England at that time was full of women, but not men, and that too many were being trained for the same jobs. Adventurous Stella, after a chance encounter in Italy, will end up in the Colonies, and even difficult Susie will get her happy ending.
Stella is probably the main character, and she’s a good mixture of liveliness and sensitivity. She does hasty things, has beliveable flaws but they mainly come from her age and wanting the best for the people she cares for. Eve is more restrained and, perhaps a goody-two-shoes, while Susie is written quite sympathetically, because Brazil is always sympathetic and perhaps not objective enough about her characters. A girl who behaved like she did written by most other authoresses would be reformed rather more thoroughly, perhaps.
You can tell it’s a Brazil book because her enthusiasm for natural history is prevalent. The girls’ mementoes of their Mediterranean holiday are mainly flora and fauna and, for them, seeking out reserves etc are as important as seeing the well-known sights. There was the dread ‘chapter’ in which the girls of the Transition are each meant to read each other compositions of things that have happened to them, NOT something from off the wireless. I had more fun with the time that they wrote doggerel about what careers they wanted to undertake, which seems about right for girls of that age charged with writing short essays – Susie writes a prim and proper essay about being a respectable mistress (like her aunt) which is the exact opposite of what she wants to do.
There’s more of an overall plot than is often the case in Brazil’s books, in that clearly something must be done about/for Susie and, to a lesser degree, the Sullivans. Stella spends only a couple of terms at St Githa and the book is mainly concerned about what happens to her there, at home and on holiday, but, as ever, there’s little interest in character development, and a sense that Brazil is rushing through all the episodes.
*The only example of an outlandish name that Brazil allows herself, apart, perhaps, from an American girl cousin names Sidney.
**There’s an ‘oh, Angela’ moment when one of the characters praises Mussolini for cutting down on beggars getting in tourists’ way in Italy.