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feather_ghyll) wrote2013-08-09 02:05 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2013-08-09 02:05 pm
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REVIEW: This Time Next Term
This Time Next Term: Nancy Breary Blackie (sold as a first edition)
This is simply marvellous. If you haven’t come across Breary, I do encourage you to look out for her. I sometimes use the tag ‘the extraordinary new girl’, but Bridget Ross, our heroine and the first new girl of the story, is used to thinking of herself as a very ordinary girl, although she isn’t, as we learn.
Unhappy at home since her widowed doctor father married again (surely ‘Wives and Daughters’ was an influence as much as the more obvious Cinderella), Bridget is thrilled that a legacy of her mother’s is to be used to give her the opportunity to go to Highstanding. The Shamrock Dormitory and Lower Fourth welcome her with open arms and Bridget is a little slow to realise that this is because they have mistaken her for a new girl who is arriving next term and who received a Medal of Honour for bravery. Enjoying her popularity a little too much, Bridget never quite gets around to correcting the misunderstanding, and feels even worse when the truth is revealed. However, sensible prefects and the arrival of Tiffany, the down-to-earth heroine herself, starts to get her to think differently about how it is better to be liked for oneself, and even if her attempts to be brave usually end up with her making a fool of herself, her kindness and developing common sense start making themselves felt among the lower school.
In some ways, this is familiar territory to that of other school stories, but what is refreshing is the tone. Breary is a comic writer, her fallible Lower Fourth, their views of school life and their part in it are a scream, from the deluded wannabe writers Barbara and Elsbeth, to the scrapes they get into because they like to over-dramatise things. Even Bridget and her daydreams of doing something as brave as her pal Tiffany are gently poked fun of.
But there’s also a lot of sympathy for the thin-skinnedness of a sensitive girl. Bridget is perfectly aware that with her straight hair, lack of brilliance or background, she is ‘ordinary’. She almost immediately grasps school hierarchies, although she also comes to see that even prefects are human, and head girl Margaret and games prefect Pat’s influence on her is a nice part of the book.
The book not only acknowledges class and snobbery, but dissects them supremely well for a girls own boarding school book. As a middle class girl who’s father has married a vulgar woman – the worst of it is that she’s grasping and inconsiderate – Bridget comes to school knowing that most of the other girls have nicer things than her, and some of them, such as self-regarding Zinnia, assume that they should be leaders because of it. Meanwhile Bridget is falling in love with the real countryside that surrounds the school and is so different from her home.
Tiffany, the girl Bridget half-accidentally pretended to be, provides a contrast. On the face of it, Tiffany, who owns a horse and has a reputation for heroism, is more privileged, but as she confides in Bridget, her home life is far from perfect. She has more poise than Bridget and Bridget is constantly surprised that she chooses to be her chum – a surprise shared by the form’s resident dramatist Barbara, who wants to write a play called ‘Bosom Friends’ about them, which made the subjects giggle and me grin. Breary has fun with the genre and her characters, but it’s married with psychological acuity while playing within the rules of the genre: from her arrival at school, the more far-sighted see that there’s potential in Bridget and two terms there bring it out of her (although I did note that Breary was a bit inconsistent in how she wrote the headmistress Miss McCall). Recommended.
I see that the last time I posted in any depth about a Breary book, I urged myself to dig up other books by the author that I owned, but I didn't follow my own advice.
This is simply marvellous. If you haven’t come across Breary, I do encourage you to look out for her. I sometimes use the tag ‘the extraordinary new girl’, but Bridget Ross, our heroine and the first new girl of the story, is used to thinking of herself as a very ordinary girl, although she isn’t, as we learn.
Unhappy at home since her widowed doctor father married again (surely ‘Wives and Daughters’ was an influence as much as the more obvious Cinderella), Bridget is thrilled that a legacy of her mother’s is to be used to give her the opportunity to go to Highstanding. The Shamrock Dormitory and Lower Fourth welcome her with open arms and Bridget is a little slow to realise that this is because they have mistaken her for a new girl who is arriving next term and who received a Medal of Honour for bravery. Enjoying her popularity a little too much, Bridget never quite gets around to correcting the misunderstanding, and feels even worse when the truth is revealed. However, sensible prefects and the arrival of Tiffany, the down-to-earth heroine herself, starts to get her to think differently about how it is better to be liked for oneself, and even if her attempts to be brave usually end up with her making a fool of herself, her kindness and developing common sense start making themselves felt among the lower school.
In some ways, this is familiar territory to that of other school stories, but what is refreshing is the tone. Breary is a comic writer, her fallible Lower Fourth, their views of school life and their part in it are a scream, from the deluded wannabe writers Barbara and Elsbeth, to the scrapes they get into because they like to over-dramatise things. Even Bridget and her daydreams of doing something as brave as her pal Tiffany are gently poked fun of.
But there’s also a lot of sympathy for the thin-skinnedness of a sensitive girl. Bridget is perfectly aware that with her straight hair, lack of brilliance or background, she is ‘ordinary’. She almost immediately grasps school hierarchies, although she also comes to see that even prefects are human, and head girl Margaret and games prefect Pat’s influence on her is a nice part of the book.
The book not only acknowledges class and snobbery, but dissects them supremely well for a girls own boarding school book. As a middle class girl who’s father has married a vulgar woman – the worst of it is that she’s grasping and inconsiderate – Bridget comes to school knowing that most of the other girls have nicer things than her, and some of them, such as self-regarding Zinnia, assume that they should be leaders because of it. Meanwhile Bridget is falling in love with the real countryside that surrounds the school and is so different from her home.
Tiffany, the girl Bridget half-accidentally pretended to be, provides a contrast. On the face of it, Tiffany, who owns a horse and has a reputation for heroism, is more privileged, but as she confides in Bridget, her home life is far from perfect. She has more poise than Bridget and Bridget is constantly surprised that she chooses to be her chum – a surprise shared by the form’s resident dramatist Barbara, who wants to write a play called ‘Bosom Friends’ about them, which made the subjects giggle and me grin. Breary has fun with the genre and her characters, but it’s married with psychological acuity while playing within the rules of the genre: from her arrival at school, the more far-sighted see that there’s potential in Bridget and two terms there bring it out of her (although I did note that Breary was a bit inconsistent in how she wrote the headmistress Miss McCall). Recommended.
I see that the last time I posted in any depth about a Breary book, I urged myself to dig up other books by the author that I owned, but I didn't follow my own advice.