READING: More almost beach reads

[feather_ghyll]

One of these was read a stone's throw from the sea!



The Dragonfly Pool reads like a junior version of A Song for Summer. It probably suffered from my having read so many books by the author and covering a similar time period to Code Name Verity, which I'd read so recently. Tallie is sent away from London to a well-drawn progressive boarding school before the second world war breaks out. It is very different from the boarding schools that her cousins attend (Ibbotson has fun parodying boarding school literature and is pointed about the snobbery and cruelty of traditional boarding school culture). Tallie ends up visiting a Ruritania-like kingdom, which is struggling with the threats of darkness posed by Hitler and where the pool of the title is located. Although I was a little disappointed, that is to be understood in the context that Ibbotson couldn't write a bad book if she tried.

I see I haven't recorded that I have been reading the Liz Carlyle novels by Stella Rimington. I've reached Rip Tide where Liz, yet again, has to uncover a plot threatening her country. Although Rimington can be a clunky writer, her obvious expertise about how things are really done in the Service and her righteous chippiness about sexism and chauvinism are pluses.

I was a little worried that The Vine-Clad Hill by Mabel Esther Allan would by too similar to Rachel Tandy, which I read a few months ago. Apart from the setting, an Italian canton of Switzerland, what it does offer that is fresh is a look at the troubled relationship between a mother and a twixt and tween daughter from the point of view of the eighteen year old niece, Philippa, who has been brought along to look after her younger cousins over the summer. There's more to the story too and I found it a charming read.

I have finally learned my lesson with Girls Gone By books - not to read the overly informative introductions until after I've read the book. The criticisms made in it about some of the gaps in Josephine Elder's story of Monica, The Scholarship Girl who makes her first term harder than it need be because of some bad advice by her former headmistress, are fair. However, as ever, Elder is good on what's going on in her characters' minds.

I also read a Jillies book, which will get its own post in due course.