feather_ghyll

As I did last year, I thought I'd do a very subjective overview of things I posted about or should have posted about here. My favourite ( Read more... )

Miss Jacobson’s Journey by Carola Dunn is a Regency romance with a dash of adventure, which its heroine always wanted. ( Read more... )

Carol’s Second Term by Ethel Talbot also featured a relatively fresh angle on the school story. ( Read more... )

And it wouldn’t be a holiday round-up if I didn’t mention that I’d read a Miss Silver mystery: The Ivory Dagger by Patrical Wentworth. There can’t be many that I haven’t read before by her, most the recentish paperbacks with vintage covers. ( Read more... )

Angela Has Wings: Peter Ling and Sheilah Ward, A Girl novel, Longacre Press, 1960.

I had to look up to see whether Angela Wells was ( Read more... )

Kits at Clynton Court School: May Wynne. Warne. (I’m presuming it’s a reprint, the picture on the dust jacket has an accidental (?) 3D effect.

Kits arrives, or rather makes her entrance, at her new school ( Read more... )

There were some mysteries: one featuring bored redheaded twins in Rhodesia in Monica Marsden’s A Matter of Clues. The first Rhodesian-set story I’ve read in a while, it's extremely silly. I then read Out of the Past by Patricia Wentworth, a (late) Miss Silver mystery that features many familiar elements, but there is an attempt to reorder them.

There were two family adventures off the Irish coast, both featuring some extraordinary modes of transportation and Irish clichés, plus the handy deaths of some of those Irishmen who were only mourned for a chapter at best. The Golden Galleon by Eileen Heming ( Read more... )

Then there was Jonquil, Test Pilot by Eileen Marsh, about Jonquil and her brother Jack and sister Belinda, who love flying aeroplanes. ( Read more... ) This book featured a lot of illustrations, most of which I didn’t like at all.

Then finally, unseasonally, there was The Merryfield Mystery by Marjorie Cleves about a group of schoolgirls, two mistresses and staff who stay behind at their school over the Christmas holidays. They’re snowed in and ‘haunted’. I wished that the whole mystery angle, in which everyone was a part-time ghost hunter and sleuth, had been dropped by the author just to tell the story of how this mixed group had got on and entertained themselves.

Oh dear, that’s a grumpy overview, and the truth is, the fact that I managed to nearly burn three toasts this morning has nothing to do with it. I had a relaxing break! (A fuller review of a book that I enjoyed more will be coming next.)

Girl Reading: Katie Ward Virago 2012

I picked up this book in a charity shop because of the title, of course. It’s a collection of (long) short stories that all feature girls (or women) reading that, until the last story, are only tangentially linked. The stories cover various periods of time and places and, ( Read more... )

Grey Mask: Patricia Wentworth, Coronet 1979

First published in 1929, this early Miss Silver mystery references Sherlock Holmes ( Read more... )

Over the weekend, I also zipped through

The Larks of Jubilee Flat: Marjorie A. Sindall, Nelson 1956

( Read more... )

( Shirley Flight in the Rajah’s Daughter: Judith Dale )

( Spotlight: Patricia Wentworth )

( (Thunderbirds)Lady Penelope: The Albanian Affair: John Theydon )

I also read The School on the Loch by Angela Brazil, Class by Jane Beaton and Skate School – Ice Princess by Kay Woodward. Fuller reviews of those books will follow soonish.

This is the last of the reviews of books that I read over my Easter holidays:

The Secret of Magnolia Manor: Helen Wells Grosset & Dunlap 1949.

This is part of the Vicki Barr Flight Stewardess Series – one of those career girl mystery story series that the Cherry Ames books epitomise. Vicki is ‘just out’ of her teens, loves her job, but is very pretty and attractive, makes friends wherever she goes, including male ones who pay her compliments and provide transport or back up as she solves cases, but aren’t to be taken too seriously. Being a flight stewardess means that she travels a lot (as does her later and fabulously named British equivalent Shirley Flight).

In this story, Vicki’s given the route from New Orleans, via Merida, to Guatemala City. She’s thrilled to get a chance to visit ‘Crescent City’, and we get a colourful, travel-booky feel for it, with Vicki staying at a Creole pension (the secret of the title is linked to her ‘host’ family) and meeting barefooted Cajuns, eating square-shaped donuts and visiting the bayou. (The other end of her route doesn’t get a look in.)

Magnolia Mansion used to belong to the Breaux family, but was recently sold. News of the new owner’s planned alterations make Monsieur Paul Breaux, Vicki's host, act extremely strangely. Vicki was already dubious about him for treating his niece Marie as if they were living in the eighteenth century – she may be about to turn eighteen and get engaged (to practically the first man she’s met, but he’s a nice man) but she has to ask permission to do anything and is treated in a somewhat Cinderellaish fashion. Vicki eventually deduces why, but in the meantime, a man goes missing, everyone takes a while to figure that out (and nobody except Marie seems particularly worried, and her concerns are easily calmed) or to do anything about clues that are screaming for attention. There is a fancy dress party for Vicki to attend first of all, you see. Anyhow, she manages to get her act together before no more than a couple of concussions are doled out (none to her) and all is well. Vicki even gets to rejoin her family in corn field country for a break afterwards.

I generally like the detail about nursing in Helen Wells’ Cherry Ames book, although that is usually subsumed in the mystery. Vicki isn’t quite such a memorable character, feeling like more of a representative of ‘the modern girl’ than her own person (especially in this book where she's contrasted with Marie Breaux).