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Books read, January
Mar. 21st, 2018 09:39 pmI still have the rest of 2017 to write up, but onwards.
Courtney Milan, Unveiled, Unlocked, Unclaimed, Unraveled (the Turner Brothers series)
Joanna Cannan, Gaze at the Moon
Catherine Storr, Vicky
Anne Saunders, St Brenda's Headache
( Courtney Milan, Unveiled, Unlocked, Unclaimed, Unraveled. )
Joanna Cannan, Gaze at the Moon. I am slowly ambling through Jane Badger's Heroines on Horseback; the Pony Book on Children's Fiction and read this after reading the bit on Cannan. This is Cannan's last children's book and the setting is different from earlier; Dinah lives in a council house with a family who do not understand her twin desires to own a horse and to be an artist. It's competent and quiet, and Dinah earns her horse (and art; I particularly like that she spends a lot of time working on drawing in a way that feels right). My copy has an enthusiastic comment on it from Noel Streatfeild complaining that the only problem with it is that it's too short, which is about right. It's very vivid and exact in its detail.
Catherine Storr, Vicky. This is the sequel to The Chinese Egg, which I last read when I was about 14 or so, although I remember a surprising amount with a clarity that escapes me for, say, something I did last week. But the book I remember was more supernatural, which this isn't; it's something Storr's done before, with the mundane Marianne and Mark as a sequel to the brilliantly terrifying Marianne Dreams, and I feel that maybe she's saying something about growing up that I'm not entirely happy with. The other problem with this - which is a perfectly competent story about Vicky, who is adopted, trying to track down her birth parents after her adoptive mother dies - is that there is a really odd and rather unpleasant plot line in this where the police officer in his 40s who was helped by Vicky and Stephen in the kidnapping case that underpins The Chinese Egg is quite clearly sexually interested in Vicky, who's about 15. Nothing overtly physical eventuates, but it's there. In addition the book does not resolve the puzzle of the egg, which is still left hanging. I have not poked around enough in Storr's bibliography to see if there definitely isn't a third book, though.
Anne Saunders, St Brenda's Headache. Re-read. My mother had/still has a copy of this, and it was my favourite of her old school stories; I finally managed to track down a copy of my own, as she's holding on to hers firmly as it was her favourite as well. Anne Saunders wrote a lot of other stories about St Brenda's that all appeared in magazines that I've never tracked down, although I caught a few in annuals. Perhaps because of that the characters have a depth and a history to them that makes them more than just stereotypes, which otherwise they are - the sporty girl, the American (as always, daughter of a millionaire), the form captain, the fat girl (arrgh), the sneak, the understanding headmistress. The plot is also a favourite of mine - the unjustly accused is redeemed by a perceptive other, who has to contend with their peers to do so - and I'm not sure now how much of my fondness is in fact entirely driven by this book. Charmain LeRoy arrives at St Brenda's, a new girl distinguished by her poise and talents - and her murky past, which turns out to involve being sent to a reform school for theft. Judy, the form captain, embarks on a mission to find the truth of this story which Charmain initially tries to block; another less noble student uses this knowledge to frame Charmain for various petty crimes that escalate. It's deftly drawn and it's well-paced and I don't think I can judge it clearly, but for me it still works, and the emotions ring true. I wish I had her other stories to read.
Courtney Milan, Unveiled, Unlocked, Unclaimed, Unraveled (the Turner Brothers series)
Joanna Cannan, Gaze at the Moon
Catherine Storr, Vicky
Anne Saunders, St Brenda's Headache
( Courtney Milan, Unveiled, Unlocked, Unclaimed, Unraveled. )
Joanna Cannan, Gaze at the Moon. I am slowly ambling through Jane Badger's Heroines on Horseback; the Pony Book on Children's Fiction and read this after reading the bit on Cannan. This is Cannan's last children's book and the setting is different from earlier; Dinah lives in a council house with a family who do not understand her twin desires to own a horse and to be an artist. It's competent and quiet, and Dinah earns her horse (and art; I particularly like that she spends a lot of time working on drawing in a way that feels right). My copy has an enthusiastic comment on it from Noel Streatfeild complaining that the only problem with it is that it's too short, which is about right. It's very vivid and exact in its detail.
Catherine Storr, Vicky. This is the sequel to The Chinese Egg, which I last read when I was about 14 or so, although I remember a surprising amount with a clarity that escapes me for, say, something I did last week. But the book I remember was more supernatural, which this isn't; it's something Storr's done before, with the mundane Marianne and Mark as a sequel to the brilliantly terrifying Marianne Dreams, and I feel that maybe she's saying something about growing up that I'm not entirely happy with. The other problem with this - which is a perfectly competent story about Vicky, who is adopted, trying to track down her birth parents after her adoptive mother dies - is that there is a really odd and rather unpleasant plot line in this where the police officer in his 40s who was helped by Vicky and Stephen in the kidnapping case that underpins The Chinese Egg is quite clearly sexually interested in Vicky, who's about 15. Nothing overtly physical eventuates, but it's there. In addition the book does not resolve the puzzle of the egg, which is still left hanging. I have not poked around enough in Storr's bibliography to see if there definitely isn't a third book, though.
Anne Saunders, St Brenda's Headache. Re-read. My mother had/still has a copy of this, and it was my favourite of her old school stories; I finally managed to track down a copy of my own, as she's holding on to hers firmly as it was her favourite as well. Anne Saunders wrote a lot of other stories about St Brenda's that all appeared in magazines that I've never tracked down, although I caught a few in annuals. Perhaps because of that the characters have a depth and a history to them that makes them more than just stereotypes, which otherwise they are - the sporty girl, the American (as always, daughter of a millionaire), the form captain, the fat girl (arrgh), the sneak, the understanding headmistress. The plot is also a favourite of mine - the unjustly accused is redeemed by a perceptive other, who has to contend with their peers to do so - and I'm not sure now how much of my fondness is in fact entirely driven by this book. Charmain LeRoy arrives at St Brenda's, a new girl distinguished by her poise and talents - and her murky past, which turns out to involve being sent to a reform school for theft. Judy, the form captain, embarks on a mission to find the truth of this story which Charmain initially tries to block; another less noble student uses this knowledge to frame Charmain for various petty crimes that escalate. It's deftly drawn and it's well-paced and I don't think I can judge it clearly, but for me it still works, and the emotions ring true. I wish I had her other stories to read.
