Reviews

Synopsis: Joey Bettany returns to the Chalet School and finds herself reluctantly forced to become a little more grown up as she is promoted to Prefect this year. However, she and many of the girls find their patience tested with the arrival of a new school on the opposite site of the lake it doesn’t take long for misunderstandings, assumptions and rivalries to spring up with the girls they call The Saints.

Review: Unfortunately my rating is low due to an error of judgment made by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer in deciding to surprisingly include a reference to the Klu Klux Klan as some of the Chalet School girls ‘emulate’ the tactics of that group against the Saints saying that it isn’t a feud “It’s fighting for our rights”. This book was published in 1929 and the Klu Klux Klan had been revived in 1915 so their reputation was already established as the heinous organisation that they are. I know that she didn’t have the internet in those days nonetheless surely a bit of research on her part would have established that their inclusion as a group to emulate was not a good idea. It is especially strange as on the whole the Chalet School books were predominantly multi-cultural in their inclusion of girls from many different nationalities and this was established early on in the series.

Such a shame as a generally interesting story is let down by the inclusion of this idea. The rivalry between the groups shows that when girls are in a group how quickly differences of opinion can escalate and they egg each other on and level heads are abandoned. Later on in reflection they realise their behaviour was wrong.

Content Warnings

spectacledbear's review

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3.0

Mixed feelings about this one - in some ways it's classic CS, with alarums and excursions in every other chapter, and Joey having a (very close) brush with death. The introduction of another school across the lake is a bit of a clumsy plot device and the casual racism from its pupils is.... well, very much of its time I suppose.

I'm not someone who is particularly offended by books reflecting the period in which they were written (this might seem a strange thing to say, but there are, amazingly, people who are. And, even more amazingly, people who are offended by the lack of feminism and of financially independent women in Jane Austen. Go figure) so the racism didn't faze me much.

I did, however, find myself extremely fazed by the mention of using the Ku Klux Klan as a model for behaviour. I don't know much about the way the KKK was viewed in the UK in the 20s and 30s, but I'm honestly surprised that it would have been considered at all appropriate by EBD or her readers.

That aside, I enjoyed this book - I don't remember reading it before and it was the usual rollicking yarn.

celiaedf12's review against another edition

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4.0

Um, I actually teared up while reading this today. Yes, I am pre-menstrual. And also pathetic.

***

A new school of English girls, St Scholastika's, is opened on the other side of the lake, and the girls from both schools enter into a rivalry. An ice skating incident results in Joey almost dying, and everyone staggers around weeping for a few chapters (hence my prickling eyes mentioned above).

We get to see a little bit of Madge's parenting skills, in which she gently exerts the discipline she uses on the girls in getting her baby son to go to sleep at his usual hour. All those exhausted mothers out there merely need to take some lessons from Madge's firm discipline, apparently.

Eventually the two schools come to a fairly fragile peace. I really enjoyed this one - I haven't read it before, and it was fun filling in some gaps (like how the Saints were established and so on).

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