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A review by jenn756
The School at the Chalet by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
4.0
When I was about 11, my Mum came home with about 30 of these books that she’d picked up from a sale, and living in the country and with not much to do I ploughed my way through the lot.
I was a `70s child, so I thought them old-fashioned, overly religious and much too goody, goody (Just William was my favourite, more anarchic and funny.) Even I could see Jo casually popping out all those children pretty unlikely. I didn’t think of them as politically incorrect – political correctness didn’t exist in the `70s but I thought them snobby. And there was the expectation that women should leave school, settle down to get married and have children – but then again that’s the way world was.
So I read them to criticise….but having said that, I read them and re-read them and re-read them.…they filled many a bored moment. For one thing they gave me a grounding in social history. The first one was written not long after the First World War, when they were still talking about war reparations, they then spanned right through the 1930s, the Second World War and into the 1950s. In the first book Jo and Madge’s parents have died, which no-one seemed particularly bothered about, hence why Madge must set up a school in the Tyrol. And there are lovely descriptions of Austria and the Alps which I was very jealous of. You could almost do a GCSE History on the back of the Chalet School Series - OK a very Anglicised GCSE history without any poor people.
I can still remember that first book vividly as if I read it yesterday (which is annoying when you consider there’s plenty more important things I’d like to remember but can’t). I remember poor Grizel with her miserable childhood, her only friend being the cook. And still paying for that childhood in later years. I remember the trip around Paris (not fair I thought the furthest I got was Preston shopping centre). I remember annoying Miss-Perfect Jo who was always sickly, and Simone they had as dark and intense (as if all the French were dark and intense!)
Most of all I can recount that flight up the Ternjoch (is there a mountain called the Ternjoch??) almost word for word, even though I’ve not read the book in more than 30 years. Most of the Chalet School books ended with some dramatic disaster and Jo nearly dying. There was one scene in about Book 4 I think, where Jo very nearly drowned but didn’t and she got double pleuro-pneumonia which I thought really exciting. I kind of hoped she would die, me being bitchy and not liking her very much.
My own children haven’t read the Chalet School books, it’s all Harry Potter now. Besides they wouldn’t have been so accepting of the old fashioned writing style as I was. You’ve got to be really bored, with no computers and no telly to just sit and read and understand novels written in a different era to your own - the past is a different country as they say. And there’s no point me re-reading them now, a book from your childhood should stay in your childhood I think.
My Mum eventually gave them all away, and now I discover they are probably worth thousands, because they were nearly all first editions! Doh.
I was a `70s child, so I thought them old-fashioned, overly religious and much too goody, goody (Just William was my favourite, more anarchic and funny.) Even I could see Jo casually popping out all those children pretty unlikely. I didn’t think of them as politically incorrect – political correctness didn’t exist in the `70s but I thought them snobby. And there was the expectation that women should leave school, settle down to get married and have children – but then again that’s the way world was.
So I read them to criticise….but having said that, I read them and re-read them and re-read them.…they filled many a bored moment. For one thing they gave me a grounding in social history. The first one was written not long after the First World War, when they were still talking about war reparations, they then spanned right through the 1930s, the Second World War and into the 1950s. In the first book Jo and Madge’s parents have died, which no-one seemed particularly bothered about, hence why Madge must set up a school in the Tyrol. And there are lovely descriptions of Austria and the Alps which I was very jealous of. You could almost do a GCSE History on the back of the Chalet School Series - OK a very Anglicised GCSE history without any poor people.
I can still remember that first book vividly as if I read it yesterday (which is annoying when you consider there’s plenty more important things I’d like to remember but can’t). I remember poor Grizel with her miserable childhood, her only friend being the cook. And still paying for that childhood in later years. I remember the trip around Paris (not fair I thought the furthest I got was Preston shopping centre). I remember annoying Miss-Perfect Jo who was always sickly, and Simone they had as dark and intense (as if all the French were dark and intense!)
Most of all I can recount that flight up the Ternjoch (is there a mountain called the Ternjoch??) almost word for word, even though I’ve not read the book in more than 30 years. Most of the Chalet School books ended with some dramatic disaster and Jo nearly dying. There was one scene in about Book 4 I think, where Jo very nearly drowned but didn’t and she got double pleuro-pneumonia which I thought really exciting. I kind of hoped she would die, me being bitchy and not liking her very much.
My own children haven’t read the Chalet School books, it’s all Harry Potter now. Besides they wouldn’t have been so accepting of the old fashioned writing style as I was. You’ve got to be really bored, with no computers and no telly to just sit and read and understand novels written in a different era to your own - the past is a different country as they say. And there’s no point me re-reading them now, a book from your childhood should stay in your childhood I think.
My Mum eventually gave them all away, and now I discover they are probably worth thousands, because they were nearly all first editions! Doh.