A review by flogigyahoo
School for Love by Olivia Manning

4.0

I re-read this book after about 30 years and now enjoyed it as much as I did first time, maybe more. Olivia Manning was famous for the excellent The Balkan Trilogy and the Levant Trilogy, the final book of which was published the year of her death. But in 1951 she published The School for Love, the story of young orphan, Felix Latimer, whose mother has died after the loss of his father while living in Bagdahd during WWII. Unable to travel home due to the war, Felix is sent to board with a foster aunt in her pension in Jerusalem in Mandate Palestine. His aunt is Miss Bohun, a woman who strikes him as mean, nasty, malicious, considering herself a good Christian woman, yet showing none of the aspects of one. Felix loves only her cat, Faro, until Mrs Ellis arrives, a young pregnant widow. Felix at first falls for this beauty but she and Miss Bohun do not hit it off well, needless to say, and Felix grows up very quickly watching the two of them battle it out. I loved this novel; Manning's spare style is wonderful.