It is no secret here on the scribbles that I am a huge fan of the girls' boarding school novel, and aren't we lucky to have such a rich seam to choose from. Whilst the boys had to make do with Tom Brown's School Days and Goodbye Mr Chips and Jennings (there must be more I just can't think of them) us girls were spoiled for choice. I cut my reading teeth on Malory Towers and begged to be sent to boarding school where I thought I'd fit right in. Darrell Rivers and lacrosse and midnight feasts and tuck boxes. I yearned for one of those little tiny trunks to keep my 'tuck' in, leaving my mum quite distraught at the whole idea that I wanted to be sent away. Chalet School (Fran, this is your cue to tell us about your Chalet School bedroom, it can't be told often enough) and the Abbey books weren't for me, but that vague sense of having missed out on something stretched into adulthood. Maybe nursing helped assuage the 'deprivation' a little, as we all pitched up with our trunks to be housed at Rosslyn Lodge in Belsize Park for Preliminary Training School, but I have still loved the books...transferring my affections to St Bride's and the 1920's series by Dorita Fairlie Bruce where the girls get into all sorts of scrapes involving things like rough seas and leaky boats.
There is also a really excellent little book, Terms & Conditions by Ysenda Maxtone Graham, published by Slightly Foxed, which shines a hilarious light on the truth about life in girls' boarding schools from 1939-1979 and I recommend it if you didn't go, and wish you had, and want to know more. This book might almost cure you, whilst those who did go to boarding school might be nodding there heads sagely and saying 'I told you so.'
'Harsh matrons, freezing dormitories and appalling food predominated, but at some schools you could take your pony with you and occasionally these eccentric establishments – closed now or reformed – imbued in their pupils a lifetime love of the arts and a real thirst for self-education. In Terms & Conditions Ysenda speaks to members of a lost tribe – the Boarding-school Women, grandmothers now and the backbone of the nation, who look back on their experiences with a mixture of horror and humour.'
If that doesn't work then I can highly recommend Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas.
Honestly, I'm completely cured. I'm over the whole boarding-school-yearning thing now.
Set in the here and now, in an unnamed minor girls' boarding school in Hertfordshire, I settled down to be decadent, on a very November-ish Monday morning, lit the fire, stretched out on the sofa and started reading whilst thinking how important it was to do these things now, just because I can. All those miserable November Mondays schlepping off to work, out and about around the Dartmoor farms in the mud and rain to see the new births, running the gauntlet of hostile dogs, opening and closing five gates to get down there.
And then finding it was the wrong farm and the place you wanted was right on the road, so five gates to get back up and out again.
Perish the memory.
Anyway I digress. Whilst the preoccupations for Daryl and Sally of Malory Towers are sports and midnight feasts, life is a little different for Tiffanie, Lissa, Bianca, Donya, Danielle and Rachel because into their midst comes Natasha the fabulously wealthy daughter of a Russian oligarch. In fact Natasha's wealth is slightly new-found because her father has only just discovered her, but no matter, she does her best to fit right in. These girls worry about diets, beauty, fashion and phone apps and all embrace anorexia as if born to it. Scales are confiscated but no matter...
'On Sunday night the girls break out of their attic dorms and it's like an Enid Blyton book except it isn't because in what Enid Blyton book do girls escape at midnight to weigh themselves on the kitchen scales that they then break. It's Tiffanie of course. Her obese lardarse. The kitchen full of food and no one eating any of it. No normal midnight feast behaviour here.'
The tyranny and dangers of adolescent dieting are forensically dissected by Scarlett Thomas in a book that she says 'came out of nowhere', surprising her and everyone around her. Think Muriel Spark and you will understand how wry humour can so expertly convey serious issues. The girls all have a warped body image, are utterly obsessed by their weight and are both impressionable and gullible in their pursuit of the perfect shape, whilst the school are hopelessly incapable of dealing with it. The arrival of the new and uninformed Biology teacher (to replace Dr Morgan who...well I couldn't possibly spoil it) a case in point...
'She is tall and sporty with thick porridgey calves... 'I know,' says Miss White...'Why don't we look at BMI? Body Mass Index. We can design some experiments. I'll get the scales....the mood lifts a little...
The only people who look uncertain are the fat girls...'
Out come the calipers as the girls are urged to measure and calculate their body fat percentages...
'You've got to hold someone else's muffin-top and basically pinch it, hard, with these metal things...'
Whilst none of the pupils were eating, Scarlett Thomas had me eating out of her hand. How can you not laugh, except you know it's going to end in a meltdown eventually. The book charts a steady course through this world of adolescent girls and their collective behaviours.
Though internet access is strictly limited the girls make the most of their one hour per evening, downloading new fitness apps to their phones and scouring Instagram for 'thigh gaps' and all manner of 'other' things. All an education in just how much more information young people have access to, and have to process, than we ever did in the 1960s and 70s. Honey magazine and maybe Cosmopolitan were our limit; that and a hot line via a classmate to her mother who was a very broad-minded youth counsellor and thus answered all our questions by proxy.
Ask on a Tuesday, have the correct answer by Wednesday.
There are some acutely funny moments too. The school outing is hilarious...
'They go to Stevenage on a geography trip. What kind of geography trip takes you to what must be the worst town in the history of the universe, well, except for those Soviet ruins of course, and the towns near Chenobyl?'
The girls have their own ideas....
'Then Donya comes out of a department store with a free sample of a new moisturiser and suddenly everyone needs free samples and there is a rampage of these beskirted, long-limbed exotic creatures with great bone structure. They stampede into Debenhams and BHS both of which smell of bad cafeterias and children's nappies and wee...'
Nonsuch Girls' did at least go to Bude.
There will be a series of very serious events along with worrying undertones, dubious activities that the reader sees and which scream predatory behaviour, but which the girls don't quite understand as such and it's clear it will end in tears, but what a fillip of a book this was and what a brilliant day I spent with Oligarchy. I buy very little hardback fiction these days but this proved to be a splendid choice, so if you are in need something a bit different get onto your library and persuade them to stock it immediately.
Muriel Spark is indeed born again and I loved it.
And now over to you because it's while since we've had the conversation...
Favourite boarding school books anyone...
Or maybe you didn't need to read them because you actually went to boarding school...
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