On riding camps and chocolate
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani
It is 1930, the midst of the Great Depression. After her mysterious role in a family tragedy, passionate, strong-willed Thea Atwell, age fifteen, has been cast out of her Florida home, exiled to an equestrian boarding school for Southern debutantes. High in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with its complex social strata ordered by money, beauty, and girls’ friendships, the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is a far remove from the free-roaming, dreamlike childhood Thea shared with her twin brother on their family’s citrus farm-a world that is now lost.
As she grapples with her responsibility for the events of the past year that led her here, and what they mean in the grand scheme of her life and her relationship with her family, Thea also finds herself enmeshed in a new order at Yonahlossee. Her eyes opened for the first time to a larger world, she must navigate the politics and competition of friendship as well as her own sexual awakening, and come to an understanding of the kind of person she is-or wants to be. Her experience will change her sense of what is possible for herself and her family.
I really wanted to like The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls. In the tradition of classic coming-of-age novels (Prep by Curtis Sittenfield jumps into my mind), it features a young teenage heroine and tackles heavy-hitting themes: family, identity, friendship, and sexuality and its flip side, sexual abuse. While Thea undergoes many of these issues, and comes to understand herself and the adult world around her better, for me the execution of the narrative fell short of other novels in this genre.
My main is Thea’s ponderous, “woe is me” narrative voice. While I get that the scandal in Thea’s past would’ve ruined any girl who came from a respectable, wealthier family, she reflects on this watershed event so often that it bogged down the flow of the story-especially since the author chooses not to reveal what exactly happened to Thea until almost the end. The novel’s back and forth, past versus present structure also drew out the story unnecessarily instead of building suspense with just the right amount. Thea is a complex character, one who is just beginning to realize just how much she doesn’t know about herself and the world around her, but I also wish the secondary characters had that same dynamic element. Instead, even characters with whom Thea was close (like her twin brother or her friend Sissy at camp) remained one-note. Though I had high hopes, I just couldn’t connect with this one.
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
When beautiful, unmarried Vianne Rocher sweeps into the pinched little French town of Lansquenet on the heels of the carnival and opens a gem of a chocolate shop across the square from the church, she begins to wreak havoc with the town’s Lenten vows. Her uncanny ability to perceive her customers’ private discontents and alleviate them with just the right confection coaxes villagers to abandon themselves to temptation and happiness, but enrages Pere Reynaud, the local priest. Certain only a witch could stir such sinful indulgence and devise such clever cures, Reynaud pits himself against Vianne and vows to block the chocolate festival she plans for Easter Sunday, and to run her out of town forever. Witch or not (she’ll never tell), Vianne soon sparks a dramatic confrontation between those who prefer the cold comforts of the church and those who revel in their newly discovered taste for pleasure.
Chocolat is a quick, absorbing read. I hadn’t actually seen the movie before picking up the book, so I enjoyed reading about the drama as it unfolded: Vianne and her daughter arriving in town and setting up their chocolate shop; their campaign to win over the suspicious townsfolk, one by one; the priest’s crusade to drive them out. The story is at its best when it focuses on the hidden lives of the townspeople: Although the small town is the kind where everyone knows each other’s names, Vianne’s arrival makes them realize they don’t really understand each other at all. There’s Josephine Muscat, the supposedly “crazy” wife of the local café owner, who for the longest time simply endured abuse at his hands; there’s also Armande, an older woman whose gruff manners hide a deep loneliness. Vianne comes into their lives and inspires them with the thought that things can be different, and in turn, they also inspire her.
However, the story is not so successful when it transitions to the priest’s point of view, which was heavy-handed and one-note. In fact his chapters came across to me as long-winded rants, instead of building sympathy for the character. I’m glad that in the movie version, which I saw soon after finishing the book, he wasn’t portrayed in such an over-the-top, melodramatic way (although in the movie he is made to be the mayor).
It is 1930, the midst of the Great Depression. After her mysterious role in a family tragedy, passionate, strong-willed Thea Atwell, age fifteen, has been cast out of her Florida home, exiled to an equestrian boarding school for Southern debutantes. High in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with its complex social strata ordered by money, beauty, and girls’ friendships, the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is a far remove from the free-roaming, dreamlike childhood Thea shared with her twin brother on their family’s citrus farm-a world that is now lost.
As she grapples with her responsibility for the events of the past year that led her here, and what they mean in the grand scheme of her life and her relationship with her family, Thea also finds herself enmeshed in a new order at Yonahlossee. Her eyes opened for the first time to a larger world, she must navigate the politics and competition of friendship as well as her own sexual awakening, and come to an understanding of the kind of person she is-or wants to be. Her experience will change her sense of what is possible for herself and her family.
I really wanted to like The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls. In the tradition of classic coming-of-age novels (Prep by Curtis Sittenfield jumps into my mind), it features a young teenage heroine and tackles heavy-hitting themes: family, identity, friendship, and sexuality and its flip side, sexual abuse. While Thea undergoes many of these issues, and comes to understand herself and the adult world around her better, for me the execution of the narrative fell short of other novels in this genre.
My main is Thea’s ponderous, “woe is me” narrative voice. While I get that the scandal in Thea’s past would’ve ruined any girl who came from a respectable, wealthier family, she reflects on this watershed event so often that it bogged down the flow of the story-especially since the author chooses not to reveal what exactly happened to Thea until almost the end. The novel’s back and forth, past versus present structure also drew out the story unnecessarily instead of building suspense with just the right amount. Thea is a complex character, one who is just beginning to realize just how much she doesn’t know about herself and the world around her, but I also wish the secondary characters had that same dynamic element. Instead, even characters with whom Thea was close (like her twin brother or her friend Sissy at camp) remained one-note. Though I had high hopes, I just couldn’t connect with this one.
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
When beautiful, unmarried Vianne Rocher sweeps into the pinched little French town of Lansquenet on the heels of the carnival and opens a gem of a chocolate shop across the square from the church, she begins to wreak havoc with the town’s Lenten vows. Her uncanny ability to perceive her customers’ private discontents and alleviate them with just the right confection coaxes villagers to abandon themselves to temptation and happiness, but enrages Pere Reynaud, the local priest. Certain only a witch could stir such sinful indulgence and devise such clever cures, Reynaud pits himself against Vianne and vows to block the chocolate festival she plans for Easter Sunday, and to run her out of town forever. Witch or not (she’ll never tell), Vianne soon sparks a dramatic confrontation between those who prefer the cold comforts of the church and those who revel in their newly discovered taste for pleasure.
Chocolat is a quick, absorbing read. I hadn’t actually seen the movie before picking up the book, so I enjoyed reading about the drama as it unfolded: Vianne and her daughter arriving in town and setting up their chocolate shop; their campaign to win over the suspicious townsfolk, one by one; the priest’s crusade to drive them out. The story is at its best when it focuses on the hidden lives of the townspeople: Although the small town is the kind where everyone knows each other’s names, Vianne’s arrival makes them realize they don’t really understand each other at all. There’s Josephine Muscat, the supposedly “crazy” wife of the local café owner, who for the longest time simply endured abuse at his hands; there’s also Armande, an older woman whose gruff manners hide a deep loneliness. Vianne comes into their lives and inspires them with the thought that things can be different, and in turn, they also inspire her.
However, the story is not so successful when it transitions to the priest’s point of view, which was heavy-handed and one-note. In fact his chapters came across to me as long-winded rants, instead of building sympathy for the character. I’m glad that in the movie version, which I saw soon after finishing the book, he wasn’t portrayed in such an over-the-top, melodramatic way (although in the movie he is made to be the mayor).