REVIEW: Nesta's New School
Nesta’s New School: Angela Brazil. Blackie, inscribed 1926.
You have to struggle through the first chapter, as it’s important to the plot. It also proves that writing about girls is Brazil’s metier, while writing a believable conversation between adults about serious matters is not. After that, you will meet Nesta Meredith. Aged 13, she’s about to go to her second boarding school, but this one is in Switzerland. The Villa Alpina is an English school that specialises in improving conversational French near Lake Geneva. Meanwhile, her mother is going to travel in Italy.
Nesta, an only child, has been a little too used to the world revolving around her. At her new school, she will be expected to think of others and not always put herself forward. There’s a prefect set to snub her, especially, oddly enough, whenever Nesta mentions the dead father she idolises, although he died before she was born. But, among nice dorm-mates, there’s kind Rita from whom Nesta learns a little about friendship, while lugeing for the first time, seeing evidence of all the seasons on a mountain and visiting tourist spots. What does it matter that she apparently has a double in England called ‘Alice’?
But as she finds her place in her new school, her personal life is shifting. A Captain Donaldson seems to be monopolising her mother’s attention, and Nesta’s holidays have become dull, with the distance growing between her and her mother. The author notes that it’s one thing to have a cute little girl, but a tall teenager as a daughter takes rather the bloom off, and points out that having a tussle of wills with said daughter is exhausting. However, I was more sympathetic toward Nesta than Brazilr meant for me to be, and not just because of the important plot point in the first chapter, how it was handled then and after.
How I wish there was more emotional truth to the big revelations and twists in this book. If it were a story about Nesta going to Switzerland and having the corners rubbed off her, this would be a successful enough tale, even if the query of whether this is copying the Chalet School arises. But there’s a lot more going on, and that’s where Brazil’s limitations are clear.
To go into further detail, there’s the most incredible informal adoption arrangements ever, where a rich woman who has lost both child and husband influences a new widow to give her one of her daughters by offering to help her provide for her friend and the other daughters. This bad example of adoptive mothering then can’t even arrange for her daughter to spend her holidays with peers, but doesn’t want her to play gooseberry with her and her gentleman admirer. He turns out to be possessive and dishonourable. She tells Nesta the truth about the adoption very quickly, very brusquely (and Brazil allows the girl…a delayed reaction to earth-shattering news.) Mrs Meredith then dies and Nesta is informed she’s to leave school and live with the (poorer) mother and three sisters she doesn’t remember, one of them her twin.
Any reader would be justified in going, ‘Wait, WHAT?’
Another writer would wring out every drop of emotion from this melodramatic plot. I’m not saying I wanted Brazil to do that, but at least write credible responses to big, life-changing events.
The story then changes direction, taking Nesta to a second new school and an entirely new home life, which is more emotionally nurturing, if financially constrained, and a more academic high school. We see that Nesta has changed due to her time at the Villa Alpina, but this is almost in the context of a whole other story as the flightier ‘pixie child’ Alice, whom Nesta can’t but love, demands a lot of attention. Nesta, having grown up a little (after being repeatedly abandoned by the woman she thought was her mother: at school, for marriage, by the truth poorly revealed and then by death, and having to adjust to a whole new family unit that, in turn, has to adjust to her) seems to be less interesting to Brazil than shenanigans with twins who are similar enough that you can’t tell them apart when they’re not together. The book ends with Alice crowing about a reversal of fortune for the whole family, unable to think beyond the holidays and not having learned to be reliable after a choppy term. There’s an incident where we’re meant to think that the other girls are horrible for taking away Alice’s character, but she’s dodgy enough on lesser matters of honour that I couldn’t blame them for jumping to the conclusion they did.
The names were very sane for an Angela Brazil book. There is one long scene of legends associated with Swiss castles being related - the Swiss section is a wonderful tourism advert, many readers, like Alice, would be envious of Nesta’s time there - and one competition where Mrs Watson and her four daughters come up with poetry. Overall, the book leaves you frustrated that the writer hasn’t making the most of her story, partly because too much is crammed into this book, which mostly tells of a year in the life of Nesta Meredith, born Clara Watson, who becomes Nesta Watson.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/173213.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.
You have to struggle through the first chapter, as it’s important to the plot. It also proves that writing about girls is Brazil’s metier, while writing a believable conversation between adults about serious matters is not. After that, you will meet Nesta Meredith. Aged 13, she’s about to go to her second boarding school, but this one is in Switzerland. The Villa Alpina is an English school that specialises in improving conversational French near Lake Geneva. Meanwhile, her mother is going to travel in Italy.
Nesta, an only child, has been a little too used to the world revolving around her. At her new school, she will be expected to think of others and not always put herself forward. There’s a prefect set to snub her, especially, oddly enough, whenever Nesta mentions the dead father she idolises, although he died before she was born. But, among nice dorm-mates, there’s kind Rita from whom Nesta learns a little about friendship, while lugeing for the first time, seeing evidence of all the seasons on a mountain and visiting tourist spots. What does it matter that she apparently has a double in England called ‘Alice’?
But as she finds her place in her new school, her personal life is shifting. A Captain Donaldson seems to be monopolising her mother’s attention, and Nesta’s holidays have become dull, with the distance growing between her and her mother. The author notes that it’s one thing to have a cute little girl, but a tall teenager as a daughter takes rather the bloom off, and points out that having a tussle of wills with said daughter is exhausting. However, I was more sympathetic toward Nesta than Brazilr meant for me to be, and not just because of the important plot point in the first chapter, how it was handled then and after.
How I wish there was more emotional truth to the big revelations and twists in this book. If it were a story about Nesta going to Switzerland and having the corners rubbed off her, this would be a successful enough tale, even if the query of whether this is copying the Chalet School arises. But there’s a lot more going on, and that’s where Brazil’s limitations are clear.
To go into further detail, there’s the most incredible informal adoption arrangements ever, where a rich woman who has lost both child and husband influences a new widow to give her one of her daughters by offering to help her provide for her friend and the other daughters. This bad example of adoptive mothering then can’t even arrange for her daughter to spend her holidays with peers, but doesn’t want her to play gooseberry with her and her gentleman admirer. He turns out to be possessive and dishonourable. She tells Nesta the truth about the adoption very quickly, very brusquely (and Brazil allows the girl…a delayed reaction to earth-shattering news.) Mrs Meredith then dies and Nesta is informed she’s to leave school and live with the (poorer) mother and three sisters she doesn’t remember, one of them her twin.
Any reader would be justified in going, ‘Wait, WHAT?’
Another writer would wring out every drop of emotion from this melodramatic plot. I’m not saying I wanted Brazil to do that, but at least write credible responses to big, life-changing events.
The story then changes direction, taking Nesta to a second new school and an entirely new home life, which is more emotionally nurturing, if financially constrained, and a more academic high school. We see that Nesta has changed due to her time at the Villa Alpina, but this is almost in the context of a whole other story as the flightier ‘pixie child’ Alice, whom Nesta can’t but love, demands a lot of attention. Nesta, having grown up a little (after being repeatedly abandoned by the woman she thought was her mother: at school, for marriage, by the truth poorly revealed and then by death, and having to adjust to a whole new family unit that, in turn, has to adjust to her) seems to be less interesting to Brazil than shenanigans with twins who are similar enough that you can’t tell them apart when they’re not together. The book ends with Alice crowing about a reversal of fortune for the whole family, unable to think beyond the holidays and not having learned to be reliable after a choppy term. There’s an incident where we’re meant to think that the other girls are horrible for taking away Alice’s character, but she’s dodgy enough on lesser matters of honour that I couldn’t blame them for jumping to the conclusion they did.
The names were very sane for an Angela Brazil book. There is one long scene of legends associated with Swiss castles being related - the Swiss section is a wonderful tourism advert, many readers, like Alice, would be envious of Nesta’s time there - and one competition where Mrs Watson and her four daughters come up with poetry. Overall, the book leaves you frustrated that the writer hasn’t making the most of her story, partly because too much is crammed into this book, which mostly tells of a year in the life of Nesta Meredith, born Clara Watson, who becomes Nesta Watson.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/173213.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.