REVIEW: Jill's Jolliest School
On Saturday, having watched the women's French Open final, I wrote up my thoughts about said Championship. I even saved it, on a thingummy that I left at relatives'. Well done, self. Those reactions have now assumed the stature of all my distilled wisdom about tennis, when they were nothing of the kind. I've caught very little of Queen's, it must be said.
Jill's Jolliest School: Angela Brazil
It didn't occur to me at the time, although there was a definite sense of familiarity, as you get with Brazil's copious output, but there's some similarity in set up with The New School at Scawdale in that twelve year old twins Jack and Jill are well-balanced orphans, who have been brought up in New Zealand by the maternal side of the family. But their grandparents yield to the other side of the family's suggestion that they come to England to be educated (as ever, Brazil patronises 'the colonies' while admiring their 'pioneering spirit'). Jill's school is run by a distant relative and is on the old family home, but she mustn't swank about it.
As her first few weeks are miserable, she doesn't want to swank about anything. She's spirited and impulsive...and keeps breaking unwritten rules. This culminates in a bad weekend with the school left to the unsympathetic second in command's charge. Being a Thoughtless girl, Jill runs away, coincidentally meeting her brother until a sensible grow-up gets hold of them.
The story then becomes sort of episodic, though there are two overall plots, one to do with secret passages and hideouts in the old family home and another to do with a mysterious artistic girl, a mysterious musical boy and a mysterious music teacher. There's also Jess, one of Jill's cousins, who turns up midway through the book and somewhat takes over, being livelier than putative heroine Jill, in whom Brazil seems to have lost interest. (She isn't the extraordinry new girl, although she saves the school somewhat). So, yes, they chum up as we progress from spring term to Christmastime, with a visit to the Austrian Tyrol over the summer at which the girls improve their French. You've got to love Brazil, even when it's later, formulaic Brazil.
Jill's Jolliest School: Angela Brazil
It didn't occur to me at the time, although there was a definite sense of familiarity, as you get with Brazil's copious output, but there's some similarity in set up with The New School at Scawdale in that twelve year old twins Jack and Jill are well-balanced orphans, who have been brought up in New Zealand by the maternal side of the family. But their grandparents yield to the other side of the family's suggestion that they come to England to be educated (as ever, Brazil patronises 'the colonies' while admiring their 'pioneering spirit'). Jill's school is run by a distant relative and is on the old family home, but she mustn't swank about it.
As her first few weeks are miserable, she doesn't want to swank about anything. She's spirited and impulsive...and keeps breaking unwritten rules. This culminates in a bad weekend with the school left to the unsympathetic second in command's charge. Being a Thoughtless girl, Jill runs away, coincidentally meeting her brother until a sensible grow-up gets hold of them.
The story then becomes sort of episodic, though there are two overall plots, one to do with secret passages and hideouts in the old family home and another to do with a mysterious artistic girl, a mysterious musical boy and a mysterious music teacher. There's also Jess, one of Jill's cousins, who turns up midway through the book and somewhat takes over, being livelier than putative heroine Jill, in whom Brazil seems to have lost interest. (She isn't the extraordinry new girl, although she saves the school somewhat). So, yes, they chum up as we progress from spring term to Christmastime, with a visit to the Austrian Tyrol over the summer at which the girls improve their French. You've got to love Brazil, even when it's later, formulaic Brazil.