REREAD: The School on the Loch
Although Scotland is in the British news big time, this isn't a timely post! I reread this book over the Christmas holidays and had hoped to post this review sooner.
The School on the Loch: Angela Brazil. Blackie (from the inscription, published in 1961 or earlier)
This reminded me a lot of the last Brazil book that I read, The Mystery of the Moated Grange (which I neglected to post about, sorry), which also featured a family mystery that was no mystery at all. In this book, the family in question, the Lindsays, don’t realise that they’re part of a mystery. Most of the book is, if not taken up by ‘the school on the loch’, about the Lindsay girls.
An uncle and aunt offer to take Jessie and Ailsa Lindsay away from their family's coffee plantation in Kenya, which has just been dramatically attacked by locusts, also decimating the family coffers. They are taken by boat to Scotland where the climate will toughen them up. Having been taught at home previously, both girls start at Rothsay Lodge, a small local preparatory school and Ailsa, in particular, goes all out for Scotland. The loch of the title doesn’t play a big part, but is emblematic of Scotland really, as the girls have all kinds of cultural experiences they’d be unlikely to have anywhere else. Jessie and two other girls from Rothsay Lodge get an opportunity to go to the larger high school in town eventually (which makes the title even more redundant).
Where Brazil is good is that a lot of her sympathies do lie with the girls, even when they’re at their most careless. The scrapes that they get into are because they haven’t thought things through. Nothing too serious happens to even the most thoughtless or selfish lassie, so Brazil isn't trying to teach any morals, though I can imagine, and have read, I think, other writers handling incidents like the Little Women one, differently. The girls really want to see a film adaptation of the classic book, don't ask permission, find that it's so popular that they have to take the more expensive cinema seats and only realise that that means they can’t afford the fares for the last bus home afterwards. So they must then walk the long miles home, which taxes Jessie.
Ailsa finally remembers a parcel wrapped up in a vital newspaper page by the end of the book. On it is news that leads to the happy ending of all the Lindsay family coming to live in bonnie, bonnie Scotland.
The book is quite episodic (and interspersed with characters such as the girls' aunt telling stories). There’s not much to it, and the chapter that purports to be Jessie and her classmates’ compositions about various characters and episodes in Scottish history was especially weak. The escapades and events described in most other chapters are there for colour and no more - there isn’t much follow-through. But it’s a fine enough read, if not A1 (the highest praise offered by the characters).
This entry was originally posted at http://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/63500.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
The School on the Loch: Angela Brazil. Blackie (from the inscription, published in 1961 or earlier)
This reminded me a lot of the last Brazil book that I read, The Mystery of the Moated Grange (which I neglected to post about, sorry), which also featured a family mystery that was no mystery at all. In this book, the family in question, the Lindsays, don’t realise that they’re part of a mystery. Most of the book is, if not taken up by ‘the school on the loch’, about the Lindsay girls.
An uncle and aunt offer to take Jessie and Ailsa Lindsay away from their family's coffee plantation in Kenya, which has just been dramatically attacked by locusts, also decimating the family coffers. They are taken by boat to Scotland where the climate will toughen them up. Having been taught at home previously, both girls start at Rothsay Lodge, a small local preparatory school and Ailsa, in particular, goes all out for Scotland. The loch of the title doesn’t play a big part, but is emblematic of Scotland really, as the girls have all kinds of cultural experiences they’d be unlikely to have anywhere else. Jessie and two other girls from Rothsay Lodge get an opportunity to go to the larger high school in town eventually (which makes the title even more redundant).
Where Brazil is good is that a lot of her sympathies do lie with the girls, even when they’re at their most careless. The scrapes that they get into are because they haven’t thought things through. Nothing too serious happens to even the most thoughtless or selfish lassie, so Brazil isn't trying to teach any morals, though I can imagine, and have read, I think, other writers handling incidents like the Little Women one, differently. The girls really want to see a film adaptation of the classic book, don't ask permission, find that it's so popular that they have to take the more expensive cinema seats and only realise that that means they can’t afford the fares for the last bus home afterwards. So they must then walk the long miles home, which taxes Jessie.
Ailsa finally remembers a parcel wrapped up in a vital newspaper page by the end of the book. On it is news that leads to the happy ending of all the Lindsay family coming to live in bonnie, bonnie Scotland.
The book is quite episodic (and interspersed with characters such as the girls' aunt telling stories). There’s not much to it, and the chapter that purports to be Jessie and her classmates’ compositions about various characters and episodes in Scottish history was especially weak. The escapades and events described in most other chapters are there for colour and no more - there isn’t much follow-through. But it’s a fine enough read, if not A1 (the highest praise offered by the characters).
This entry was originally posted at http://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/63500.html. Please comment there using OpenID.