REVIEW: The Ballet School Mystery
The Ballet School Mystery: Constance M. White. Hutchinson, 1959
This was a lot more engrossing and engaging than I expected, partly because of the setting, but more because of the characters. On a trivial note, I bought it on my birthday last year.
Madame Vassar has expanded her specialist ballet boarding school, moving to one Tregarth Abbey and thus enabling young Lesley Fane and several other girls to join the school. Shy, dreamy and kind-hearted, Lesley really wants to be a ballet dancer, finding a mentor in star pupil Toni. Things don’t go entirely smoothly, however. We get to know the strongest charactes in Lesley’s dorm, one of whom is the mysterious and unpopular Nadine, who clings to Lesley and who can almost be two people in the space of one conversation. Meanwhile, Lesley keeps running across the school gardener Brant acting not quite as you’d expect a gardener to. The big question is will Lesley solve all these mysteries without it affecting her dancing?
As you can see, this is getting quite close to containing all the elements parodied in Daisy Pulls it Off, but it is fun to read about Lesley attempting to find her place - the contrast between her initial awkwardness and the more outgoing girls, her assumption that all the girls share her moral compass, and her feeling for dance all draw you in. It’s not perfect and although the ballet stuff is decent, it lacks the authenticity of the Sadlers Wells series or even the Drina books. I kept thinking that while the Cornish location was great for the plot and the girls, who seemed to pop into the sea every Saturday afternoon, wouldn’t it and the lack of boys tell against the older girls on the verge of starting their dancing careers?
While White teases us about what Brant is up to, the second a romance develops between him and one of the mistresses, he loses all credibility as a suspect. And yet, although the mystery is clichéd and not as integrated as it could be, that’s not the aspect that will stay with me.
This entry was originally posted at http://www.dreamwidth.org/12345.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.
This was a lot more engrossing and engaging than I expected, partly because of the setting, but more because of the characters. On a trivial note, I bought it on my birthday last year.
Madame Vassar has expanded her specialist ballet boarding school, moving to one Tregarth Abbey and thus enabling young Lesley Fane and several other girls to join the school. Shy, dreamy and kind-hearted, Lesley really wants to be a ballet dancer, finding a mentor in star pupil Toni. Things don’t go entirely smoothly, however. We get to know the strongest charactes in Lesley’s dorm, one of whom is the mysterious and unpopular Nadine, who clings to Lesley and who can almost be two people in the space of one conversation. Meanwhile, Lesley keeps running across the school gardener Brant acting not quite as you’d expect a gardener to. The big question is will Lesley solve all these mysteries without it affecting her dancing?
As you can see, this is getting quite close to containing all the elements parodied in Daisy Pulls it Off, but it is fun to read about Lesley attempting to find her place - the contrast between her initial awkwardness and the more outgoing girls, her assumption that all the girls share her moral compass, and her feeling for dance all draw you in. It’s not perfect and although the ballet stuff is decent, it lacks the authenticity of the Sadlers Wells series or even the Drina books. I kept thinking that while the Cornish location was great for the plot and the girls, who seemed to pop into the sea every Saturday afternoon, wouldn’t it and the lack of boys tell against the older girls on the verge of starting their dancing careers?
While White teases us about what Brant is up to, the second a romance develops between him and one of the mistresses, he loses all credibility as a suspect. And yet, although the mystery is clichéd and not as integrated as it could be, that’s not the aspect that will stay with me.
This entry was originally posted at http://www.dreamwidth.org/12345.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.