Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 9-12

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

My apologies for this being a day late: I had planned to finish it yesterday, but there was what might be described as very nearly a nasty accident (no harm done) and I didn't. Anyway, here goes.

This chapter does a wonderful job of suggesting how a mixture of loneliness and disaffection can prompt futile and perverse action. Forest often suggests that Ginty's emotions are less than genuine: that takes on an aggravated aspect here, as she persists in playing poorly to demonstrate to Craven that her 'feelings weren't to be switched on and off to order'. Her surprise at not being much disappointed in to not being chosen for the team is also, I think, plausible: life really has lost its savour for her. Her four remaining friends' reactions to being in the teams when Ginty is excluded tells us a lot about each of them with extreme economy. Her reflection on the arithmetic of friendship, in which six is not equal to two threes, and which has now become 'twice two plus one', is memorably elegant.

I enjoy the conversation between Ginty and Ann, simply because we rerely see much interaction between them, and it made me think about the very different ways in which they react to and cope with being the middle of the family. The Marlow siblings have their semi-official division into quarterdeck and lower deck, and that gulf opens between the two sisters whose temperaments could scarcely be more different. There are some phrases to relish here: I love 'infantile figures, extinguished by pullovers' and Ann's 'sisterly look'. Inchoate disgruntlement, such as Ginty feels here, seems foreign to Ann, for whom unhappiness has distinct causes which must in turn be overcome: an immensely irritating response to adolescent dissatisfaction. But her reflection on Ginty suffering more than Lawrie because Lawrie releases her feelings where Ginty frets is astute.

I wonder what Ginty dislikes about The Red Shoes? It actually seems rather her sort of thing. Perhaps too much so.

And another intervention by Mrs Lambert and her pedantic manner: I think Ginty's mixture of defiance of Mrs Lambert, guilt at knowing she has nonetheless been impolite and fear of the consequences of that rudeness sets a wonderfully complex groundwork for her decision to use the phone. So different from Nicola's, and yet it's the shame of being afraid to do something that Nicola wasn't that gives Ginty the final push.

Remembering my own schooldays, I don't think that phoning one's mother would be much of an excuse for having entered the school office and used the phone without permission. By the standards of the Marlow's holiday capers it's absurdly low risk, but it seems inconsistent that a school with so many Shopping Party rules and regulations hasn't quite impressed upon its charges the idea of the school office, with all its sensitive material, being out of bounds.

Then, the first conversation with Patrick. I'm endeared by the thought of him taking bus rides for fun (I do that). A hint of a possible future career for him, though I don't know whether liking the look of Lincoln's Inn is a very sound basis for a legal career: I can't see Patrick as a lawyer, myself. What do people make of his message for Nicola? It seems significant in terms of the evolution of the friendships, and Ginty's reluctance to actually pass it on is deliciously awkward, but I wonder if people think Patrick has any motivation for it. Ginty doesn't seem, initially too thrown by it, though 'Oh darling Patrick' strikes an off-note of affectation. Dilys Carver's card is so memorable that sometimes I think of it out of the blue. Mad success or mess? Who was it for? We shall never know.



Ginty’s luck again lets her down, as Mrs Lambert reports her discourtesy: the image of Mrs Lambert lurking by ‘making sure she was sufficiently avenged’ is a neat detail. Meanwhile, Ginty has been reluctant to pass on Patrick’s message, but finally does so, ‘abruptly’ as these things tend to come out. Nicola, understandably (though not, it seems, to herself--‘some indefinable reason’), is reluctant, and deflects the situation with prehensile antics. There’s been some commentary in other threads about the way in which this novel blurs the worlds of Home and School--almost hermetically sealed from one another in most of the rest of the series. Day girls also play a bigger role than before. I rather like it: it seems both more plausible for a 1970s setting and a sign that Forest is still interested in innovating and experimenting. But what do you think?

The scenes dealing with the carol service are among my favourites in the novel, and this one is a tour de force. Tim is clearly still at her Headmistress’s Niece bit, indignantly appealing Ussher’s decision not to allow Upper IVA to warble ‘incomprehensibly in foreign tongues.’ I could see that one coming, with Miss Keith’s communitarian spirit and her tendency to regard the Play as a religious act (she’s a natural supporter of vernacular worship, to touch on another theme) and presumably so could Miss Ussher. Tim has now been confirmed in her role as dictatorial (‘this isn’t the Eurovision song contest’) Master of Revels: I’m amused by how the form simply leave it up to her, confident she’ll put on a show. What happenes if she decides not to, or fails to come up with the goods? This has been your regularly scheduled fic prompt.

UIVA’s scorn for the ‘feeble’ Sixth and their ideas is perhaps an index of their growing-up; it touches on the school-story perennial of hero-worship.

Miranda still has a sense of herself as outsider, but Tim, showing a confidence in her own judgement on inter-faith relations (wonder where she gets that from, albeit in inverted form?) is having none of it. That exchange moves neatly into the case of another outsider, poor Meg Hopkins, still suffering the consequences of the Prosser affair.

Maggie’s ‘honest dismay’ at ‘poems’ always delights me. Tim’s choices are rather good, don’t you think? Not sure about the de la Mare, though I love ‘Linden Lea’ and I can imagine Miranda’s arrangement (with Pomona’s adjustment--a sung reprise I think would have been a bit much) working. Canny Tim, to have planned something for Lawrie to shine at, and her ‘carefully casual’ announcement of it. I don’t ship them, but I can sort of see why people might: there’s a touch of mentor and protegé dynamic there. I also adore Nicola’s ‘It looks too religious. Miranda, you do it,’ which is a much more tactful way to answer Miranda’s uncertainties than Tim’s bossiness.

What do people make of Miss Keith’s handling of the Changear row? In narrative and characterisation terms it foreshadows the flap over the telephone business beautifully, but looked at from the perspective of school discipline and management I find it rather hard to make sense of. The ban on purchasing pocket-money-priced clothes without parental consent seems peculiar in the first place: if sweets and books are OK, why not the odd pair of second-hand slacks? Miss Keith is also conflating a possible case of bullying in UIVB (or that’s how I’ve always read it: I see on closer attention that it could well have been a day girl offloading some ‘expensive’ Mummy’s-friends-to-tea-dismals in return for something more hip, and getting nabbed: I remember a similar row occurring with a friend who had enthusiastically swapped good-but-dreary clothes for a pile of cheap fashionable tat and whose parents insisted she must have been bullied into it, because look at those appalling things) with the rule about not buying clothes. I’m also a bit puzzled (from a Watsonian point of view; the Doylist is obvious) why she should be so intent on finding out who first ‘discovered’ the shop, as opposed simply to who might have bought or exchanged clothes there. It’s not the source of the Nile or the peak of Everest: there’s a sign with purple tipsy letters outside; the Oxfam volunteers know about it; the UIVB girls found it more or less independently when Nicola and Miranda refused to tell them. From a discipline point of view, why on earth does it matter who found it first? Distinctly flawed in other books, Miss Keith actually seems slightly deranged in this one: pursuing her own ideas about causation at the expense of reasonable discipline.

Odd that Ann, if not Ginty, haven’t remarked before on their younger sisters’ colourful clothes?
Miss Latimer is utterly lovable in her suggestion of a strategy for UIVA’s owning-up: I like particularly her disclaiming of credit if it works and accepting the blame if it doesn’t, and Nicola’s spirited appreciation of it.

Then we come to the actual strip-tearing. I like Miranda’s attempt to explain about Elsa, and Miss Keith’s total incomprehension of such adolescent scruple. There’s been some discussion of the rule about telling Shopping Party prefects of planned purchases: it sounds a peculiar and redundant one to me too, and I can quite understand why Gina French skipped it--I wouldn’t want to know, in fact (this sort of thing is possibly why I was not a school prefect.) But school rules are often peculiar and redundant, I suppose. Nicola’s incredulous reaction to possibly being an object of admiration to the lower forms is delicious (I bet she is, or will be when she gets to the Fifth--this has been your regular &c.)

I’m touched both by Nick and Lawrie’s determination to hang on to the clothes and their (slightly childish?) embarrassment at the thought of Latimer seeing a maternal endearment. (I also love Pam’s seamless decoding of the capitalised instruction.) Lawrie’s shift dress sounds fantastically horrible.

Ginty’s reflection on the difference between the ‘feel’ of school in summer and winter really struck me on this reading. And this must, one reflects, be the most accident-prone set of O-level papers for years.


Ann’s ticking off (‘But why did you do it?’) is irritating, but does chime with the novel’s theme of just-because adolescent recklessness. And I’m amused by her actually secretly sharing Nicola’s opinion of Gina French’s lack of authority.
Miranda’s Visiting Day confession to Miss Keith forms another strand in the novel’s exploration of causation. I like the fact that Nicola’s thoughts turn to the endearing hippie youth, and she hopes (vainly) he won’t get in trouble.

Berenice’s doting grandfather is surely worth a drabble or two? Lawrie’s distinction between reading and reciting always pleases me (though I suspect her actual performance, impressed as UIVA are by it, is the sort of actorly reading of a poem--think Richard Burton making a dog’s-own meal of ‘Welsh Incident’--that gives me the professional heeby-jeebies.)

Ginty’s telephoning has now become something of a compulsion (can she really not have thought of the cost of the calls, by the way? In my parents’ household, nearly twenty years after the publication of Attic Term, any telephone call longer than about five minutes in duration would have one of my parents coming in and wagging fingers at me, because my school and most of my friends were in another telephone district and National Telephone Calls Are Expensive. We also had roughly the Trennels attitude to Hot Water. Does she not consider that the extra cost is likely to be registered and enquired into when the next bill comes in?)

I’m intrigued by the way Forest entwines Ginty’s superstitions with Patrick’s offer of intercessory prayer; almost as if she’s challenging the reader to make an equation of Catholicism with superstition.

And at last, a Claudie conversation! I noticed this time that Patrick’s embarrassment at her calling Ginty his ‘girlfriend’ is expressed in an oddly conditional mood. (‘Claudie would state’... ‘He could always retort’) I think this might be the present habitual--common in Hiberno-English, where it translates an Irish verbal form--meaning that it’s something that happens reasonably regularly, but it standard English it leaves open the possibility that it’s something that Patrick has only imagined happening and has shied away from on that account. I don’t much care for the terms boy/girlfriend myself (and didn’t even when I was Patrick’s age) but that he cannot truthfully offer an alternative (‘no, just a friend’ being presumably recognised as treacherous) is telling.

Marlowverse idiom is a tough call for anyone, one reflects, let alone an ESL learner. I don’t know the film about a ‘demented female who walked around with skinned rabbits in her handbag’. Anyone recognise it?

Rather nice that it’s ‘carry on’ that set Patrick off on a string of inadvertent innuendoes--someone stop that boy watching Up Pompeii! I’ll leave consideration of Patrick’s alarming sexual scruples to the general discussion, pausing only to note how radically his grudging admission of sex work to acceptability changes how we understand the rest. Without ‘--okay--if it’s paid for’, we can see him arguing that sex should proceed from a strong emotional bond (‘someone you--care for’), which is a sympathetic position even if you don’t particularly agree with it. With the partial admission of paid-for sex to admissibility (absolvability?) the worldview alters to a distinctly sexist one (I don’t think the Merrick Boy is claiming that male prostitution is in the least okay, whatever the gender of the client, nor that it's occurred to him that women might pay other women to have sex with them, but maybe I’m underestimating him?), and the meaning of ‘care for’ changes from ‘someone you love and respect’ to ‘someone you mean to make an honest woman out of.’ It sounds like a mildly unlikely, though far from impossible, stance for a 16-year-old in 1971 to take, but to me it has that ineluctable ring of from life about it. I’m also interested by ‘as one technically lapsed Catholic to another’: a interesting parapraxis. He only means, I think that Claudie is ‘technically lapsed’, but that’s not what he says. Or do others have different readings of that?

Though I’m scarcely well-disposed to the Merrick Boy coming out of that one, I really enjoy his subsequent conversation with his father. Further indications here that Patrick’s faith is more a matter of form than content (‘if you didn’t think that it mattered enough that we hared off to these outlandish places for a proper Mass, I’d probably have packed the whole thing in by now’) though I accept that the content/form division is probably not one he’d recognise: still, the indication that if his family were of the reform tendency he’d drift towards agnosticism is suggestive. Though in many ways this is a prickly conversation, I like the way Forest suggests affection--love, indeed--between father and son. It’s also bristly with fic possibility: anyone fancy writing the argument between Alan and Patrick from Alan’s point of view? Or perhaps Anthony Merrick reflecting on his own schooldays (‘You mean you were belted?’ speaks volumes, I think.) Patrick’s masterly distinction between being unhappy and just loathing the place is almost enough to make me like him again.


This is perhaps my favourite chapter in the novel, and one of my favourites in the series: Tim and Miranda, lolling in deck chairs on the staff terrace (chilly, in what must be late October, November?) and hanging out in the music room (at my school, definitely a place to get up to no good whatever).

I love the mention of Sordello--I read it for exactly the same reason as Tim does, and it is, actually, quite difficult, though nothing like as bad as Jane Carlyle or whoever it was would have it.

Again, that horror of poetry, and the reassurance that ‘it only has to rhyme and scan’. I adore Miranda getting Maiden Mother and Holy Son in the ‘right order’, but then getting needlessly embarrassed about ‘Israel’. Miranda really does sense Miss Keith’s will to exclude, I think, with her qualms about what she would think about Miranda helping to write a carol. It’s interesting that Tim seems to ascribe similar feelings to Ann Marlow (the source for this more likely to be auntly than from Ann’s sisters, one feels) and Jean Baker. Ann does have quite a sectarian view of religion, as we discover in Run Away Home, but I’d never registered anything of the sort from Jean.

Miranda’s appetite for the unlikely echoes the end of End of Term, at which point a few people mentioned that her comments had the flavour of a certain sort of Christian apologetics represented by C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, and there was a general sense of relief that Forest chose not to pursue a conversion narrative for Miranda. Here, indeed, it turns out very like the reverse. I’ll leave commentary on the story about Miranda’s aunt to the general discussion, except to say this has been your regularly scheduled &c. And also, Tim’s rowdy Scottish forebears. (I have to say I always imagine--and write--Miss Keith as actually Scottish, and am abashed to discover that it’s her grandfather who was.)

And with Nicola’s realisation of Tim and Miranda’s united unsinkability, we close for this week.


Have at it!

Comments

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I think I assumed that the lapsed bit was Patrick's assumption of what the current Church thinking would be - that as he didn't subscribe to their new forms of workship, they would deem him lapsed even though he followed what he thinks of the right way. But I don't know much about Catholicism so this is perhaps way off base.

I also like Ann with Ginty, especially her no-nonsense approach to getting Ginty off the wall and back with her. I'm torn between whether it is that Ann has practice with recalcitrant children now that she is a prefect and deals better, or whether it might reflect a more long-term history of being able to cope with Ginty more than Ann.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Patrick is setting up his own judgement in opposition to the Holy Mother Church's regarding what is a proper communion service (not the school ones; only the ones in Latin), which I assume contributes to his perception of himself as "lapsed" in the eyes of the Church.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I thought it was an odd word for him to use of himself, even allowing for irony, given that the phrase tends have a very strong connotation of someone with a cultural attachment to the Catholic Church but who's neglected to practise their faith. But, 'technically' does suggest that he's perhaps speaking from the viewpoint of the post-Vatican II Church, and Claudie and he have sort of 'lapsed' in different directions out of that.

[nnozomi.livejournal.com]

I'm glad there wasn't actually a nasty accident, and thank you for the fascinating commentary.

I'm with slemslemspike (not sure I've reduplicated correctly?) on Patrick's use of "technically lapsed"--that he counts as lapsed on account of not following the new Vatican II rules correctly. I'm not sure whether he means that Claudie is doing likewise or that she's lapsed in other senses (bed and breakfast?).

My reading of two of Patrick's comments here is slightly different from yours, I think, although I'm in two minds over both. The "or if it's paid for" thing suggests, to me, that he feels sex should involve either a strong emotional bond or no emotional relationship at all--no hookups, one-night stands or whatever his idiolect would have called them. Either you're doing it as part of a serious relationship, or it's a straightforward business proposition. (The morality behind this goes beyond my analytical abilities.)
I can never decide, either, about his saying to his father "If you didn't think it mattered so much that we...I'd probably have packed the whole thing in." The reading I like, although I'm not sure it's accurate, is not "I don't really care" but "I have faith in your judgment about what is important." This implies that his Catholic faith is not, or not entirely, self-propelled, but I think that's not improbable for sixteen.

Like you, the conversation between Tim and Miranda is one of my favorite scenes in the whole series. (I've been requesting more Tim&Miranda for a Yuletide or two, and plan to keep on doing so!) One thing that interests me extremely (who says that again?) is Miranda's reference to Vatican II via her aunt, expressing it as a move closer to the original Judaism on the part of Christianity. Miranda herself seems to approve of this idea, though it's hard to tell. On reflection, this always blows my mind a little. The whole novel is about (among other things, okay) Patrick's struggles with Vatican II, presented from his family's end as unequivocally negative--and here's Miranda, generally a sympathetic character whose pronouncements the author is inclined to stand behind, casually subverting the whole idea.
It goes more or less unremarked on because Tim is neither knowledgeable about nor specially interested in modern Catholic theology, but imagine Nicola's confusion if she had been present and had to set Miranda's thesis against Patrick's take. Which is just what the reader does. We don't hear anything further along these lines in the rest of the book, but it fascinates me that Forest was willing to throw in this twist. (It also complicates the book beyond an anti-Vatican II tract, needless to say.)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Around 1970 or so when I was at uni, there was a male FOAF who was reported to be of the opinion that it was okay for men to buy sex but not to engage in carnal activity with women who might be assumed to at least fall within the potentially marriageable class. This was, however, regarded as pretty eccentric at the time. Though I can also report that the Student Health Centre was prescribing The Pill to women students*, but there was a pretty explicit assumption that this was because at that time, actually marrying would seriously affect their grants, and that they would be making an honest fellow of the chap in question after graduation.

*On a private prescription as it was then only available on the NHS in certain areas; this then had to be taken to the Boots in town as the Health Centre pharmacy didn't carry it. This would cause the young women involved to be objects of interest to the Boots staff.

Miranda/religion/her aunt the nun

[antfan.livejournal.com]

here's Miranda, generally a sympathetic character whose pronouncements the author is inclined to stand behind, casually subverting the whole idea

Yes, this bit blows my mind too, for just the reasons you say...I think most modern readers are going to go along with Miranda and her aunt, and yet this surely is the opposite of what Forest/Patrick believe. Does Forest really think the adolescent reader will read Miranda's comments and think to themselves "my goodness, but if Catholicism is now so changed that it can even be seen as compatible with Judaism (as well as the Protestantism) then clearly Vatican II has made a nonsense of everything". Yet presumably that would be Forest's own take. Very peculiar.

By the way, I think the nun aunt may actually be based on a real person - there was a nun Forest corresponded with and fell out with precisely because they disagreed over whether one should conform over Vatican II. I can't actually remembered if she was a convert from Judaism or not (it's in Celebrating Antonia Forest) - will try and check.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Ann does have quite a sectarian view of religion, as we discover in Run Away Home,

If anyone is demonstrating sectarianism in this book, it's Patrick with his use of "Protestant" as a opprobrious epithet in conjunction with "dim" to describe the post-Vatican II mass.

Ann's behaviour in RAH is hardly sectarian; she merely suggests that if Nicola is truly interested in Catholicism, rather than its trappings as displayed in the Merrick chapel, she should go to the updated one. And after what happens to her bicycle after Peter borrows in TTA, I don't blame her for not wanting to lend it to anyone, any more than Ginty is allowed to lend Catkin to Lawrie.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Well, I certainly wasn't saying that Patrick isn't sectarian: I think his sectarianism more or less goes without saying.

I would certainly support Ann's right not to lend her bicycle to anyone after Thuggery, regardless of the reason, but I think there is a suggestion of disapproval of the traditional rite over and above her suspicion of Nicola's motives (unexpectedly, because I don't think we've seen anything of the like before from Ann.) But I think there'll be a lively discussion of Ann's character in RAH when the time comes anyway!

Tim's choice of poetry

[(Anonymous)]

I liked them, on the whole, but I was amused that a crowd of 14-year old girls could discuss Eddi of 'manhood end' without giggles, even if it was Kipling. Of course slang might well have changed a lot in the meantime!

Re: Tim's choice of poetry

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Especially with Lawrie doing it in a Dad's Army voice! (If some of them are smuggling bodice-rippers while Nicola's solemnly absorbing Mary Renault, I can imagine that 'manhood' is one that they've all come across by UIVA..)

Miss Keith/Changegear

[(Anonymous)]

(sorry, forgot to sign previously) - res23

I thought Miss Keith handled the Changegear row terribly, and that Nick and Miranda were unfairly treated. They can't have known how many shopping party rules they were breaking (or at least not how serious it was), surely, since it didn't really cross their minds as an issue when they were buying them. (That they possibly shouldn't have bought them from that particular shop after the drugs/package possibility, yes, but not on grounds that they were buying forbidden clothes, or from an previously-unmentioned shop).

And that others then repeated this rule-breaking - or was it? If the day girls were allowed to do what they liked, were rules being broken? I suppose getting them to provide the clothes or actually make the purchases on behalf of boarders was against the rules.

I find the introduction of the day girls a bit strange, because they haven't played much of a role before (apart from Meg, perhaps) and didn't even seem to exist earlier, but maybe they get more common in the upper years as nearby families send girls there for exam prep or something. But it does feel like a modernisation/change to the tone of the stories, mixing the school/home environments more.

Re: Miss Keith/Changegear

[mheloyse.livejournal.com]

Miss Keith's attitude to the clothes buying, while absurdly strict, is consistent with Nicola's internal debate about wearing the coughing-bear dress without her mother's consent in RAH (and Ann's extreme disapprobation when she does so). The row doesn't seem surprising in a school where it's forbidden even to borrow a sister's hat (as shown in CT).

There seems to be a generally accepted rule, even outside the school environment, that children's clothing must be parentally vetted before it can be worn.

Re: Miss Keith/Changegear

[antfan.livejournal.com]

It all seems especially bonkers as Miranda and Nicola were allowed to go off shopping for Kempe unsupervised in EofT - so why now this sudden obsession with petty shopping party rules?

Re: Miss Keith/Changegear

[elktheory.livejournal.com]

Miss Keith's reaction to the whole Changear incident seems utterly bonkers to me. I agree that it shouldn't matter a whit who originally found the shop. And why on earth shouldn't the girls buy some cheap and cheerful clothes, if they have a mind to? Obviously, Miss Keith is responding to the complaints of the day girl's parents, but I don't at all understand why she holds Nicola and Miranda responsible for the actions of an entirely different group of girls. The coughing bear theory really doesn't hold water.

In fact, so many of the Kingscote rules seem bizarre and incomprehensible to me. It's forbidden to borrow another girl's hat, but it's perfectly acceptable to hand one down to a younger sister. Where's the logic in that? Borrowing money is forbidden. Why?

Even the ban on telephoning seems a bit odd, though that may be down to the era the book was written in.

Ginty and phone calls

[(Anonymous)]

I find it very hard to believe that they wouldn't have felt that the office would be extremely out-of-bounds, and that Ginty would have continued phoning more than once, without living in constant terror of being caught and presumably expelled - let alone the cost of it all. The confidential exam papers, pupils' records, cash, who knows what all else - surely the office must have been utterly forbidden, and I'm amazed that either of them even considered sneaking in to use the phone, let alone more than once. It's not the phone-use, but the being in the office!

res23

Re: Ginty and phone calls

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I haven't a copy to hand at the moment, so could you or someone else remind me how Ginty is getting into the office? Surely it isn't being regularly left unlocked?

Re: Ginty and phone calls

[(Anonymous)]

I agree absolutely. Everyone from Nicola onwards plays down or ignores the seriousness of going into the office. It always seemed to me that it wasn't just Miss Keith who was deranged, but that the author was backing her up. The effect of playing down the trespassing into the office aspect of the crime, and the theft aspect, whilst overemphasising the seriousness of phoning a boy is to make Nicola's punishment seem disproportionate, which it actually isn't. This serves to emphasise the coughing bear philosophy, which seems to be that even tiny sins have dreadful consequences. Does anyone understand what game Forest is playing with us and why? It has always baffled me.
Mrs Kent

Tim & Miranda

[buntyandjinx.livejournal.com]

Gosh, I find this chapter the dullest in the novel. I find the whole carol service, in fact, a distinct damp squib - nothing about it appeals and I don't really see (but very willing to be illuminated) what it add to the story. Possibly, like Miss Keith, I feel anything after the Minster to be a let-down.

Re: Tim & Miranda

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It feels a bit generic school story to me - autumn term, must have a carol service. I think that some of the stuff Forest does with it is interesting, like Tim and Miranda, but I can't find the event of any particular note.

Re: Tim & Miranda

[elktheory.livejournal.com]

I like the scene of verse writing. And I love the detail of Nicola capitulating about singing the solo because for the first time ever "she found herself up against Miranda and Tim united, and she knew she couldn't win."

I know that some people here aren't fond of Tim but I adore her. And I think she is an important character to the books, providing a subversive element that the more strait-laced characters can't give us. I like the way she throws herself into producing the form's participation in the carol service. If Kingscote were better at recognizing and channeling talents, Tim would have a much better time at school. But the teachers (and of course Miss Keith herself) clearly have no idea what to do with someone like Tim.

Re: Tim & Miranda

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I like the religious discussion too, and especially in that it reveals a lot more about Miranda and her background. That Tim is an outright atheist is no surprise, but what becomes very clear I think is that Miranda is fairly distant from her own official faith - when Tim says "what's special about it [being a Jew]" - Miranda replies "My grandfather did tell me once." It comes across fairly clearly that her family are pretty much assimilated, that for her mother the main aspect of Jewish identity is Zionism (which Miranda is also fairly distant from) and that her father tends to put personal relationships ahead of any kind of faith/"tribal" (to use Miranda's word) considerations.

It interests me because imagining Miranda's future, I think she could go in so many different directions. Given her dodgy relationship with her mother, I can't imagine her getting into Zionism, but if she does live in London and work with her dad, she might well become more involved with the Jewish community again and develop much more of an interest in the religion. Then again, given that her dad is the parent she values most, and that he has even been prepared to accept a Catholic nun, she could abandon the faith altogether and even marry out.

I also find it an insight into AF in that I rather assume that AF is using her own background to a degree (although not the Zionist mother) with the Reform background that never took root - though, of course, it is always dangerous to draw parallels between AF and her characters.

a ‘demented female who walked around with skinned rabbits in her handbag’

[fengirl88.livejournal.com]

I recognized this one instantly and with a shudder - it's Repulsion (1965, directed by Roman Polanski), the demented female is Catherine Deneuve, and the rabbit incident made a lasting impression.

Re: a ‘demented female who walked around with skinned rabbits in her handbag’

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Surely it was an 18 X-certificate at the relevant date? Tut, tut,Claudie.

Patrick and the bar

[liadnan]

The bar in general, and Lincoln's Inn in particular, has always been full of the dysfunctional, the hopelessly romantic, the awkward squad and so forth. Says the member of Lincoln's Inn practising from chambers there. Incidentally the bar has always had a surprisingly large number of Catholics - historically there were reasons for this - and they definitely tend to the trad.

I can see Patrick fitting in very easily, even now and certainly then. Which isn't the same as saying he would be a massive success.

Anyway, for those of us in another small fandom, it does open up the possibility of Julia Larwood and Desmond Ragwort encountering Serena's golden-eyed new pupil at 62 New Square. The dating even works reasonably well.

Re: Patrick and the bar

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

Anyway, for those of us in another small fandom, it does open up the possibility of Julia Larwood and Desmond Ragwort encountering Serena's golden-eyed new pupil at 62 New Square.

Oh my, that would be brilliant.

Ginty's Isolation

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Forest often suggests that Ginty's emotions are less than genuine

I actually find Ginty's withdrawal from school life rather at odds with the "chameleon-like", charming, shallow characterisation of her. Rather than shallow, her feelings for Monica and Patrick seen to be sufficiently deep to cut her off from activities, like teams, that have previously meant a lot to her, and to disenchant her with her other friends.

It doesn't seem to be about acting a part, either - there's no inviting an audience, or playing a melodrama. It's not Unity Logan sentimentality. To me, it seems the kind of behaviour of someone who is genuinely depressed. Combined with her intense neediness towards Patrick (those attempts to pump Nicola for information about every interaction really make me wince) I feel both uncomfortable, and a measure of sympathy for her for the first time in the series.

I also find the contrast with Jan interesting. We were constantly told about Jan's aloofness, but in fact, Jan always seemed heavily involved in school life - teams, "plays tennis seriously", looks out for Nicola, soloist, she's even a conscientious librarian. Her supposed withdrawal is tacitly approved i think, yet there's little evidence of it - Ginty is the only character who seems to genuinely withdraw from school life and I feel she is implicitly condemned for it.

I find it easy not to like Ginty in the preceding books, but I realise I'm very uncomfortable with the way the whole Patrick/Ginty/Nicola storyline plays out in Attic Term and subsequently Run Away Home. As people said in an earlier thread, there's something very submissive about Ginty and Nicola - Ginty so desperately dependent, Nicola waiting for the scales to fall from her true one's eyes like some latter day Fanny Price, and Patrick pretending not to see what's going on, but knowing perfectly well I think, and hurting both sisters, while also having a bit of diversion with Claudie. Albeit Forest liked exploring uncomfortable emotions, it somehow erodes my respect for all three characters (well, I feel an element of pity for Ginty, but I find her trajectory not at all pleasant reading).

Re: Ginty's Isolation

[(Anonymous)]

I think Ginty uses her isolation to identify with Patrick, who is also an outsider at his school. I'm not sure whether the isolation is deliberate on Ginty's behalf or whether, having found herself isolated, she then draws comfort from resembling Patrick.

Normally she'd be in Monica-mode at school (being 'in' things) but without Monica, she's forced to stay in Patrick-mode (as she can at least have some verbal contact with him) and her aloofness is part of that character.

MHeloyse

Mr Merrick/schools

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I know this is very late in the day, but I wondered if anybody else shared my irritation with Mr Merrick and especially his remark "all schools, except the very best and the most abysmal, are much of a muchness". Really? I suppose that's why he sent Patrick to prep school, then. And what exactly does he know about most schools?

And for once my sympathies are completely with Patrick in not wanting to be a standard bearer within the hostile environment of a Catholic school - and why should he, he's old enough to leave school anyway so why does it matter if he's at a Catholic institution or not - presumably Mr Merrick wouldn't object to him going to a non-Catholic university?

Re: Mr Merrick/schools

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, he comes over as unusually callous. He seems to have chosen Patrick's schools for form's sake and because it was (Merrick) custom and now he can't readjust to the fact that it is unreasonable to send your child to a totally hostile environment and expect him to thrive on the conflict. He accepts Patrick's assurance that he's not unhappy he just loathes the place far too readily.
Mrs Kent