trennels | How good is Antonia Forest?

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How good is Antonia Forest?

There’s been a lot of discussion on the girlsown mailing list recently about Marie Dobson and how she is bullied, and Nicola’s character in relation to this. And it’s recently segued into a discussion of how good Antonia Forest is, compared to all authors, not just school story ones. Obviously this is a community of fans, so I’m not really expecting anyone to pop up here and start explaining why they don’t really like Forest (though it’s fine if anyone wants to!). But I thought it might be interesting, since

trennels has been quite quiet lately, to ask here what people particularly enjoy about her – style, characterisation, plot, description, drama? – and examples of that - and indeed what you don't like.

For me she has been a favourite writer since I first encountered her books as a child. Some of her books I wasn’t able to find until I was an adult anyway, and I found them just as gripping. I think her biggest strengths are in her style, and the depth of her characterisation of a wide range of people. Almost no one is unambiguously good or bad in her books, and I’m able to understand and get involved with characters I don’t necessarily like as people, but find fascinating nonetheless. Even someone like Rowan, who is mainly and effectively held up as an admirable person, can and does hold grudges, make mistakes and mishandle people. I think one of Forest’s strengths is her ability – despite plainly having strong views on many things – not necessarily to have her favourite characters share her beliefs, or give one the sense that the world she’s created is being forced into shape to vindicate them. She does I think fail at this in her handling of Ann in Run Away Home and in the accounts given of the post-Conciliar Catholic church particularly in Attic Term – though to the extent that the latter come from Patrick, I think they are in character. Nicola shares some of her enthusiasms – for the Navy, Nelson, and Hornblower for example – but that works very differently.

I don’t rate all the books equally highly, but even those which I consider lesser, such as Thuggery Affair have some scenes I’d be very reluctant to lose, like the canoe trip at the beginning. Though I think Thuggery Affair has too much plot, and that plotting is not one of her strengths. Instead, she’s good at themes, like death and betrayal in Falconer’s Lure and Peter’s Room. In fact I wonder if the school/family story genre suits her partly because it is rather episodic, and I think her best books (Cricket Term, End of Term, Falconer’s Lure) are episodic. There is drama, there are crises, but nothing is fully resolved and other bits of life are always going on around the big moments.

One other aspect which came up on girlsown was whether school stories as a genre are generally not that good when compared to other children’s or adult literature. Thinking about other books than Forest’s with a strong school aspect which I would put on any list of good books, as opposed perhaps to my favourite school stories (not that I am any good at lists, they change every time I make them), I’ve come up with the following on a first think; books that have a strong shape and feel in my mind still, even though I may not have read them for many years:

Frost in May, Antonia White
Charlotte Sometimes, Penelope Farmer
Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild
Swarm in May, William Mayne
Nightwatch Winter, Jenny Overton

(ETA: Am temporarily deleting my lj as I need not to be distracted at the moment; I will be back.)

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I've only read a few of the Forest books. They are extremely hard to find in my part of southern California, and far too expensive. Obviously people who have them hang onto them, because used copies cost a fortune!

But having only read a few, I thoroughly agree with your assessment of the complexity of her characters, the beautiful prose--the moments of humor, and drama.

Well, I feel slightly nervous about mentioning them, but I do think that the Harry Potter books have clearly demonstrated the ongoing appeal of the school story, to both children and adults. I don't think they're the greatest books ever written, but they're not bad. And the school genre does give them that clear sense of progression.

But for me, as I think you've explained, Forest's genius is in her characterisations. Even Nicola is shown quite clearly with faults and all, and every character is more or less grey. And you can feel sympathetic at moments for even the least likeable characters and contemptuous towards the most likeable. People change. People have good and bad points. People respond differently in different situations. AF's characters do all these things in a way that makes them completely, immediately real. And that's a rare thing. Especially in a school story.

I could rattle on at length about AF's characterisation and dialogue - and her brilliance at negotiating between what someone says to another person, and what she says to herself, and the things she is afraid even to say to herself - and her talent at conveying setting unobtrusively, whether it's a boarding school or Elizabethan Shoreditch, but, speaking absolutely primitively as someone who will happily pick up an AF at almost any time and read it with pure pleasure - what touches me most closely about all her novels is (how shall I put this?) how morally sensitive all her important characters are, reading and judging even their own most private behaviour, sometimes very unflinchingly. I'm thinking of Patrick keeping vigil for Peter, Giles and Surfrider, or Nicholas, guilty at his relief that Hamnet Shakespeare is not going to displace him in Will's affections, striking his hand off a wall, so that 'it hurt, but not enough.'

I also like the way in which, without being in any way an overtly emotional writer, AF writes terribly well about people's violent, private, emotional responses to the small change of daily interaction with other people, and how unfamiliar and mysterious even your own family members can be. If her characters have anything in common, it's their inability to be indifferent. (I say this as someone who has often been told 'You shouldn't read so much into things!') I like the darker elements of her characterisation - I'm thinking particularly of Peter and his internal horrors at what he sees as his own cowardice. And of course AF's intelligence, her broad cultural range, the reciprocal intelligence she expects from the reader.

I tried to work through the AF discussion on Girlsown but unfortunately it all seemed to wander off into metadiscussion about the attitudes of the list at large, which I'm afraid doesn't interest me much. Does it get back onto Marie Dobson later?

For me, what lifts AF's books above the usual run is her use of language. Yes, she has a rather free hand with the italics - I always think this is probably something to do with having known exactly where her speakers put the stress, and wanting her readers to know too - and yes, there are failures, like the slang in The Thuggery Affair - but in general, I think, she seldom puts a foot wrong. In particular I think of the list of hounds' names in Peter's Room - that gorgeous, rounded-pebbles-through-the-fingers run of beautiful words for the sake of it.

I mostly read fantasy when I'm not reading childrens' books, and I've noticed that over recent years there seems to have been a swing towards lusher use of language, with writers like Jacqueline Carey and Sarah Monette. (Not that I can see AF writing about anguissettes or tortured gay wizards, though, my God, I'd read it if she had) One couldn't call AF's writing lush, but, as someone usefully said on the Girlsown discussion, one couldn't call it spare, either, and spare seems to be what's been admired for some years now.

Possibly there will be a swing of the pendulum in childrens' books also? Of course one of the main duties of childrens' books is to be comprehensible by children, but there's also a place, I think, for instilling a love of language.

I completely agree about the list of names - that's one of my favourite bits to read aloud. Almost like poetry.

The discussion did become a general one about bullying, really, though there were a couple of interesting contributions about Marie and Nicola's attitude to her.

I agree, I love her style of writing. The list of the hounds is gorgeous - and that long passage when Nicola follows the three white hounds. And sometimes just single sentences and phrases, things like 'and Val was scuttling still' at the end of the cricket match have stuck in my mind since I first read them. Some of her sentences make me happy in the same way that some of Jane Austen's do, for their rhythm and pace and placing. (I was going to go and get the books and start picking favourite passages when I wrote this post but sanity prevailed.)

Oh, and the dialogue is often brilliant too. Particularly catching the way everyone is slightly different depending on who they're talking to. Some especially so of course, like Ginty, but also the differences between the way Nicola talks to Miranda or Tim or Lawrie. And the group scenes, like the fight over Nicola and Lawrie in End of Term or the Marie Dobson letter writing.

Yes - I can only think of one group conversation in AF when I've been confused about who was talking, and that was the scene at the beginning of Cricket Term with Karen and all the Dodds in the kitchen talking to Nicola. (I don't think it helped that I hadn't read the holiday books at that point and was a bit unclear on who the Dodds were and why)

Though it includes Fob's wonderful put-down "'Goodbye', said Fob decidedly, and chalked in a bright blue sun.'" (Or something like that - quoted from memory.) I had no idea who they all were the first time I read it either, and found that whole section a bit confusing, though fascinating. In fact it was years before I read Ready-Made Family and understood things like Karen and Nicola's response to Chas looking up 'brother'.

Memorable stories with school settings:
Olivia by 'Olivia' (Dorothy Bussy)

Regiment of Women by Clemence Dane
These are very much not children's books - I first read Olivia when I was about 13 and was both gripped and completely baffled by it.
There is a Naomi Jacob mystery set in a girls school called Radclyffe Hall, but I can't remember the exact title, and don't recall it as being that much, anyway.

Oh yes. And Claudine a l'ecole. And an Australian one I can't remember title or author for.

Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom

Thank you! It was annoying me that I couldn't remember - and I thought of Richardson and looked in the right place on my shelves, and there was nothing there. I remember enjoying it.

"Cat among the Pigeons", Agatha Christie.

I rather saw Nightwatch Winter - and, even more so, Creed Country - as reading a little too much like very good quality AF fanfic.

Tell England is certainly a memorable school story, though I'd hesitate to call it good. Goodbye Mr Chips is good, and has me in floods each time.

For me AF stands out as having this fully realised world with texture and layer and depth - including, as I've mentioned before, the idea that characters actually read and relate to literary characters the way I read and relate to literary characters - including them. And the fact that characters are nuanced, and not always good, or right, or if good, not right and vice versa, and mistakes continue to have consequences several books down the line, and the teachers are often petty and frequently contrary because people are like that..

I know what you mean about Overton, but for me there is something about Nightwatch Winter in particular which is a bit more than that. She gets her own atmosphere - a very chilly one, admittedly. And the landscape is much more of a presence than it ever is in Forest. But then there is excellent AF fanfic which also has its own distinctive stamp.

I have never read Goodbye Mr Chips, though one day I will.

And yes absolutely about the way they relate to literary characters. I love that Hornblower and Lord Peter and the others are residents of Nicola's mind, just as they are for me - and so is she of course. That glorious bit in Cricket Term when she invokes Mr Talboy (?Tallboy) as she throws the ball. I'm sure Nicola's deep pleasure in reading (the afterglow of a good read after she's finished Mask of Apollo), and that she read books I already liked and some I discovered I liked because she read them, was a big part of my initial love of Cricket Term. The cricket helped too of course. Forest, Sayers, Wodehouse, and England, Their England - are there any better literary cricket matches? Or descriptions of any sport?

The thing I liked about Nightwatch Winter - the two things I liked, actually - were that the rescue didn't, in fact, work - that sort of jab-in-the-ribs realism really resonated, and also that the play was not by any means an unqualified success, but a "good amateur" effort. I always felt that given my experiences with school plays even good school actresses were frankly pretty bad, so while I could believe in Lawrie I certainly couldn't believe in her supporting players to the extent I was supposed to. But probably most people of school age didn't get taken to as much live professional theatre as I did, so didn't judge by the same standards.

I think the quality of the acting might depend to a large extent on rehearsal times. At a boarding school with thrice weekly rehearsals, there's plenty of time to get it right - it's much more common at day schools to get the impression that another month's rehearsal might have made it good. Certainly I've seen at least two school performances which bore comparison with average professional plays.

Thanks for the heads-up about the discussion on Girls' Own: I joined the group and spent all yesterday evening, while I was supposed to be marking papers, reading about Antonia Forest. It turned out that one of the key participants was somebody I used to know at Berkeley and I got to reconnect with her off-list; so altogether it was a very enjoyable evening.

It's telling that when we want to find comparanda for AF, we all tend to turn to adult authors. Jane Austen was the favorite on GO, and I too have often explained AF to people by saying "She is to the school story what Jane Austen is to the romance novel." Even thinking of school stories that we'd put on a general list of good books, you come up with *Frost in May* and *The Getting of Wisdom* which are adult books about schools, not children's books. To them I would add Rosemary Manning's *The Chinese Garden,* a very eccentric book about an eccentric school but well worth reading.

A few other random comments. On GO, some of the anti-Forestians commented that her characters were really quite unsympathetic and self-absorbed. It's probably true and it's just what I like about them. I think that Forest's books always challenged me to think about judgements--of character, of actions, of rules. I felt that in them when I was an adolescent and I can still sense it now. They do it constantly and subtly. Unlike lesser books, that make a huge point out of posing one of these questions, Forest creates a whole world in which value systems are always colliding. Nicola has a very strong system, and one not without problems; part of her apparent self-absorption is the way she clings to her values and finds it hard to see beyond them.

I always identified most strongly with Miranda, who's one of the other more unsympathetic and self-absorbed of AF's characters. I wonder why I did. Did anybody actually identify with, say, Lawrie or Tim or Ginty, all of whom I find fascinating but unidentifiable?

Here's a question I was thinking about: Over the course of the books, does Nicola grow and learn? Or, by Run Away Home, is she essentially just a somewhat older version of the Nicola from Autumn Term? My feeling is that she grows less than one would expect, perhaps because this is not really a series about "development". The standard expectation of chidren's literature is that the protagonist will really learn something, will grow emotionally, over the course of the book(s).

On the series aspect, somebody asked (perhaps on GO) why AF was not more popular. One reason I suggest is the inconsistancy of her books--not good vs. bad, but just too varied from one another. The school stories are made to hang together as a group (although not all have the same texture, nor are they equally good) but the others are such genre experiments: the Adventure Tale; the Pony/Hawk story; the Edgy Youth story; the Family Problem story. Personally I love the way Forest does this, using the same characters to perform in a variety of genres. But it doesn't build an audience. Popular series writers (most obviously JKR) have all their books carry a fairly consistant story type and a consistant narrative voice. AF completely fails to do that.

In terms of plotting--actually AF does a plot quite well in *The Marlows and the Traitor,* a book I like a lot and that rarely gets discussed here. The plot is not complicated but it's quite compelling and well sustained. Of course, what makes it an enduring story is the characterization. This is an interesting book because two adults--Foley and Anquetil--play rather large roles and are carefully characterized. Especially Foley, who bears comparison to Lois as a strong, problematic character whom Nicola cannot, will not, understand.

And yes, besides the brilliant characterization she's just a great writer. Rereading *The Marlows and the Traitor* recently, I had to sigh at the thought that somebody could write a children's adventure tale THIS WELL.

I identify with Tim: quirky, out of step with the mainstream, morally doubtful. I find her funny & engaging & even when she loses her temper very, very witty. I like Miranda too, though not as much.

Characterisation is definitely Forest's strong suite but I also like the historical content she inserts. I might never have heard of Hakylute if not for her & Nick.

Your question about Nicola chaimed with something I was thinking last night, having just re-read The Player's Boy and The Players and the Rebels (because I'd just read James Shapiro's 1599 and kept remembering AF's version of the Essex rebellion and just how good this pair of novels is). I don't think that either Nicola or Nicholas, her Elizabethan doppelganger, really alter at all, but given that both are extremely talented, charismatic, brave, loyal, beautiful, clever, sensitive (but stoical), honourable and mature beyond their years, where would or could an alteration take place, without it being a deterioration?

Maybe I'm being obtuse here (and people, including me, have posted before about sneaking moments of fellow-feeling with Lois Sanger and Marie Dobson), but I genuinely can't see that in the world of the Marlow novels, Nicholas or Nicola are presented as having any more to learn, really. I don't think, for instance, that we're supposed to blame Nicholas for not going home to Trennels, or even thinking to let them know he isn't dead for seven years... Okay, Nicholas is in an uncomfortable position when he returns to Trennels to find Geoffrey away, Kate's father about to move in, and a host of heirs born since his departure, but would it really be so hard to leave a note saying 'Don't try to find me, but I'm alive - sorry for letting you think you'd been responsible for my suicide?'

I admit to moments of annoyance with AF's fascination with (and arguably, lack of distance from?) her Nicks. Humfrey more or less says that the character of Shakespeare's Viola (whom N says is the best of all Sh's girls) is based Nicholas, lost but gallant and eternally lovable, and I found myself growling slightly at the moment towards the end of PatR, when Nicholas ends up at Essex's trial for treason, mistaken for the clerk Barnabas, and ends up watching the unfortunate Barnabas trying to persuade the guards to let him inside. We are told 'Barnabas was not, and never would be, one for whom doors are opened.' Whereas both Nicks manifestly are.

I wonder whether part of the reason why AF is not more popular is precisely this refusal to write about flawed, ordinary, dishonest, untalented protagonists? Obviously there are moments of narrative given to Marie Dobson, Peter Marlow, Lois Sanger, even Humfrey Danvers, but they aren't her primary focus. One can feel abashed at times by the Nicks. Also, her intense focus on honour is out of step with a contemporary tendency to let people endlessly off the hook...? I don't know any children of the age-range AF wrote for who are now reading her novels, but I'd be very interested to hear what they made of her characters' internalised codes of good behaviour.

I really agree with you about the two Nicks being the same character –also earlier point about the way that the characters have moral conversations/enquiries in their own heads, and at different levels of their characters, which you describe so well. And I immediately thought of two bits that illustrate both your points:

1) At the end of Players and the Rebels when Nick realises he doesn’t want Bess and Humfrey to get together, and that the reason is because then he won’t be first with either - and concludes he really dislikes himself for feeling this.
2) At the end of Cricket Term, when Nicola realises she could have borne Meg winning the Prosser – it is Lawrie winning it she minds (even though in rational terms she should be pleased) and again dislikes herself.

I think both are wonderful writing, with the characters admitting to rather despicable semi-conscious feelings which they then respond to, but the reader (well me anyway) admires their humanity and honesty in feeling this way (and who doesn’t have such feelings after all?) and also still believes these are essentially “good” characters because they dislike this aspect of themselves. Brilliant! Part of the subtlety/sophistication of AF’s writing – where would you find such gems in another author?

I don’t agree with you about Nicola never changing though. I think the early Nicola –naïve and impulsive - is completely transformed later on – and I’ve always thought it rather unlikely she would change so much in eighteen months! I could probably drone on about this for ages – but look how in the early books Tim and Lawrie can always push her buttons. Then Nicola dramatically rides off and leaves Lawrie in the street in RMF, and after that she always maintains some distance from her. In Cricket Term she has a certain adult detachement towards her Caliban obsession, and as for Tim – Nicola “takes her as she finds her”. Its all much more adult.

Just reread your post and had to respond to this bit too:

- I wonder whether part of the reason why AF is not more popular is precisely this refusal to write about flawed, ordinary, dishonest, untalented protagonists? Obviously there are moments of narrative given to Marie Dobson, Peter Marlow, Lois Sanger, even Humfrey Danvers, but they aren't her primary focus. One can feel abashed at times by the Nicks. Also, her intense focus on honour is out of step with a contemporary tendency to let people endlessly off the hook...? I don't know any children of the age-range AF wrote for who are now reading her novels, but I'd be very interested to hear what they made of her characters' internalised codes of good behaviour. -

Have to say I immedately thought of Harry Potter here, and he ain't "flawed, ordinary, dishonest, untalented" that I can see! In fact the HP characters always seem to me Enid Blytonesque in their character types and general moral blandness! And JKR has a very black and white moral framework. I don't think the current crop of boy spies - Alex Rider et al- are any less brave, loyal, intelligent, resourceful blah blah than HP himself. I really don't think its Nicks heroic qualities that put modern kids off - hard to tell of course when they're can't get hold of them anyway.

OK, I will give you that Harry Potter isn't ordinary or untalented, but I think that arguments could certainly made for him being both flawed and dishonest - using the Half-Blood Prince's book stands out, for me, as a classic example of the latter.

I think the point is that whilst his behaviour - or Hermione's free hand with curses, or the way everyone persistently underestimates Neville - might look anywhere from 'a bit dodgy' to 'morally culpable' to the reader, JKR doesn't particularly examine it or give it worked-out, reverberating-down-the-books consequences to the extent that AF would.

I agree entirely about the characterisation - one of the beauties of AF is the huge number of perfectly formed characters. For example, the 8 Marlow siblings - all entirely different people with but all fully formed, not caricatures. Compare "Seven Sisters at Queen Anne's" (if anyone on here's read it!) where the seven are mostly disatinguished by a single characteristic and are otherwise indistinguishable. Even the minor characters (Elaine Rees, Sandra Grigson, Miss Latimer, the hunt Master, Lecky, etc.) are all possible to identify with and feel we know them.

The other feature IMO which is very different from other children's books, at least, is the multiple plot lines. Take Cricket Term - the main plot is obviously the cricket; subplot the play. Most authors would leave it at that, with no other plots except those directly relevant to the cricket or play. But we have Ginty and her swimming, we've got the log about Nicholas, we've got Nicola leaving school and her form prize, Jan and Miranda, and Marie Dobson. Compare Tennis Term at Trebizon - there's Rebecca playing tennis, and the hoaxes and their impact on Rebecca playing tennis, with the Pippa/Annie subplot. Much less complicated, much less to get out of a re-read, let alone several re-reads.

maybe we could start a new discussion on AF's plots? Are there multiple strands, like you said, or episodic, maybe a weakness, like other people have suggested?

Well, why don't you start one?

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How good is Antonia Forest?

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Harry Potter

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