Readthrough: Autumn Term: Chapters 1-5

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I'm just going to plunge in straight away with some suggestions for things you might like to discuss, but do feel free to raise topics and questions in the comments.  If you don't have an LJ and you're commenting anonymously, please sign your comments.



The economy with which Forest draws her characters in the first few paragraphs is really remarkable, I think: we learn about Nicola's inquisitive restlessness, Lawrie's relative timidity ('stuck to chicken and ice-cream' on their restaurant lunches), Karen's slightly uncertain authority, Rowan's sarcasm, and (parenthetically) Ginty's 'unreliability'. We even get a sketch of Giles, who isn't going to show up again for a good few chapters. Ann is less vividly present, and Peter has to wait for the conversation with Tim to get a mention. But although there is a fair amount of info-dump in these opening pages, it's really rather suavely done as part of Nicola's twitchy internal monologue. I'm immediately alert to how the characters might fulfil or disappoint these initial glimpses.

The idea of Tim apparently emerged from a correspondence in which Forest's interlocutor suggested that it would be fun to have a schoolgirl related to an authority figure who, instead of being shy about it, is determined to exploit it for all she's worth. But the privilege (and the disadvantages) of having illustrious relative at school is a serious theme in the novel. Our sympathetic and pov characters are the privileged ones, but we get glimpses of how sheerly aggravating Marlow (and other) privilege might be to those who do not enjoy it.

Ambition and showing off: ambition is mandatory, talking about it is firmly discouraged--the authorial voice as well as Nicola squashes Lawrie's confessions of the twins' fantasies of success to an outsider. I find this a really interesting analogue to the way in which Forest outlines characters with highly developed inner lives who nonetheless vigorously suppress manifestations of emotion, either positive or negative. Of course 1940s codes of English middle-class behaviour demand such suppression, but Forest is I think notable in her deep interest in complex emotion and her characters' parallel investment in not letting it show.

Crushes and queerness: Lawrie's various pashes--on Margaret to start with, then on Lois, are more prominent than I remember. Elsewhere, sympathetic characters express vigorous disapproval of crushes as soppy, but there is I think a general sympathy with same-sex attachments in the series as a whole. (Do share your sexuality headcanon for Forest characters!)

The contrast between Lawrie and Nicola, symbolised by the gifts of watch and knife respectively.





Staff-pupil interactions: Miss Cromwell's frank disapproval of prefects and Karen's confusion. The staff are very engagingly flawed in Forest's novels, I think--sometimes to the point of outright pottiness; Miss Keith being no exception.

Rowan's suavity: her treating Nicola to a raspberryade in a crisis situation offers a parallel to Giles, later on. Rowan's one for the competence kinksters among us, I think--how do you feel about her?

Ginty not being 'the tomboy of the Remove': Forest's consistent commentary on the clichés of school stories.

The taboo on crying is, of course, simply part of childhood and adolescence, but am I alone in feeling Forest lays very particular stress on the ignominy of tears, and interestingly, particular emphasis on coping with the embarrassment of others weeping?

More views of the Marlows from outsiders' perspectives and how that's very interestingly constrained by limited (if variable and multiple) POV: Lois's unfriendliness to Rowan.

Nicola's photographs of Nelson and Giles's ship are rather adorable: as we see them at the moment, her crushes are deflected where Lawrie's are straightforward, it seems.





The ethics of trespass and pear-scrumping: what do you make of Nicola's scruples about Tim's apparent theft?

That segues with an almost word-associative flair into the arrival of Pomona. (Pause to appreciate ankaret's fic about the Marlow cousin who practised her pretty wiles on grownups. This should have a damn sight more attention, imnsho.)

Tim's wonderfully sophisticated hostility to artyness: 'Father's not at all artistic. Father paints.' 'My father and hers were at school together [...] One fagged for the other, or they blacked each other's eyes or something equally touching.' Tim Keith, 12 and a half going on 35. Plausible? More commentary on school-story clichés, we note, boys' ones this time. Tim's disgust at Pomona's dress and behaviour seems to feed into a very common aversion to 'progressive' thought and education in novels of the period, for children and adults alike: it's there in writers as different as C.S. Lewis and Mary Renault, for example.

In Tim's mention of an Anti-Pomona League there are the first hints of a--to me--very disturbing storyline about bullying, narrated almost exclusively (but not quite, which is what is rather chilling about it: it's not that Forest hasn't considered the victims' feelings, she just seems to dismiss them) from the point of view of the bullies.

The exam scene is beautifully atmospheric, I think: Forest catches examination panic wonderfully. Share your stories.

And that emotional repression again: the code of behaviour demands the suppression of disappointment, and later, we'll find, pleasure and elation too. It does raise questions about what the purpose of it all is. What the the tenor of life is like, if everyone is successfully quashing their feelings to a steady, self-possessed politesse?





There's some great stuff in this chapter about attachment to objects in childhood, whether it's Nicola's desire to have heirloom books, or the desk itself. I was fascinated aged 9 and am fascinated now (as a lecturer whose classes fill from the back, like buses, and who has to coax students towards me with repeated assurances that as a 5'2" bantamweight with no formal combat training, there's very little harm I can do them) that front-row visibility might be desirable to schoolchildren.

The evolution of the Tim/Nick/Lawrie triad, and Nicola's distrust of Tim's 'reliability as an ally'. Forest is fascinated by unreliable, disloyal, subversive, do-it-for-the-thrills-and-the-heck-of-it characters, I think, and she writes brilliant ones: Foley, Jukie, Patrick anyone?

Marie Dobson: how I'd love to read fic from her perspective. Anyone know any, or do I have to write it? What do people think of Marie?

The Delicate/Backward/Plain Stupid taxonomy delighted me on first reading and delights me now, and I really enjoy the underdog solidarity of Third Remove. But the educational philosophies of Kingscote are entirely baffling to me: would anyone care to make sense of them?





As I've said, the bullying of Pomona is disturbing to me as an adult, though as a child reader I accepted it quite readily. I feel a sense of Forest's complicity with her sympathetic characters, who behave really rather appallingly to a child who has done little else wrong than wear an odd frock and object under Marie's dubious tutelage to Tim's skulduggery in securing the desks, even as she is showing those characters behaving in distinctly unedifying ways. But perhaps other people feel sympathy is distributed differently?

Karen shows herself to be very indifferent in managing disorder, especially with the added embarrassment of her sisters involved. Effective command is an important theme in the Marlows books, and it's fascinating to see which characters have a gift for giving orders, and which can manipulate others. I'd really like to hear people's thoughts on that.



This has already been rather an epic post: so I think I'll leave it there. I'm sure there's much I've missed, so do feel free to suggest other topics for discussion in the comments. Looking forward to all your thoughts! Do feel free to link to other blog posts or fic that you think might be of interest, too.

Note: Comments contain spoilers for other books in the series.

Comments

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

So much comment. Wow. Amaze.

My own comments are going to be fairly sketchy, because there's so much to cover already, but if anyone wants to call me on any of it then I'll be happy to expand. I should mention that I'm a very new fan - I've only read four of the books so far - so my views are still very much in flux. Don't hold me to anything.

Nicola and Lawrie only going off to school at twelve: this would have been entirely usual before the First World War, say, but seems fairly eccentric after the Second. (Though there are other novels of a similar period where an upper-middle-class family similarly gets away with very limited schooling - Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton (1953), which might appeal to some of those who enjoy the Marlow family.)

Does Nicola's rescue of her knife seem faintly unlikely to anyone else? The train is presumably going at full speed when she pulls the cord - how far back would she have to have gone to find the knife? And through the tunnel as well? And even then, just spotting the thing wouldn't be terribly easy, given how much ground she'd have to cover.

When I read this first I was actually more interested in Tim than in Nicola and Lawrie. A very interesting character in her way. But my favourite remains Rowan - and not just because she reminds me of Ralph Lanyon. Only mostly.

Good catch with the anti-progressivism in the depiction of Pomona. As a child I remember being faintly baffled by the commentary on Eustace and his family at the beginning of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I wasn't quite old enough to understand the subtleties but I did get the sense that the author wouldn't have liked me or my family and that was... an odd feeling.

Were "sisters' rooms" a normal thing in girls' schools of the period? I haven't read as many girls' school stories as boys' ones, and I've never encountered the concept before. It seems unexpectedly civilised.

I want to say something about Lawrie's pashes but - having just flipped through these chapters to refresh my memory - I can't find the relevant bits. Will keep looking!

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

I think the emphasis on not showing emotions and the depiction of bullying are linked. Exposing your feelings does make you vulnerable to others who want to attack you in your 'weak spots' and Pomona does make things much worse for herself by stamping and crying. Pomona would have been bullied in any school, and it was entirely believable to me as a child, and now as an adult (and teacher). As adults we are horrified by how unfeeling the characters are towards Pomona but that's exactly what children are like. I think AF explores this later in the book with Marie after the guide expedition, and in End of Term when Nicola realises Tim doesn't like her, but those discussions are in the future!
I too was interested as a child in the way the main characters chose to sit at the front. I think Nicola is the sort of person who would like sitting at the front, but I find it odd in Tim.
I think the twins had been to day schools - they weren't entirely uneducated up to that point.
One thing that I never noticed as a child but did now - They pull the window down to throw the sweet paper bag out. Really? Did well brought up girls just throw litter out of trains? wouldn't they have found a bin? I know it's partly a plot device to get the window open so the knife can fall out, but considering how horrified Nicola is later by the pear stealing, I would have thought she would have minded Tim throwing rubbish.
The pear stealing episode certainly dates the book. No modern child would consider picking fruit as stealing; and if they did pick fruit it would only be to throw it at another child - not to eat it! Or am I just getting too cynical?!

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

i'm not sure that AF dismisses the feelings of Pomona or Marie, so much as that she conceals them, at least from the characters. I think it is a really interesting depiction of the way a group can treat an outlier, and not realise they are doing anything wrong. I do think it's clear to an adult reader, and I think I got that when I first read it at about the same age as the characters. Even here, though, I feel sorrier for Pomona (quite a lot, really) than for Marie, who is not a likeable character. (The one thing I find implausible is that she had been able to 'boss the Second' the previous year.)

Generally, I think the characters are brilliantly drawn from the start.

One thing that strikes me on this read is that there is no mention of rationing, which was still in force for lots of things when AF wrote it. A deliberate attempt not to date the book?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Marie is, I agree, dislikable to the extent that I sometimes use her as a touchstone for my own disreputable thoughts and behaviour. & yes! How did she lose the social traction that she had in the Second? (Fic, please!)

What interests me about the presentation of Marie is how the aesthetic immediately takes on an ethical dimension. Because of her aesthetic unappeal, unproblematically good things that she does (defending Pomona with a laudable don't be beastly to a new girl) are seen as irritatingly turgid, whereas more morally dubious things become outrageous, because Marie is yuk. Both she and Tim commit dubious fait accompli actions over the desk, but Marie's involves an element of invasion of privacy, and is thus creepier (though how private a desk is varies from school to school). Ideas of soiling and sullying are persistently attached to Marie, though, and make her not-very-heinous actions seem a deal worse than they are. I'm interested that novels which often present themselves as being very much about objective codes of ethics, honour even, have such a strong element of aesthetic value judgement. (Not just Forest, I think it's a general thing in a lot of 20th, and indeed 19th-century fiction.) Does that make any sense to anyone?

Pomona later loses her affectations and is accepted (though never by Tim); bullying is thus framed I think as something that can be fixed and stopped by its victims conforming to social norms--that in my experience is untrue and a rather pernicious untruth at that.

Tim has chocolate! Which perhaps caters to a rationing-era desire to read about such things. Later on, in the note to The Thuggery Affair, explaining her decision to update the setting, she says 'it would be a bore, to me as well as everyone else, to keep strictly to period time (who cares that sweets still had to be rationed in 1947?)'. But I can't remember any mention of rationing at all. Clothes are in short supply, but that seems to be a general issue of Marlow household finances and the notion that thrift and even a certain shabbiness are well-bred, and new things a touch vulgar.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Re-reading it this time I was struck by how much information Forest gets across about all her characters in a train journey, and also that this is the source of all the stories I wrote when I was nine to er... about fifteen which consisted of nothing but character-revealing conversations on trains because once I'd got them all arrived at school I couldn't think of any plot for them to do. As a child I liked Rowan best. I wanted to be the sort of big sister that Rowan was but was worried that in fact I was far more like Karen. I've been thinking about how moments of "Karen is like Lawrie" keep cropping up through the series and note that here is one of those right at the beginning in her being thrown completely off balance by disaster - though thinking your 12 year-old sister has been crushed to death by a train (on your watch) is quite a major disaster and it's fairly reasonable to be thrown by it, however not coping is not what we expect of our head girls* and not in the best traditions of the service either, and Karen knows it. Being sandwiched in the family between Giles and Rowan cannot have helped. I had also completely forgotten Lawrie's crush on Margaret Jessop.

Re. references to school stories. Isn't new boys having to sing Tom Brown's Schooldays? Does it occur anywhere else or is Nicola exaggerating when she says "like they do in books"? Is she expecting the prefects to roast them in front of an open fire as well?

I want to know how it is determined who goes into Third Remove and who is "really stupid" and goes into IIIB. It's not as if new girls get benefit of the doubt because some are instantly damned (though there is some shuffling up and down later on). "Has missed a lot of school for various reasons and may not actually be as plain stupid as their test results make out" makes sense but what are the criteria for those who have come up from the Second? Perhaps they are all Delicate. Was Marie removed to break a tendency to boss everyone about and to re-jig the group dynamic in that year?

The bullying of Pomona is awful, though as a child I thought it normal.

*Then Keith shouldn't make them head girls then should she? I am getting ahead but failing to live up to other people's expectations of your competence, and your own expectations of how competent you ought to be able to be, is a theme throughout the series.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

between Giles and Rowan cannot have helped

Giles gets into a bit of a flap in a crisis, no? and simply meeting a grubby sister on the street and having to put her on a train is far less crisis-y than finding one has pulled a communication cord, leapt out of the train and into a tunnel. Rowan I quite agree on though; she is Officer Material.

Lawrie refers to roasting when Cartwright has told them off for bullying Pomona, doesn't she? In the context of that being Real Bullying, as opposed to the 'mere' name-calling they'd been engaging in. So Tom Brown has clearly been read and absorbed. I don't know about singing as a First Night custom anywhere else, though.

I imagined Kingscote starts streaming with the Thirds and Marie's lack of academic ability was what landed her in Third Remove; she moves up to IIIB and thence to L.IVA, so she clearly puts the effort in over the year. But your idea sounds very Miss Keith...character-training! Casting the Nativity Play by reputation!

[(Anonymous)]

Mrs Kent here.
There was an adaptation of Stalkey & co 20 or 30 years ago that featured the most sadistic bullying I've seen in a children's programme including making new boys sing 'There's no Place like Home'.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I bounced so hard off Autumn Term first time round that I didn't try Forest again for bearly 20 years! I think that it was the train, which I didn't get as a starting point, and I didn't like the characters - I definitely didn't like the bullying of Pomona at the time, I didn't like Tim, and I don't think I liked Nicola (to be honest, I am glad not to know most of the Marlows IRL, interesting characters as they might be). As an adult, I enjoy the aspect whereby it's clear that they don't always come across to others the way they think of themselves, but as a child I didn't really see that.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Oh, how interesting--most people who bounce bounce hard; I've found, and don't bounce back. A complaint I've heard from more than one person is the world feels exclusive: with its own quixotic assumptions and codes, even its own language. I have to say that's what I love about it.

I'm not sure I would like any of the Marlows if I knew them irl either--and I'm sure they'd loathe me. I did like Tim (though I'm not sure I understood her barrage of allusions, she was an education). I had rather a rave for Rowan. Still do. I must like the sarky ones.

the aspect whereby it's clear that they don't always come across to others the way they think of themselves

I don't think I quite got this as a kid either, except wrt Giles: I remember very vividly thinking that it was rotten of him not to live up to his own subversive precepts--I did I think understand that Nicola had misread his tone, but I still thought he was a louse, and inchoately, that it was sort of cowardly to turn on her like that in Port Wade.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say I was grabbed by it either. It sounds like I enjoyed it a lot more than you did, but I doubt I would have gone on to subsequent volumes were it not for the fannishness of friends. I'm glad I did, though!

[schwarmerei1.livejournal.com]

As children my sister owned (and I read) "End of Term", "The Cricket Term", and "The Attic Term" but not any of the others. Somewhere along the line I had the good sense to nick them from her, and moved out with them in my possession. So I only read "Autumn Term" as an adult coming back to the series (and naturally devoured it with fascination.) So I avoided any problems of being put off the series by it. However, you're correct that it's full of events that are very uncomfortable to read. My enjoyment was more in visiting characters I already liked when they were not so likable (to me at least). Of course it's impossible for me to unpack whether how I would have reacted if I'd read the books in order...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! I came to Forest via Falconer's Lure when \i was 10 and loved it with a mad passion; I only later discovered the other Forest book, and I did/do not like Autumn Term as much as any of the others. I think it was the Marie problem and the extent to which she was being set up to be Irredeemably Awful, and my own feeling that, being scared of farmyards, I was probably never going to be among the elect (though Meg Whatnot, who isn't in AT, was probably the one I most felt like). Plus as I aged myself I felt considerable sympathy for Karen.

[clothesinbooks.livejournal.com]

I think from post-War through to the mid-60s there was a strange code of conduct for characters in children's books: don't show emotion, don't snitch, don't cry, don't boast, don't confide deep feelings, don't ever admit to a whole range of feelings. Forest was very much of that school, and tbh it fits slightly less well in the later books. Like others, I was shocked by the sheer hatefulness of the bullying of Pomona - though I didn't see it at all that way when I was the same age as the participants.

Very much of its time - I like that Joan, Peggy and Betty are seen as the normal names - they are not common at all now.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I do agree the suppression of emotion is a general part of mid-century middle-class life. Forest is so interested in those suppressed emotions, though, and how one suppresses them, and how one behaves in the presence of somebody who is trying to suppress them and maybe not managing, that it all begins to seem rather potty. Whereas I think other children's writers in particular often just take it for granted that you should suppress tears or immoderate pleasure, it is duly done or not done, and on with the plot. Maybe I'm being unfair, though, I read and re-read Forest a lot, but haven't re-visited much other children's lit of the period in adult life. (I might be one of those Forest snobs that people complain about sometimes *grin*).

I like that too: on first reading as a child I was nonplussed--my grandmother and great-aunt were respectively Betty and Peg, and I thought--but those are old-lady names! I don't think that was when I worked out how to read a publication-info page, though; I think it was a Lorna Hill novel and tights being a novelty to the protag. that did that.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Yes, on this reread the big change for me was noticing the bullying nature of the APL, which was something that didn't stick out to me at all on first read -- which I did as an adult, albeit a fairly young one. In the intervening years, I acquired a child who actually has some of the features of Pomona -- prone to over-emotional outbursts, interested in odd things that her peers are not necessarily interested in (including clothes; just last week, one day when she picked out her own clothes, another child sidled up to her and said, "Tell your mom you don't have to come to my house in pajamas..."), in general not quite socialized to the kid norm, but coming off quite well to adults. All the things Tim objects to with respect to Pomona, in fact. So I noticed it a lot this time around, and it hit me pretty hard, because I remember on first read sympathizing a great deal with Tim/Lawrie/Nicola and their dislike of Pomona and Marie.

The other thing that struck me (also mentioned in the post) was how all the different sisters are drawn so that one couldn't confuse any of them for another, even after only five chapters -- and I've been known to confuse characters from other books far past the point of five chapters! Some of that, of course, is due to the thumbnail -- what is the word I'm looking for? "stereotypes" is kind of it, though I don't mean the connotations -- that we get straightaway, although of course these are modified due to POV, etc. in subsequent chapters.

One thing I wonder: why did the twins do so poorly in the examination, when the rest of their family did so well? Is it because their schooling was neglected while they were sick? Is it because the rest of their family came in at the "normal" time, when they weren't expected to know as much? The way it's written suggests that there were things they didn't know that the exam expected them to (as opposed to not being able to think about the problem correctly, or having a bad exam day, for instance) -- but it's not clear to me why that should have changed between the rest of the family and them.

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

I think the implication is that it's because they've missed so much school time due to various illnesses. But it's interesting that it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone else in the family that it might be an issue, either. Ginty at least is certainly surprised; and no one appears to have dropped any gentle hints when Lawrie was telling everyone her grandiose plans that perhaps she might not be in IIIA.

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Is anyone else amused by how Crommie, whom we are told hates prefects (and in passing can I say how much I love that Forest is allowed to do omniscient 3rd, which is currently about as fashionable as chopine heels on men) systematically and brutally undermines Karen's authority on the first day of term? Honestly, what was Kingscote trying to turn out? Ruthless, honed corporate warriors?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

omniscient 3rd, which is currently about as fashionable as chopine heels on men

I would support a revival of both.

What I rather like about the staff at Kingscote is they're often all too obviously not thinking about what sort of people they'll turn out at all--Crommie just seems to exercise her prejudices and favours at will--or they're thinking about it all the time, like Keith and Craven and Redmond--and doing it so magnificently wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if the "Thalia sounds like Failure" comments are just so we know it's pronounced THAY-lia, not tha-LIE-ah (as with JK Rowling giving the pronunciation of Hermione in one of the HP books)?

As people have said, finding the knife seems pretty unlikely - for that matter, I could never work out how you could (accidentally) throw a knife out of a moving train window and have it land - and stay - on the step. And after the knife was so important to Nicola at the start, did it get mentioned again?

ARB.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I certainly think a Forest might be giving us a clue to pronunciation as well as a bit of laugh, yes.

I think the idea is that it is very flukey that it lands on the step, and if Lawrie manages to stumble so her hand is just outside the window and simply lets go as she does--there's no implication it isn't a completely genuine accident, is there? Or am I missing something?

The knife does have another minor plot-significant moment in Autumn Term, yes, and I think is incidentally mentioned elsewhere too.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Does anyone else find it odd that members of staff are also returning to school on the same train? Are they there officially to be in charge in case of trouble? Or are they returning to school on the same day as the pupils? Wouldn't they have returned several days earlier to start planning etc? Although it does say somewhere that the first few days of school were relaxed and only the exam classes got stuck in straightaway.

[biskybat.livejournal.com]

Looking back to my brief time at boarding school, I think members of staff would have been there on the train to help with new pupils and generally oversee things in case of mishap (like girls running into tunnels). I suppose some of the girls would have been quite young.

As for planning, I don't think they would have needed to do much. A school like Kingscote, at that time with far greater autonomy than nowadays, would perhaps have just rolled out the same curriculum year on year? The household staff would probably be there in advance and probably Miss Keith herself.

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Incidentally, in terms of emotion, is anyone else struck by Karen's complete lack of gumption throughout all five of these chapters? From the moment when her response to the knife story is "I've a good mind to take it away altogether" (like depriving someone of a talismanic object that they've literally just risked their life for is something which will make the situation better ) to the desk incident, she's really not very competent at all. Mind you, since we never do see a competent head girl, I think it's just symptomatic of the somewhat dotty Kingscote approach to personal development.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I have to say I adore Karen's splendidly misguided Wisdom of Solomon decision: 'Nicola can have the place and Pomona the desk...' Worthy of Miss Keith herself, that one.

[mainerobin.livejournal.com]

Comments on Chapter 1


Story is told from Nick’s pov—why her and not Lawrie? How would the story be different if it starts from lawrie’s viewpoint? I've always felt like a bit of a Nick/Lawrie dicotomy myself. Do you suppose that's why AF made them twins? To explore her own multiple selves? Why did AF choose Nof all the Marlows? What makes her POV more compelling for AF than any of the others?

Nick’s notes on Kingscote uniforms? Do schools really have people where different clothes according to their activities? How does one know at the beginning of term which activities they’ll do? How do people keep straight what all the small (hatband and tie color) nuances mean? Also, what is a girdle? And what does a games tunic look like?

Cromwell’s attitude toward prefects? What is the attitude towards prefects at most schools? Do people want to be prefects, or are more inclined to avoid the extra work like Jan Scott? I think I remember seeing in the archives that somebody had access to AF’s school records? Was she ever a prefect? What is the purpose of a prefect? Has the attitude changed since 1948? What is the attitude toward boarding schools in the UK? How has that changed over the last 75 years, Harry Potter notwithstanding? I love the way Rowan handles Crommie, it took me decades to be that cool.
I love the little asides like “The crowd in the corridor, who liked Karen, but were never averse to seeing authority in trouble, stayed to listen.” Such a simple sentence such a great visual!
Speaking of visuals, has anyone ever done any sort of movie/television series on the Marlows?

Rowan speaks to Ginty “Don’t talk as though you were tomboy of the remove.” What is meant by this? How is tomboy defined here? Is it a role that other girls envy or avoid? And what does being tomboy have to do with getting in trouble? Ginty had a row with Miss Keith over a case of bounds-breaking? What sort of punishments would that crime have merited in the 1940s? Also what does “remove” mean here?
BTW this question just reminded me of a book called Back Home by Michelle Magorian which is about a girl evacuated to America and now returning home. It does a wonderful job of explaining the attitude towards thrift and rations and “making do” during that time period. I should think Rusty and Nick would have enjoyed each other.
Where is Kingscote actually set? I assume the south coast, perhaps near Portsmouth, with that city being represented by Port Wade?
Tim’s description of Pomona is indeed sick-making. Yet I don’t think we ever see Pomona acting like that in the books. That seems to be more up Marie or perhaps Berenice’s alley. Poman is a little whiny to Tim about stuff, but we don’t hear much more out of her.

Tim mentions quite a bit about her father, but not her mother. Is her mother around?
Oh dear, this is quite a long comment already and I’m only on chapter 1. I’ve got decades of questions saved up. It’s so exciting to finally have someone to ask?

If you've already discussed all of this in previous posts, please just point me in the right direction.

[(Anonymous)]

I think of it as near Chichester.

My mum was head girl at her school, and she hated it.

A remove in this context was a sort of remedial form which the backward would go into for a year for extra coaching - like Third Remove here, and there's a mention of a Middle Remove in one of the later books.

Occasional Hope (posting away from home, can't remember password atm - btw I may have to miss the next bunch of chapters.)

[learnsslowly.livejournal.com]

Remove can also be a class between the fourth and fifth forms, a sixth form class for those retaking O-levels/ School cert or the last class of the junior dept before you remove to the senior dept!
I once knew a girl who set herself the target of being able to wear a different tie on each day of the week before she left school. She started off with a house tie, and had already earned a tie for winter sports colours (in her case hockey) and for non-sporting colours (in her case, the school play, but it could have been music). All she needed to do was get one for summer sports and then become a house prefect and then a school prefect. In the event, she was appointed school prefect without an intervening stage, but the school had stopped Saturday lessons by then, so she just made it!
A very "young Nicola" type ambition.
I wonder to what degree AF planned for Nicola to be the viewpoint character in so many of the books? Once we have seen the others through her eyes, it is more difficult to be quite so sympathetic with them.

[this-other-life.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to find time all week to join in and failed until now. At first, when I realised days were slipping away from me, I thought I might just leap in without reading the first few chapters' after all I've read the books enough times to know what folk were talking about. However I wanted to read the book(s) so I made an effort and got caught up.
Rather than reply to any specific comment already posted, I thought I'd just throw my own random thoughts down so as to have at least participated in the first week and then slide swiftly onto week two, thus neatly catching up.
So....
The first page tells us that life has to be very quiet indeed for Nicola to settle with a book, which seems quite a contrast to the amount of reading we see her doing throughout the rest of the books. It is quite surprising, as somebody has already mentioned, how young Nicola seems here.
The idea of Nicola doing without a watch now until she is 21; I expect she will either have acquired a cheap and cheerful one by then or, when the time comes, she will have seen some other magnificent object that she will want more than a watch. Or maybe some very special, unusual watch that will be considered odd by all who see her wearing it.
Despite Rowan suggesting Nicola change into the clean blouse before seeing Miss Keith she will make a better impression, she is actually shoved at Miss Keith's door on their arrival back at school.
I know I found it odd when I read the book for the first time as a child, that anybody other than a swot should want to sit at the front of class. Most people's preferred seat would be at the back or perhaps a window seat.

[schwarmerei1.livejournal.com]

I was fascinated aged 9 and am fascinated now (as a lecturer whose classes fill from the back, like buses, and who has to coax students towards me with repeated assurances that as a 5'2" bantamweight with no formal combat training, there's very little harm I can do them) that front-row visibility might be desirable to schoolchildren.

If we're taking names on this issue, I'll admit to being a front row type (but to the side! never in the middle -- that would have been too obvious.) I was the epitome of a teacher's pet. This continued throughout high school. I even had intense crushes on a few teachers. I was tragic . . .