trennels | Readthrough: Autumn Term, Chapters 6 & 7 (Reply)

Thanks to everybody who commented in the first discussion post. It's been a roaring success, generating over 70 comments at the last count and still rumbling gently on.

These are longish chapters by the standard of the book overall, so I'm going to split the discussion between a couple of posts.

I have never been able to share Nick and Lawrie's disappointment that they cannot play netball, because I've always loathed the game with a passion. But I'm interested to see that apparently rounders is seen as a gentle, non-competitive activity at Kingscote. I suspect this is because the school also plays cricket; and cricketers in my experience tend to be scornful of rounders. Rounders was a summer game at my school, and netball a winter one: both were played competitively with other schools; netball perhaps did have a little more prestige--but we didn't play cricket. But even allowing for heavy sarcasm, Rowan's "Third Removes, according to Miss Keith, are gentle, delicate little souls who aren't strong enough to romp in rough games like netball. But exercise being good for them they are allowed to go into Upper Field and play rounders" struck me as a bit odd. Is netball so very much more strenuous than rounders? I never found it so to be, but I am not a good test subject, because I was a very dilatory netballer and a more enthusiastic rounders-player. I could understand Removes not being allowed to play on school teams, because they have academic work to make up, but forbidding them from the games enjoyed by the rest of the school seems a bit un-Keith, to me: she's a contender for the loopiest headmistress in fiction, but she is strong on equality, sometimes to the point of discouraging individuality.

That brings us to the fairly frank scepticism that Forest allows sympathetic characters to display regarding Guides. Tim, an individualist through and through, is naturally scornful, and the Brownies' convention of naming their Sixes after fey creatures is not likely to endear fairy-phobic Tim. But Karen, Rowan and Ginty have all found a way to avoid being roped into Guides by Ann, and--perhaps it's just me, or Nicola's exasperation with Ann?--but there is I think a faint suggestion that the activities that the other sisters choose--academic, sporting or even merely social--carry a little more kudos than Guides, which is seen as a wee bit plodding and pious? Certainly, it's a something of a last resort for the twins, despite being on their over-ambitious list: the only thing left they can shine at, rather than something they passionately want to do.

I really enjoy the insights the chapter gives us into Ann's school self, where she is confident, happy, popular--and most surprisingly of all, happy to delegate tasks. I have lots of thoughts about how Ann copes with her family, who do not seem much to like her as a person (the feeling may also be mutual, which I sense gives Ann even more distress than not being liked, because one is supposed to love and like one's family) but I'll confine myself to saying that one of the things I think makes Forest so enjoyable is the light touch with which she suggests a very different vantage point from which to see characters and events than the dominant twin-centric one.

Lois! I find Lois fascinating--Forest does such good, rounded, appealing 'villains' (see also, Lewis Foley) and in this chapter we see her both as Rowan's antagonist and the rather charming, mercurial person she is when she is feeling secure and confident.

and...

just as a little coda, I really like the glimpse of Lawrie's acting skills we get from Nicola's point of view as they are enrolled: 'Lawrie seemed to be doing it as Nicola had wanted it done.'

We begin with an interesting study of the dynamic between Tim and the twins: Tim does not much like not being the centre of attention, and is disconcerted by Nicola's tendency to treat their friendship relatively lightly. Tim demands admiration and adulation from her friends, we discover, but when she gets it is easily bored. At this point, she seems to like Nicola more (as most people, we are told, do) but later in the book and series, her real bond is with Lawrie. Nicola, with her greater self-sufficiency, plays that little bit harder to get than her twin, and that's a challenge to Tim at first, but later on Tim discovers that she really likes, and in some ways admires, and is prepared to defend Lawrie.

Allusions: Tim, despite her disdain for Bacchantes, knows her classics, and can supply Boreas as a 'a good blower'. In the previous chapter we had Nicola correcting Lawrie over battles of the Jacobite uprising. As a child I urgently wanted to live in this world, where historical, literary and classical allusions were part of everyday discourse. As a matter of fact, I still do.

Another perspective on the Lois/Rowan row, from Jean Baker via her sister Pauline: I really enjoy the way Forest slowly drip-feeds us this one, so by the time we do discover the truth (at least from Rowan's perspective) we have quite a multi-faceted view of it, and how hearsay might have distorted it.

Lawrie has transferred her pash, it seems, from Margaret Jessop to Lois. Am I alone in finding it VERY funny (as an adult reader) that this information is conveyed in Morse Code? There's a mischievous sense throughout the series that heterosexuality should not necessarily be regarded as compulsory or default, I think--see also: Miranda's discussion of crushes in End of Term and Nicola's unexpected détente with Miss Cromwell on the matter of Ancient Greek homosexuality in Cricket Term. I am also touched beyond measure by Nicola's assertion that her pash--Nelson--is "much more real than Lois Sanger" and her melancholy at Lawrie's heartless reminder that he is...of all the cruel things...dead.

And then, the hike! 'Life for Lois was apt to jerk between triumph and catastrophe. When things went right for her she was gay and arrogant; when they went wrong, she minded desperately, supposing (needlessly) that her contemporaries gloated over her ruin.' A glorious character summary, I think. 'Minding', or being seen to 'mind' is a very great social faux pas in Forestworld, and Lois is also seen to be a little subject to a persecution complex. But I think it is also evident that she has great personal charm, and she is not a malign or cruel person. Her good nature when Nicola corrects her over the compass directions (oh, look, that was foreshadowed at the end of Chapter 6, as the thing Lois said the patrol should practise) is marvellously inscrutable. Lois is not A Good Officer, however. She leaves the juniors with little to occupy them but mischief, rebukes and blames her second-in-command in front of the troops, lets said troops sway her decision-making, is indecisive and panicky even about that, and then sends the youngest and most timid of the Patrol to rectify the mess. Oh dear, Lois. Deserves the sack for poor judgement of character if nothing else.

Lois's skill at reading aloud and inability to act is one of those sharp observational details at which Forest excels (it's also a freak (non-)skillset that I happen to share, so maybe I am biased in thinking it interesting). How neatly and subtly the similarities and differences between Lois and Lawrie are underlined by the latter's dread of being read to, and embarrassment should her pash-object do it badly.

(Side note: Third Remove are reading The Faerie Queene, a text I found challenging at 19. Bloody hell, strenuous; rounders or no rounders.)

And finally, this chapter's fascinating commentary on volunteering information, telling the truth, eliding truth and untruth, and telling downright whoppers: to this we will recur in the discussion on Chapter 8.

As ever, these represent only a few of the things I'm interested in; do feel free to raise topics in the comments.