I was wandering the local bookstore and found The Headmaster Ritual which Christopher Buckley gives high praise for it on a back cover blurb about being better than A Seperate Peace.
I haven’t read A Seperate Peace in 20+ years, but somehow I felt the need to re-read it again.
And then I wondered, are there any fictional ( or biographical accounts) of girls boarding schools? ( yes, yes, I am sure there are a **Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would happen to me… **kinda thing somewhere out there, but this train ain’t going down that track.)
I’ve never read it, but my fiancee has the book **Virgins ** on our bookshelf and it appears to be about girls in catholic prep school. The reviews on this Amazon page seems to support that notion.
EDITED TO ADD: The author of the book is Caryl Rivers.
Yup, “Malory Towers”. There used to be plenty of other school stories too. I suspect the genre is much less fashionable than it used to be. School stories were a staple of girls’ comics and annuals, along with ballet, tennis and showjumping.
Malacandra, in 2001 I was sitting on a train to Scotland next to the sweetest old English grandmom having a lively chat about Enid Blyton (I’m a fan because my mom and dad were raised in post-British india when she was all famous-like, hence my exposure and affection) and she told me they’ve fallen out of vogue on account of the sexism/ethnic stereotyping. Same for Dr. Doolittle, I’ve heard.
Malory Towers and the Famous 5 were my faves. Though I do have a special affection for those siblings and their friend who stow away on the island because their mom and dad abandoned them to go take a trip to Bafutoland and were never heard from again, and then they were raised by their evil aunt and uncle. Oh, and in the sequel the siblings and their friend go to Bafutoland to rescue the 'rents from the darkies deep in the heart of the mountain, remember? That was totally awesome.
There’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Murial Spark and Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey – these are a little dark.
Not girls, but a co-ed boarding school YA book that I thought was excellent is the somewhat recent Looking for Alaska by John Green.
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray is another recent one – girls’ school, Victorian(?) setting. You might need to be a kid to find the mystery parts mysterious, though.
And Both Were Young, by Madeline L’Engle. This is the author of the Wrinkle in Time books, but this one is not fantasy at all. It’s set right after WWII. L’Engle’s writing is great (as expected) but the book is a little dated – in a good way, if you are into that kind of thing. Teen romance and all that. Classic story of the new girl at boarding school who has a hard time fitting in, but then learns to make friends and all that.
Jean Webster’s Daddy Long Legs is set at a women’s college, not a boarding school, but it’s still awesome. The school is based on Vassar at the turn of the century (the previous century). It’s not like the film version.
The Secret Language by the late, great Ursula Nordstrom. This is at a bit of a younger reader level, I think, but it’s really charming.
Yeah, you can hardly get an Enid Blyton book these days. We have one, which hasn’t got any awful ethnic stuff in it, and it’s one of my daughter’s favorite books. I wish they would republish the ones that are worth reading; she’d love to have more of them.
I second Daddy-Long-Legs – one of my favorite books. The sequel (Dear Enemy) is also worth a read. Particularly interesting due to its eyebrow-raising (by today’s standards) on eugenics.
I also liked (loved, actually – it was one of my absolute favorites when I was a teenager and I still enjoy it today) – Miss Bannister’s Girls by Louise Tanner (who was married to Patrick Dennis of Auntie Mame fame). It was written in 1961 and is pretty dated, but it’s an absolute stitch, if you can find a copy.
Life With Mother Superior by Jane Trahey is set in a girl’s Catholic school. The Hayley Mills movie The Trouble With Angels was based on this book. Hard to find (I’m still having trouble tracked down a copy I’m willing to pay for) but funny.
If you don’t mind a children’s book, The Courage of Bethea by Elizabeth Howard (about a student at the Western Female Seminary in Oxford, Ohio in the mid 1800s) is quite enjoyable.
You might have some luck finding these through inter-library loan as they are all long out of print.
Are films acceptable? If so, check out Strike! (variant titles: All I Wanna Do and Daughters of the American Ravioli). The uprising part is exciting – Yeah! Power to the . . . to the rich, overprivileged schoolgirls!
