Back to School Round-Up

For my sins, I volunteered to put together this round-up post of Vulpes Past and…umm…Vulpes short recommendations for our Back to School Week. So, get your jotter, strawberry-smelling eraser and multi-coloured erasible pen-set ready to take down these course notes on Vulpes Roughly School-Themed Books Wot We Reviewed and Short Recommendations.

First Up, one of the Vulpes original 3-way discussion reviews. In Split by a Kiss, Luisa Plaja explores the culture clash of the British “limey” kid at an American high-school – a fantasy for most of us limeys at that age, staring out of our dreary classrooms at the grey British drizzle, particularly after sunny visions like Sweet Valley High entered our consciousness. (See that nifty segue into Lisa’s piece on Boarding School Books. You have to scroll down a bit on that link to see what I’m on about.)

Next we have Kirsty’s review of Petit Nicholas stories or, to give them their official title: Histoires inédites du Petit Nicolas, vol 1, by Goscinny and Sempé.

Sound intimidating? Here’s a quote to whet your appetite:

tart little vignettes of 1950s schoolboy life (complete with stressed, office worker father, emotional housewife mother, marbles, airplanes and little girls in checked dresses).  Viz., when you are confronted with a volume comprising 80 stories in lieu of the usual dozen or less, don’t read them all at once.  Not even if you have a fourteen-hour flight ahead of you and don’t much like the films on offer.  For heaven’s sake, have some self control.

And if you really want intimidating, Kirsty has twisted my arm to include The Young Lev Bronstein. Not sure what this has to do with schools exactly, but we include it just to encourage those pottering back to school this week what they could achieve if they really put their little minds to it. (Being bludgeoned to death with an iceaxe, for example. That sort of thing.)

No question about the relevence of  writer Antonia Forest. In her overview of Forest’s work, Emma shows us how:

In the closed world of a boarding school term Forest investigates friendship, rivalry, hero-worship, siblinghood and enemies

and why Forrest is more complex and subtle a writer than people often give her credit for (although Faber’s children’s classics and an army of adament Forest fans most definitively do.)

And my own masterly (oh yes) dissection of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark , originally included in Adaptation Week, is surely as school-themed as you could get (not to mention an excellent and informative read! Aha!), examining Spark’s eccentric creation in both book and film versions:

Miss Brodie is dramatic and eccentric and exciting with unconventional teaching methods. She declares Art to be greater than Science, admires Renaissance painters (Giotto is her favourite), tells them romantic stories about…herself – and has a bit of a penchant for Fascist dictators.

And now if perusing the annals of Vulpes Past isn’t enough for you, we have three mini-review recommendations from Trilby of three school-themed reads.

VULPES SHORT RECOMMENDATIONS

Skim, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

A disclaimer: Mariko Tamaki is an alum of my alma mater, which has featured in more than one less than flattering work of fiction (see below). That said, there is very little here that won’t resonnate with anyone who’s spent time inside a private girl’s school within the last twenty years. Skim – aka Kimberly Keiko Cameron – is an overweight Wiccan trying to survive Grade Ten while coming to terms with her gay identity, the suicide of a popular girl’s boyfriend, and her developing crush on an eccentric English teacher. Her story, presented in the form of diary entries, is told with an effective blend of gallows humour, scathing wit and a poignancy that always stays the right side of sentimentality.

Walker Books (4 May 2009)
144 pages
ISBN-10: 1406321362
ISBN-13: 978-1406321364

The Wives of Bath, Susan Swan

Now perhaps better known for inspiring the 2001 film, Lost and Delirious, Swan’s tale of gender-bending friendship at an exclusive Toronto girl’s school lurches from the bawdy and absurd to the heartbreaking and horrific. The author vividly evokes a time (the early 1960s) and place with precision and flair, and the result is a Bildungsroman that is at once chilling crime thriller and moving love story. Why Swan is not better known outside Canada remains a mystery to me.

Knopf; 1st edition (August 31, 1993)
237 pages
ISBN-10: 0679419195
ISBN-13: 978-0679419198

Frost in May, Antonia White

This classic tale of convent school life presents a damning account of the processes through which children’s spirits were once routinely broken by social isolation and ridicule – all in the name of producing “soldiers of Christ”. Nine year-old Nanda’s desperation to please her father leaves her no choice but to embrace a cold and mysterious world where every day is shaped by ritual and friendships are forbidden. Although the writing is in places slightly dated, this remains a chilling account of the destruction of a young spirit.

Virago Press Ltd; New edition edition (27 Jun 1996)
224 pages
ISBN-10: 0860680495
ISBN-13: 978-0860680499

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