Reading: Strangers at Vivians

Although it's set the year after Head Girl at Vivians, Strangers at Vivians, the third of Patricia K Caldwell's Vivians books, was privately published nearly 40 years later, in 1996, after a secondhand book dealer encouraged Caldwell to revisit her fictional school; it's a nostalgic collector's item, rather than a contemporary children's story.

Strangers at Vivians tackles another classic school story plot, the school merger and resulting tension between two groups of girls. I can think of at least two Chalet School books which cover this territory, and I have an Angela Brazil which does it as well. Still, Vivians' feud and gradual reconciliation is pretty well done, and I liked the subplot about Hungarian refugees (though I might have liked it more if the novel was contemporary and this had been a storyline aimed at convincing children of the time to support and befriend refugees). I thought that the plotting of this instalment was a bit tighter than the earlier books, with none of the oddly anticlimatic resolutions the first two featured; there was also more about the general organisation of the school (but still no explanation for the second year in the Upper Sixth; it can't be for Oxbridge entry as in Strangers all of the Upper Sixth, including several in their second year, are taking A-Level exams). Oddly, the tighter plotting almost made me like it less; for me, the anticlimaxes added to the charm of the first two books, and Strangers seemed duller; I also I didn't find the characters as engaging as the ones in the earlier books. It was enjoyable, but probably my least favourite of the three.