Reading: Strangers at Vivians
Jul. 23rd, 2018 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartAlthough 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.
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.
