white_hart: (Default)
white_hart ([personal profile] white_hart) wrote2019-02-24 04:23 pm
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Reading: The School on the Moor

The second Dorita Fairlie Bruce novel that [personal profile] antisoppist lent me, The School on the Moor was first published in 1931, much closer to Nancy at St Bride's than That Boarding School Girl, and I think that showed in more subtlety of characterisation, and a sense of place and landscape that was absent from That Boarding School Girl (although that may just have been due to the Dartmoor setting, rather than more humdrum Surrey).

I thought The School on the Moor was great fun, if frankly quite astoundingly silly in places; two key plotlines concern an escaped convict (and it strikes me as demonstrating quite breathtaking amounts of upper-middle-class privilege to assume that the obvious answer for a young man wrongfully convicted of fraud is for him to escape from prison and, with the collusion of a friend with a private plane, flee the country to take up farming in Africa - seriously, where to even start with that one?) and searching for the Ark of the Covenant on Dartmoor. There's also a friendship between the central character, Toby, and another girl which I simply could not read in any way other than through a queer lens, and while there were a couple of quite jarring examples of period-typical casual racism I generally liked it a lot.
hilarita: stoat hiding under a log (Default)

[personal profile] hilarita 2019-02-24 06:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I think the legend of Joseph of Arimathea coming to Britain has a lot to answer for...