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Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School
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Author:  Róisín [ Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:55 am ]
Post subject:  Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Synopsis here.

What do you think of Adrienne's backstory - is it overly romantic, and is it extremely convenient that she had an English mother, like Elisaveta etc? What about Robin's stepping in to help her - do you enjoy this glimpse of the adult Robin's life? Just what IS the 'unspeakable fate' that Adrienne may have suffered if the nuns hadn't arrived? There is a second case of bullying in this book - Janet Henderson tries to imply that Adrienne is lying and cheating; how does this compare with Jack's methods against Jane? This is also one of the books where we get a glimpse of Ailie's group rather than Jack's - any opinions on their modus operandi? Finally there is the chance relationship that is discovered between Adrienne and one of the Old Girls ...

Please join in the discussion below :D

Next Sunday: Summer Term at the Chalet School

Author:  Alison H [ Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I assume that EBD just meant Adrienne would have ended up scrubbing the floors or something like that, but the place doesn't half sound like a brothel ...

I love seeing Ailie & co - I wish so much that we'd seen more of them and less of Jack's gang! They are so normal :D .

It's lovely to see Robin "back", however briefly - the implication in Future was that she'd be moving to Arles permanently, but EBD seems to've either forgotten that or changed her mind. The long-lost relative story is ridiculous, though. We've already heard it with Mélanie and the le Cadoulecs and the Richardsons and the Rosomons by this time, and it's particularly silly because Adrienne is Robin's cousin on Ted's side and we've always been told that Robin is the image of her mother.

Author:  Mel [ Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

EBD is trying to ring the changes again here and the book is moderately successful. It's good to have a continental heroine but the relationship with Robin, especially on Ted's side is ridiculous. I am also appalled that Jo did not move Heaven and Earth to see her beloved Robin. No-one else seemed to bother either. Why is Mary-Lou the one to spot the likeness when she must have seen very liittle of her and only as a neighbour at Carn Beg.

Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I think EBD absolutely meant her older readers to get the hints that Adrienne would have been prostituted by the concierge, who I think is definitely hinted at as a small-time brothel madam sizing up her penniless lodger as a potential prostitute. That's how I read all those things the Reverend Mother says about it being essentially a rescue mission, and about it being the last part of town one would want to leave a young girl, and sending a male protector with the nuns, and Adrienne's own fear that she has no means of earning a living, and her own sudden fear of her surroundings:

Quote:
she felt an unaccountable dread of the place, of its inhabitants and, above all, of the concierge. She shrank from the calculating look of those beady black eyes whenever she encountered the woman. The last two or three days, she had not only locked herself into the appartement: she had dragged a couple of heavy trunks across the door with a vague idea that if anyone tried to break in, this obstacle would give her time to call for help through the window. She had no real reason for this. It was sheer instinct on her part.


I think it's clear what the concierge's plans are from this bit, and that the nuns grasp the situation:

Quote:
As for you, petite, you stay here with me and if you cannot pay me in money, well, doubtless we shall find another way.” [...]
Then the nun spoke.
“No; I think you will not go to the Mairie, for you dare not. What had you in mind for this child? Nothing of good. [...] You will not interfere with Mademoiselle, for it is who will go to the Mairie and I do not think you would enjoy being questioned by the gendarmerie.


Again, rather like the real violence in Redheads, I'm a bit shocked by this in EBD - this to me is a real hint of genuine sexual threat and EBD recognising that prostitution exists and might have featured in the life of a CS girl!

Though I'm also amused by the fact that the Reverend Mother, in choosing to send Robin to the seedy district to rescue Adrienne, does so because she is English:

Quote:
“And then she is English,” the elderly nun said to herself. “The English are a mad race, sans doute, but in an affair of this kind they shine.”


I know we're told in Exile that Robin has become a completely English schoolgirl, and she's always had English nationality via her father, but somehow I'm surprised that adult Robin comes across as English to a presumably French Reverend Mother, given her background and the amount of time she's spent in England vs elsewhere...?

Author:  Cel [ Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I like Adrienne, and love meeting the Robin again. I, too, always assumed the veiled references were to prostitution, and I think EBD does manage to create quite a threatening atmosphere here. And Ailie & Co. are lovely, it's such a pity we see so little of them later on.

But the long-lost relatives story! :roll: Why, oh why, was this necessary? And even the way it's all revealed doesn't make any sense. Not just the fact that Robin is supposed to look like her mother, but doesn't either Mary Lou or Joey imply, quite early on, that they suspect the link between Adrienne and the Robin - something about how they "think they'll have good news for two people, one of whom they know to be very nice and the other they think to be nice" (sorry, I'm quoting from memory here so that's probably way off, but I think it's the general gist). And yet, when Adrienne's hair is burnt and her likeness to the Robin is revealed, it seems to come as a total shock to everyone. This has always bugged me...

Author:  Cat C [ Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I liked seeing Robin again, and although it's a while since I read the book, I otherwise remember being rather annoyed at the almost pantomime Frenchness of Adrienne's 'thoughts' near the beginning of it, and by all the stuff about overshoes and cloaks and what have you that happen later in the book - inconsistent with the rest of the series... like characters from somewhere else have wandered in and appropriated the CS setting to act out some drama of their own.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Mon Mar 09, 2009 10:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I always assumed that she would be made to beg on the streets or start stealing from other people, but I've always been far too naive for my own good (I couldn't understand why 'Relax' by Frankie Goes to Hollywood was banned by the BBC until my mum explained it to me :oops:)

I quite like that the Robin got some family at last, but it could have been done in such a better way - the Nuns could have been trying to find out about Adrienne's background, or Robin herself could have found the link because she had a special interest in Adrienne.

Author:  Kate [ Mon Mar 09, 2009 10:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

ChubbyMonkey wrote:
I always assumed that she would be made to beg on the streets or start stealing from other people, but I've always been far too naive for my own good (I couldn't understand why 'Relax' by Frankie Goes to Hollywood was banned by the BBC until my mum explained it to me :oops:)

So am I clearly. *off to wikipedia the song*

Author:  jennifer [ Tue Mar 10, 2009 3:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Plus, Adrienne and Robin are related through Robin's *father*, but Adrienne is supposed to look like Robin who looks like her mother. And it's Adrienne's mother who is English and father who is French, in spite of being related through her father to Ted, who is English.

What also puzzles me is why none of the Freudesheim crowd seems to have connect with Robin while she was in France. Even if she couldn't visit Switzerland, certainly they'd meet each other in France.

I do wish we could have seen more of the girls in this book. I think Judy, Ailie, Janice, Jose and Jane could have formed the core of a group that would have been a lot like Tom, Bride and their friends. Certainly a more likeable group that Jack and her sheep.

Author:  JB [ Tue Mar 10, 2009 2:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I do like this book. I think it's one of the best of the later ones and, were it not for the lost-relative storyline, I would really like it.

It's great to see Robin again and I love Ailie's group of friends. As someone else has said, they are similar to Bride's group where there's a mix of definite personalities and they aren't "led" by anyone.

I've always assumed it was prostitution.

Quote:
like characters from somewhere else have wandered in and appropriated the CS setting to act out some drama of their own


A Jasper Fforde moment? I'm now seeing Thursday Next arriving on the platz to sort it out. Perhaps that was the cause of the fire during the play. :lol:

Author:  Cat C [ Tue Mar 10, 2009 3:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

JB wrote:
Cat C wrote:
like characters from somewhere else have wandered in and appropriated the CS setting to act out some drama of their own


A Jasper Fforde moment? I'm now seeing Thursday Next arriving on the platz to sort it out. Perhaps that was the cause of the fire during the play. :lol:


That was the line of my thinking - I'm currently re-reading Jasper as preparation for a cross-over type thing I have in mind, but I have a feeling the details will take some working out, so don't hold your breath!

Author:  Sunglass [ Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Can I ask a silly question here, about a completely unimportant phrase which comes up in Adrienne?

It's about the phrase 'cut and come again' when applied to cake, here to Karen's cake served at Inter V's tableaux evening:

Quote:
Her cakes had plenty of fruit, and yet remained of the cut-and-come again variety.


I remember EBD using the same phrase about cake in Exile, where a Guernsey cake Joey serves for elevenses is referred in the same way. I'm only used to this expression used about certain kinds of salad greens, where it means you can cut leaves as you need them, but the plant will keep producing. I did google 'cut and come again cake' and got only a recipe for what seemed like a fairly ordinary fruitcake. What does the phrase mean, as EBD seems not to be using it to refer to a particular cake recipe (unless Karen's cake and the one Joey serves on Guernsey are the same kind of cake)? Why in Adrienne does she specify that Karen's cakes have plenty of fruit 'and yet' remain of the cut and come again variety? Why wouldn't they be cut and come again if fruity? Does she just mean they were popular cakes? Or that they kept well, so you could cut some up, and it wouldn't spoil even if it wasn't all eaten immediately?

I keep imagining some kind of Alice in Wonderland magic self-replenishing cake! Am I being incredibly dense?

Of more import to Adrienne - I can't help thinking that Janet, Adrienne's enemy, has a certain amount of reason on her side when she wonders whether Adrienne is somehow managing to cram in bed or cheating at lessons! Adrienne specifically says at the start that she speaks only enough German to ask directions and order a meal, but by precisely six weeks into the term, she's joint top of a form of 27 girls, despite never going to school before and doing one third of the work in a language at which she is a total beginner! No wonder Janet wonders whether she was telling a lie about not knowing any German!

Also noticed a reference I'd never picked up before to Margot being, according to Ted Grantley, 'on the chubby side' - is this possibly what is meant by the various references to her 'showy' looks, that she's curvy or bosomy? I have to say I'd always imagined all three triplets as 'slender as wands', as EBD seems to prefer her girls...

Author:  abbeybufo [ Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Sunglass wrote:
Can I ask a silly question here, about a completely unimportant phrase which comes up in Adrienne?

It's about the phrase 'cut and come again' when applied to cake, here to Karen's cake served at Inter V's tableaux evening:

Quote:
Her cakes had plenty of fruit, and yet remained of the cut-and-come again variety.


I remember EBD using the same phrase about cake in Exile, where a Guernsey cake Joey serves for elevenses is referred in the same way.


'Cut and come again' cake is cake of a type that will keep - sponge cakes generally taste stale more than a day or so after baking and dry out once cut into, but fruit cakes and gingerbread, plus a few other 'heavier' types of cake can be brought out for tea one day, and be cut into, and will also be OK to offer on future occasions.

Author:  JayB [ Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Quote:
Also noticed a reference I'd never picked up before to Margot being, according to Ted Grantley, 'on the chubby side' - is this possibly what is meant by the various references to her 'showy' looks, that she's curvy or bosomy? I have to say I'd always imagined all three triplets as 'slender as wands', as EBD seems to prefer her girls...

I think we're told somewhere that Margot is more sturdily built than Len or Con. Presumably all the games have made her more muscular. So she probably does take up more space than Ted or Adrienne - but the 'chubby' is probably just Ted teasing.

I quite like the opening of this book - it is something quite different for EBD. And of course it is good to see Robin again. But I don't find Adrienne very interesting as a character. We're told (repeatedly!) that she's determined to work hard, and is so grateful to Mrs Maynard, and wants to repay all they've done for her etc. etc., but I don't think we get much sense of who she is beyond that. And EBD herself seems to drop her quite quickly - the fondness between her and Phil is forgotten, for example, and a year later it's Samaris who develops a bond with Phil.

And nothing much happens in the rest of the book. We're told that Joey is going to Australia, then Phil is seriously ill and she doesn't go - but that all happens offstage and we only hear about it after the fact.

Maybe EBD was trying to write something different, but we have no expeditions, no naughty Middles, no lessons or prep, no Millies' Panto - many of the things which define a CS book are missing.

The relationship between Adrienne and Robin is nonsense. We're told more than once that Adrienne's mother was English - but in the end it turns out that her father was English too, or at least half English, and the relationship is on his side. And after a big thing being made of Adrienne's locket, we never hear any more about it. But I like Dick's letter, and his saying they want to see Adrienne - more for Ted Humphries' sake, it's implied, than for Robin's.

And I find it unbelievable that Robin was in, or near, Arles for three years and no-one - not Joey, not Daisy, not the triplets or Hilda or Nell or anyone else - went to see her. I know Jo and Daisy had babies/young children, but Arles isn't very far from the Platz and Joey made much more complicated journeys when Felix and Felicity were small. With one or more of the triplets along to help they could easily have gone. EBD could quite easily have slipped in a retrospective mention of a visit having been made perhaps during the previous summer holiday.

We do get some mention of the Len and reg affiar in this book. It's all fairly low key and I think much more satisfactorily handled than it was in Prefects. I don't know why it was felt necessary to revisit the issue in Prefects.

Author:  Millie [ Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Hi Everyone, I joined quite a while ago but this is my first post.
Like several others have mentioned; the part of this book that bothers me is that no one seems to have met Robin while she was living in Europe. This seems so unlikely, especially for Joey, but I suppose it's just another example of how EBD just didn't know what to do with Robin when she grew up and pretty much forgot about her once she joined her convent. I think it's such a pity because Robin was always one of my very favourite characters.

Author:  JayB [ Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Welcome, Millie.

I think Robin is lovely as a teenager, but I agree EBD didn't know what to do with her once she'd grown up.

One would think Margot, especially, would have wanted to see her, in view of her calling. And Con always seems especially fond of her.

And then we get Mary Lou demanding to know why she wasn't told that Robin was in Paris, because she would have rushed over to see her if she'd known - when ML can't have known Robin all that well, because she was either away at Oxford, or away doing her settlement work, or in Canada, for most of the time ML knew the Maynards in England.

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

JayB wrote:
And then we get Mary Lou demanding to know why she wasn't told that Robin was in Paris, because she would have rushed over to see her if she'd known - when ML can't have known Robin all that well, because she was either away at Oxford, or away doing her settlement work, or in Canada, for most of the time ML knew the Maynards in England.


I think everyone was considered to be part of One Big CS Family :roll: . We get the same thing in Reunion when Grizel asks what Verity would like as a wedding present. It's very kind of her to want to get Verity a present, but she only knew her on a teacher-pupil basis, and even that was only for 4 years or so.

In Future, the triplets are very excited when Joey mentions that Robin is coming to Arles, and the implication is certainly that they'll all go and see her ... but they never do :( .

Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Mar 11, 2009 10:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Thank you, abbeybufo - I had honestly never heard that expression applied to anything other than greens outside the CS.

Just thinking about the Maynards not visiting Robin at the convent in Arles for three years, which is mystifying (as people have said, why not just make a tiny reference to some of them having visited even once, especially after all that excitement at the news that Robin was transferred to France? It wouldn't have been impossible in the holidays, with the triplets helping out with childcare, and we do regularly see Joey leaving the Platz with or without some of her children to visit Winifred Embury or help Mary-Lou close up Carn Beg.)

I always find the part where Robin delivers Adrienne to the train at the Gare de l'Est rather sad, though I'm not sure whether EBD can possibly mean us to feel that it's poignant for Robin, after three years in France, to be on her way back to Toronto for the foreseeable future, after no more actual contact with her beloved adoptive sister and the Maynard/Russell clan than this brief encounter at the Gare de l'Est with Ailie Russell and Peggy Burnett. What with mistresses who would have hardly known her (and later Mary-Lou) being so evidently pleased to see her, you notice the lack of Maynard visit even more!

I've tended to wonder if EBD is deliberately going for this effect - of slight distancing between the Maynard/Russells and Robin, to the extent that she seems surprised that Ailie Russell is with the CS in Paris - to heighten the drama of discovering Robin isn't actually alone in the world, but has a blood relative in Adrienne?

But surely not, as it implicitly criticises Joey and her family for neglect, especially in the wake of a book like Reunion where she goes to a lot of trouble to round up many old friends of the same period?

I'm possibly over-reading this a bit, but I've just been re-reading the Tyrol books which talk endlessly about Joey's intense love for the Robin, and her anguish when she's ill, or when they are separated - it feels strange to be comparing that with a situation years in the future, where three years of relative proximity after long distance go by without even one visit...

Author:  Josette [ Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I felt that this strange sort of diffidence to Robin started in Joey Goes when she leaves for La Sagesse - no-one except Daisy seems at all concerned that it's going to be years before they see Robin again (if at all) yet this contrasts with Primula's devastation at Daisy getting married and "going away" from her even though she'll be going to live with her after the honeymoon! All most peculiar considering, as Sunglass says, Joey's near-obsessional devotion to Robin in earlier books.

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Maybe Grizel had a point and Joey's devotion to Robin did lessen after she (Joey) was married. However close she was to Robin, it's hard to imagine her being so obsessive as she was about her (unhealthily so, IMHO!) when she was in her teens once she had a husband and (by the time Robin went into La Sagesse) eight children to concentrate on.

I can't think of a good way of putting this :oops: , but maybe there was a kind of domino effect in that Joey devoted herself to Robin once there were rival claims (Jem and later David) on Madge's attention, but then the same thing happened with Joey in turn. Primula might well have been thinking something similar - that, however nice Laurie was, things between her and Daisy just weren't going to be the same once Daisy had a husband.

Even so, it does seem odd that she doesn't seem upset about the prospect of her being so far away.

Author:  Sunglass [ Thu Mar 12, 2009 5:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

This is an interesting line of thought. On the one hand, I suppose there's nothing more natural than a teenager (who's probably felt like an only child because her siblings are so much older) becoming enormously fond of a younger child, but on the other, as you say, it does become slightly more obsessional after Madge marries, leaves the school and starts her own family, like a kind of compensation for loss.

And I've always found it slightly significant that, given that Madge (and Jem) are Robin's adoptive parents, that Joey doesn't come to think of her as an adoptive niece rather than sister. It seems a bit as though she's trying to claim her for herself, or even as a Madge replacement...?

Joey-basher though I am - :twisted: - the period at which I tend to feel sorry for Joey is the whole period between Madge's marriage and Joey's engagement and flight from the Nazis. Joey only had the school and Madge as 'home', and then, no matter how stoical about it she is, she lost Madge in a day-to-day way, and would only have lived at the Sonnalpe in school holidays until she left school - and then, having lost her 'school-home' as well, it must have been hard not to feel slightly like a visitor, at Die Rosen, or displaced in her sister's affections as her family grew. Some of that feeling seems to me to get displaced onto adoring the Robin (and maybe also onto remaining an eternal CS girl?)

There's that rather poignant little bit at half term, when Jem comes down with the Robin, in Jo Returns, when Jo, delighted to see the Robin, says she's felt desperately homesick for Die Rosen all term - you tend to think that not only does she now not really have anything to do in life other than help with the children, but she's sort of in transition between homes too. It just seems sometimes like all kinds of complicated feelings got displaced onto her love for the Robin.

Author:  KatS [ Thu Mar 12, 2009 11:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

This is the "talking about boys" scene that always seems so un-chalet to me. I mean, obviously they display the acceptable I'd-much-rather-play-tennis attitude, but there's still the suggestion that dances and boy-friends have their merits :lol:

Quote:
“Juliet is supposed to have been only fourteen when she fell in love and there was all that hoohah with Romeo. I suppose,” she added thoughtfully, “it’s being away at school and having such piles of other things to think about that makes us not bother so much about boys; but I know two girls at home who have boy-friends they go out with and all that. And one of them isn’t as old as I am.”
Judy tossed her short brown curls. “I suppose we’ll come to it sooner or later. At the moment, it strikes me as mad. I’d a lot rather win the Junior Tennis Championship next summer than go to dances with boys.”
There was a general laugh and then Ailie voiced her ideas.
“I’m with Judy. It’s all right going to dances and all that – but I’d never be allowed, of course – but where’s the fun of getting married before you’ve had any other kind of fun? Anyhow, Miss Moore has been cocking an eye at us. We’d better stop talking about boys or she’ll be coming down on us.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:03 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Quote:
...but where’s the fun of getting married before you’ve had any other kind of fun?


Hm, Jem needs to watch one of his daughters, then... :shock:

Author:  Alison H [ Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

That's what I meant about Ailie & co being normal :D . In Problem, Mary-Lou, when discussing Joan with Jack, can barely bring herself to utter the word "boys" and is clearly very embarrassed about the whole subject. In Prefects, when Ruey hears two younger girls discussing Len and Reg, instead of just telling them off for gossiping about her friend's private business she tells them that "We don't talk about things like that" as if they've been saying something that was completely taboo. Ailie and her friends are just wonderfully normal!

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Thu Mar 19, 2009 1:15 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I really liked this book, mostly impart because we see so much more of Ailie, Janice and Judy. The three are wonderful to Adrienne and despite they have a new girl who is like Eustacia (in the doesn't know how to mix with her age group sense), they are so lovely and accepting of her and include her in their group at all times and they tend to protect her from Janet's bullying. I only wish they had stood up to Jack or Jose had a lot better than she did when Jane was being bullied

Author:  Kathy_S [ Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

My shiny new GGBP arrived yesterday. :)

Overall I enjoyed the book, but nothing particularly stands out once Adrienne is safe at the school. I do wish Robin could have been allowed a few days' visit, given she's being shipped back overseas!

It's rather odd reading Adrienne back to back with Two Sams: little Phil drawn to new girl, new girl treated badly by old girl(s), fire, long lost cousins.... Ailie's group is nicely drawn, though, plus we have all those little tidbits such as Hilda's declaration that the staff "are quite glad of a change from all you people now and then," the romantic eye contact between Len & Reg, and Matey's attempt to smash her way out of the bathroom. (a bathroom! or does this just mean a room with a tub?)

Can anyone tell me what "streeling" means, as in, "I'd a lot rather win the Junior Tennis Championship next summer than go streeling round to dances with boys."? I presume it's some sort of dialect, but is it really the blah "going" someone gives when quoting the same passage earlier in the thread? (I'm sure my picture of someone dancing a frantic reel between dance venues is excessive, but the word does sound as though it should be most expressive.)

For that matter, where does "dicky dancing" come from?

Does anyone else think Hilda must be a mind-reader to know just what Len means by "the news Mamma dumped on us this morning.," when there's not been a word about it in the narration? Yes, Joey's proposed trip to Sybil's wedding, complete with Mr. Flower's plane. Then, just 2 chapters later, there's relief that Mr. Flower just happens to be available to take Ailie over, Joey's trip having been cancelled due to Phil's mastoid operation. *wonders just how fresh that wedding cake was by the time it got to Switzerland*

Author:  macyrose [ Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I've wondered what streeling meant too. To me it sounded like it should mean something like "drunkenly reeling" though when it finally occured to me to google it, I came up with "to saunter idly and aimlessly" and "to trail along, carelessly, swaying in a kind of zigzag motion".

Author:  andydaly [ Sun Apr 05, 2009 8:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

This, if I'm not mistaken, is an Irish word. A streel in Ireland is a slovenly and untidy woman of improper habits. Streeling, I suppose, would be behaving as a streel would.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/streel

Author:  Mel [ Sun Apr 05, 2009 9:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I've read Maeve Binchy use the adjective 'streelish' which is meant to imply slovenly or unkempt or unlady-like, from the context.

Author:  Margaret [ Mon Apr 06, 2009 9:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Kathy_S wrote:
My shiny new GGBP arrived yesterday.

*wonders just how fresh that wedding cake was by the time it got to Switzerland*



As you were supposed to keep the top tier (sp?) as a Christening cake for your first baby, I imagine they used to last a very long time! Anyway Christmas-type cakes last a good three months with no problem, so I suspect it'll have been fine.

Author:  Cat C [ Mon Apr 06, 2009 1:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Margaret wrote:
Kathy_S wrote:
*wonders just how fresh that wedding cake was by the time it got to Switzerland*



As you were supposed to keep the top tier (sp?) as a Christening cake for your first baby, I imagine they used to last a very long time! Anyway Christmas-type cakes last a good three months with no problem, so I suspect it'll have been fine.


That's true, but part of it has to do with keeping the icing intact, if they were sending slices (and I can't remember), it would have been a somewhat different story.

Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Apr 06, 2009 2:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Kathy_S wrote:

Can anyone tell me what "streeling" means, as in, "I'd a lot rather win the Junior Tennis Championship next summer than go streeling round to dances with boys."? I presume it's some sort of dialect, but is it really the blah "going" someone gives when quoting the same passage earlier in the thread? (I'm sure my picture of someone dancing a frantic reel between dance venues is excessive, but the word does sound as though it should be most expressive.)



I was a bit gobsmacked I hadn't noticed that word in a CS book - but then I went and checked, and it's not actually in the version of Adrienne on the transcript site, which is the only one I've read. If the GGBP has reprinted the original hardback, perhaps the word was taken out of subsequent editions as dated and rather obscure for many readers?

Plus I'm not sure EBD grasped all its nuances - it's a bit like 'slut' (as used in the past) in that it has two senses, one of physical untidiness and another which does suggest a kind of moral 'looseness'; it sounds a bit odd as used by Judy, as though she's suggesting that the only alternative to winning tennis championships is faintly loose beahviour around the dance halls - which certainly isn't what she means. In my experience of coming across the word in Irish novels of the early and mid-20thc (Joyce uses it, but I'd associate it mostly with rural Ireland - Edna O'Brien uses it), it has tended to be used of a lower-class girl or woman - I can think of a couple of occasions when it's used by a housekeeper of a misbehaving servant girl: 'a young streel of a thing with a flower in her hat and a smile for every young fellow'. So it's a bit odd that Judy is (kind of) using it of herself and her own middle-class schoolgirl acquaintance, to describe fairly innocent behaviour. Suggests to me that EBD misunderstood what exactly it meant, and might explain why it was taken out.

She might not have even realised it wasn't standard English, given that she usually fences around any deviations with explanations, like Joey saying 'hanes'.

On the wedding cake freshness issue - although I do agree heavy fruit cake is practically immune to time for long periods if properly kept, I know for some people, eating the wedding cake someone's sent isn't really the point, it's more a symbol of them wishing you'd been at the wedding. Plus there are all those rituals that unmarried girls are supposed to do with it, like sleeping with it under their pillow to dream of their future husbands. Which I've always thought would be horrifically crumby...

Author:  Lesley [ Mon Apr 06, 2009 9:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Sunglass wrote:
Plus there are all those rituals that unmarried girls are supposed to do with it, like sleeping with it under their pillow to dream of their future husbands. Which I've always thought would be horrifically crumby...


Ah, so that's where I went wrong - I always ate the cake! :wink:

Author:  Cat C [ Mon Apr 06, 2009 9:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

My (married) cousin told me she tried something like that once.

Said she was still waiting to meet Ben Affleck :roll: :lol:

Author:  Pollyana [ Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

Fiona Mc wrote:
I really liked this book, mostly impart because we see so much more of Ailie, Janice and Judy. The three are wonderful to Adrienne and despite they have a new girl who is like Eustacia (in the doesn't know how to mix with her age group sense), they are so lovely and accepting of her and include her in their group at all times and they tend to protect her from Janet's bullying. I only wish they had stood up to Jack or Jose had a lot better than she did when Jane was being bullied

I'm the same, the three (Ailie, Janice and Judy) come over as really genuine characters, especially when we see the glimpses of reality - Dances with boys? Shock horror! They are so welcoming to a girl who must have been terrified in such a different environment.
I really love this book, always have, it has so many different sides to it. The reality of Adrienne being a young girl alone in Paris, with a landlady desperate to get her into prostitution; the almost fairy-tale "escape" to School, and then the way she makes friends and finds a whole new life.
Someone said earlier in the thread that there is a parallel with Eustacia - I'd never thought of that before, but I guess its very true, as both are pitchforked into school life from very strange and sad backgrounds. The only difference is that Eustacia didn't want to fit in, whereas Adrienne does.

The only part of the book with which I have little patience is the contrived relationship between Robin and Adrienne. I would've been more willing to accept it as a friendship forged during the rescue, and which continued because of that bond. The family tie is too contrived, even for EBD, and thus rings false, I think. Its almost as if for there to be a lifelong bond then EBD has to contrive a family tie, friendship isn't enough.
And as so many others have already said - if Robin was still so important to Jo, why on earth did she not make more effort to see her while Robin was in France?

Author:  Catherine [ Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I'm re-reading this and once again, I'm struck by the comment Janice makes about her work. She's handed in some work and then had to see Mdlle because it was messy but she says she knows there weren't any ink blots on it or something. It's never followed up though.

Author:  MJKB [ Wed May 13, 2009 7:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adrienne and the Chalet School

I only got my copy yesterday and am in the middle of it. I really like it, it has a different 'feel' to it somehow. I like the touches of modernity about it, particularly the talk about boys. Ailie and co act and talk like really nice adolescent girls of their time so it's decidedly more a product of the age in which it was written than subsequent books. I wonder why EBD regressed in terms of allowing her characters to talk about the normal concerns of teenagers?
One incident in the book intrigued me, the scene in which Jane and Adrienne rub the lotion into each others' shoulders in the bathroom! It's all very innocent and above board, I hasten to add, but it shows how healthy minded EBD was in many ways.

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