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Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6050

Author:  Róisín [ Mon May 11, 2009 11:37 am ]
Post subject:  Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

There is a very detailed summary of the book here and there is also a sample chapter available on the transcripts site.

Well! Is this a book you either really love or really hate? And if so, where do you fall down on that division?! (See poll above.)

How much of the book is humourous parody, and how much of it is kitchen-sink-realism - and should the author have made it clearer from the start which she was aiming for? What about the places she has taken the characters - would EBD have let go of Madge in this dismissive way? And Joey's reaction? There are many social issues brought up in this book; is a CS book the place to raise these kinds of questions or should the author have created a new or different platform?

There are SO MANY questions we could raise here about this book, so I'll just throw open the floor and please do raise whichever issue bothers you the most below... :D

Next Sunday: A Leader in Spite of Herself

Author:  Margaret [ Mon May 11, 2009 12:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I did not find it 'kitchen sink realism', as she took established characters and then had them behave in ways which, I felt, were totally out of character. I do not feel that anyone as deeply religeous as Jack would have comitted suicide for example.

I also feel that to have taken over these characters, which already had a wide fan base, was merely to get publicity for what wasn't a particularly well written book, which, without the words 'Chalet School' in the title might not have been published.

The fates and actions seemed almost deliberately hurtful, whereas for most of us the CS books are a comfort read, or part of childhood.

Author:  jmc [ Mon May 11, 2009 12:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

This was the first fill in story that I read and it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It took the characters that I had grown up with and twisted in ways that I didn't believe was plausable. No one really had a happy future which I found difficult to swallow. I too, also found that Jack's suicide was unbelievable given the fact that he was so religious. I had to wonder why someone would even bother to write such a story when they seemed to have such a dislike for many of the major characters
For a long time this was the future of the Chalet School to me, but then I found the board. Most of my memories of the book have now been eradicated. I prefer to think of the future as something more like RCS.

Author:  Rachelj [ Mon May 11, 2009 12:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

The worst character assassination for me, I think, was Mary-Lou. Love her or hate her, she would never have behaved like this! There was an attempt to explain away her character - by Tony I think - but it didn't gel with Mary-Lou as depicted by EBD. Con, too, was dragged unrealistically far away from the faith and morals with which she grew up. And poor Peggy got a walk-on part to demonstrate that she was a complete airhead.

I did read it compulsively - maybe hoping for something cheerful to happen :bawling: but needed to comfort read my entire collection by the end of all that misery! Maybe MW was bullied by triplets and was out for revenge. :wink:

Rachel

Author:  JB [ Mon May 11, 2009 12:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

The first time I read this, I disliked it intensely and struggled to get to the end - partly, I think, because it was just not what I was expecting. Last year I read it again for a discussion on Girls Own but I don't see me reading it again. It's was unremittingly bleak and lacks any of the warmth which even the least good Chalet titles have in buckets.

As others have said, I don't believe in Jack's suicide. Mary Lou behaved in a way which was completely out of character too. It seems a gimmick, to cash in on people (like us) who'll buy it because it's "about" the Chalet School.

I don't see how anyone with any fondness for the Chalet School books could have written this. I don't see this as the future of the CS. Thanks goodness for the CBB.

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Mon May 11, 2009 12:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I didn't mind the book in parts so long as I didn't see it as a Chalet School fill in. The author was determined to be far too depressing and changed how EBD wrote them which I felt to be unfair to EBD herself. I know that charcters can't be copyrighted but I do think anyone who writes a fill-in should at least stay faithful to the essence of a charcter written and created by an author. For example Lesley Green author of Hilda Annersley: Headmistress didn't write in EBD's style but did stay true to what EBD had created so I can accept (and enjoy) what she wrote, this I couldn't. I did enjoy some of the scenes the writer wrote about, but I would certainly never want to buy any of her other books. Her writing was far too ordinary and under developed. There are writers on this board who don't follow the cannon of EBD, whom if they developed their drabble into a book and called their charcters different names, I would love to read their books simply because their writing is that good.

Author:  Emma A [ Mon May 11, 2009 1:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I haven't read Chalet Girls Grow Up, so perhaps am debarred from really commenting about it. That said, even in the plot summary, there comes across a real sense of characters behaving in ways that they - as EBD portrayed them - would never countenance. Half the girls seem to have married unpleasant, unfaithful husbands and are either divorced or unhappy (or on a second marriage). While bringing the Chalet School into the real world of the 1960s and 70s could have been interesting, it seems that Williams piled every possible misfortune on the characters simply because she could. Poor Len, for example, finds that her husband has turned abusive, unfaithful, cruel and heartless, loses one of her children to meningitis and is then prescribed Valium! :shock: It seems that, in her anxiety to use every single "real life" problem available, Williams overcooked it, making the whole thing unbelievable.

Judging from what other people have said about it, and on the basis of the synopsis, I shan't be rushing out to buy a copy.

Author:  abbeybufo [ Mon May 11, 2009 2:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

It's a long time ago since I read it, and I won't be rushing back to re-read - indeed I sold on my copy when someone I knew wanted one - even for this discussion! But my overall impression was of real depression and hopelessness - again something that EBD would not have been writing into any of her books - even allowing for the fact that EBD was writing for children, and MW deliberately for adults - if it was 'all meant lightheartedly as a joke' - which I have heard claimed, then it was a pretty weak, unfunny joke. I'm not (and have never claimed to be) EBD's greatest fan - I reserve my 'best love' for EJO, as most of you will know - but this book seemed to me a pretty pointless exercise to capitalise on her name without any of the love that people here - even when they are killing off everyone (see Holocaust) - show in their dealings with EBD and her characters.

Author:  JS [ Mon May 11, 2009 2:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I haven't voted in the poll because none of the categories quite fit my feelings on this one (I know, picky, picky).

I read the book before I discovered the CBB, so all the Mary-Lou and Joey-bashing were a complete shock to me (previously I was a naive enjoyer of the books, taking them at face value). I did think that some bits were funny so I wouldn't say I out and out hated the book, but I certainly didn't love it either. I actually found some bits of it really distressing and, as others have said, the unremitting distaster-upon-disaster/if something could go wrong it would, and then would get even worse - sense of it was a bit grinding. Having said that, I was reading some of it while I was visiting my mum and I did say a few times 'you'll never guess what she's done now...'
Once I'd finished it, I had to acquire New Beginnings (despite being irritated by the title which struck me as tautological!) just as an antidote. And it's taken me a couple of years to get over everything she wrote about Reg and stop taking that as 'canon'.

Thought it was funny that the cover of my edition of New Beginnings called it the sequel that's true to the series or somesuch - in an obvious swipe at CGGU!

Author:  Tor [ Mon May 11, 2009 3:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Like JS, none of the poll-categories fit my response to CGGU. I read this many years pre-CBB, and read it with a rather fascinated horror. But I read it through, and though I haven't re-read it, I can't say I hated it anymore than New Beginnings (which I've also never re-read).

To me it was rather like watching an unbelievable soap-opera, and I just could not take it seriously. It wasn't 'funny', it was just so full of intrigue etc.

However, I have no problem with Jack's suicide vs his religious beliefs. Very religious people do kill themselves. It is terribly sad that their depression is such that, despite believing it will damn them, they still go ahead. But then suicide is tragic in any case. What I don't buy is the *reason* given for his suicide. I think Joey and Jack were a very solid couple, and that development didn't ring true (am I remembering correctly - Jack can't bear Joey-gone-mad wife, or something, thus kills himself :roll: )

I also think I do agree with the way Margot's character developed.

But no, none of the character developments are likely to have gained EBDs approval!

Author:  MaryR [ Mon May 11, 2009 3:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

It's a long time since I read it - and was filled with horror - but I thought that the only character who did come out of it with her dignity intact was Hilda Annersley - it was sad, but not unnatural, that she ended up in a home.

Author:  Cat C [ Mon May 11, 2009 3:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Quote:
I read this many years pre-CBB, and read it with a rather fascinated horror. But I read it through, and though I haven't re-read it, I can't say I hated it anymore than New Beginnings (which I've also never re-read).


So, if I've read this correctly, you didn't like New Beginnings any more than you liked CGGU, which wasn't much?

I've never really wanted to read CGGU, having read the reviews, and was underwhelmed by the first few chapters of New Beginnings as well. As I've remarked elsewhere, I think continuing a series which was anyway past its best by the end is a bit of a hiding-to-nothing IMO, unless you go a long way ahead, and do really interesting things.

Author:  Sunglass [ Mon May 11, 2009 5:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I picked this up a long time ago, after I hadn't been reading the CS books in years, and long before I was aware of the existence of 'fill-in' books and the whole CS adult fan culture on the net. So I didn't read it as a 'fill-in' (actually, I don't read fill-ins at all anyway, so I'm possibly coming at CGGU from an entirely different angle to those people who do), or part of an ongoing dialogue with adult CS readers, just one person's rather grim/grimly humorous take on what happened to the CS characters after the end of the series.

I supose I understand the impulse - I do remember being in my teens and talking with my little sister about Enid Blyton's school stories, and us having bitchy fun predicting smug Darrell and Sally and bitchy Alicia developing alcohol problems and unplanned pregnancies in their first term at St Andrews, turning shy, insipid Mary-Lou into a ravishing femme fatale in a nurse's uniform (and, because we both felt sorry for Gwendolen, imagining for her a happy, vibrant future in which she developed a career she adored etc etc). I do occasionally lament the lack of realism in the CS books, even while I recognise that I don't read them for that - and judging by what I gather of the drabbles on here, other people also feel the need to inject bits of realism/comic realism into the books on their own behalf, and some of those drabbles are quite dark or blackly humorous...?

But it takes much more sustained vitriol to depict, at length, a future in which virtually every character is wrenched into a desperately unhappy situation, complete with suicides, rapes, multiple infidelities, abusive marriages, illnesses, betrayals, disillusion and failure. It seemed like a terribly aggressive thing to do to a harmless children's book series. I also feel like it's quite an aggressive thing to do to your presumed readership, adults who read as children, or who still read, the CS books, and who can be presumed to love the books. It seemed to me that Merryn Williams was implicitly saying to us 'GROW UP, LOSERS!'

Has she ever talked about why she wrote CCGU? I suppose I have difficulty imagining why on earth someone would expend such painstaking aggression on 'ruining' a series she didn't feels trongly about, but if she hated the CS books, why bother...?

Author:  trig [ Mon May 11, 2009 5:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I'm a haven't read, don't want to, so I don't know if my opinion is valid, but the synopsis reads like a bad episode of Eastenders. While I can believe that several of the characters, and in particular the triplets, went a bit off the rails as adults due to their upbringing, such a wholescale breakdown of civilisation is totally inconceivable.

Like Sunglass I planned futures for the Malory Towers characters as well as the CS ones (and alternative realities where they meet), but they mostly involved lucrative crime and massive alcohol indulging plus attractive Latino boyfriends on the side (I was also strictly brought up... :roll: ) Nothing dreary and depressing!

I can't agree with the author trying to bring in some realism. 90's / 21st century realism perhaps (and even then not most people's) but having lived through the 70's divorce was still very much a rarity, at least in my area.

I much prefer the CBB carry-on alternative!

Author:  Tor [ Mon May 11, 2009 5:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Quote:
So, if I've read this correctly, you didn't like New Beginnings any more than you liked CGGU, which wasn't much?


Ye-es.... sort of. I think ambivalence to both is probably a better description. So maybe I plop for the final poll choice! However, I think I feel more kindly towards Heather Paisley as an author, as whilst New Beginnings didn't really do it for me, there's a certain comradeship between author and CS reader that isn't there with CGGU. Along the lines of 'Tread softly for you tread on my dreams...." type thing (suspect I've misquoted there). I have never read any other fill-ins, as neither of these gave me much appetite to read non-Canon books.

Probably Sunglass has it with the 'sustained vitriol' aspect of CGGU - it does leave a bad taste in the mouth, like she is laughing at the series, the reader, or both. But I do wonder if the whole thing would have developed differently in the era of the CBB, had it started as a drabble, and been interspersed with smilies and a bit more banter. It's possibly like she took that gleeful evil-streak of wanting to mess a bit with trusty characters as is the case in many drabbles (and a bit like cutting the hair off one's barbie doll etc....), started off on the project , and then got mired in unremitting misery. As trig points out, some 'fun' modernizing would have been nice!

I too would like to know why and what Merryl Williams' aim was with CGGU. I often wonder if she lurks, or is on this board under a different name. If she was a CS fan, and it was supposed to be a homage (of sorts...), she may well be. If it was some weird kind of fictionalized critique of a series she hated, or grew to hate, perhaps not! She'd have to seriously hate it to go to the effort of writing a book about it, and self-publishing said book though... and so, if that is the case, I hope it achieved any cathartic aims.

Author:  Margaret [ Mon May 11, 2009 6:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

One thing which I feel about this (I am permitted to add more aren't I? Please delete if not), I feel MW hasn't in any way developed the known characters merely taken their names and situations. Many of the board's drabbles have taken existing characters and extended and developed them in credible ways, like Hilda Annersly and Bill's love affaire. I did love your phrase 'sustained vitriol', Sunglass,though, just discribes it.

Author:  topcat [ Mon May 11, 2009 6:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

It would appear that Merryn Williams wrote a thesis on Thomas Hardy. If this is the case, all becomes clear as one only has to read Tess of the D'urbervilles to recognise the doom, gloom and despondency. In Hardy's books one often feels if something can go wrong it will and Ms Williams sadly does not display the writing ability that made Hardy's works gripping albeit not cheerful. All that remains to be asked is how anyone who read the Chalet books could want to write this?
:dontknow:

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Mon May 11, 2009 6:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Having only read the synopsis - still not sure if I want to read it or not, but definetely verging on not (though 'Tess of the D'urbervilles' is sat waiting to be read, so I may want to more after that) - I would have to conclude that even a soap opera might find it just a little far-fetched.

As far as I can tell, everyone has an affair with everyone else, there are several pregnancies and children most of which die or nearly die, and a lot of the characters betray everything that the CS would have taught them.

I could just about understand Reg having an affair despite his obviously deep love for Len, as there is still a subtle double-standard whereby men are condemned far less for infidelity than women, and even with Mary-Lou who loses a lot of her family and does, to me, read as a lonely character in the later books, it might be plausible. I think that a skilled writer could just about make that believeable.

But all of the other various relationships are just *too* unbelieveable for me (though Joey refusing to believe Reg has left did ring quite true for me - Older Joey never seemed to be able to accept things could be less than perfect - and while I can understand the need for one or two issues occuring - such as Joey going into a home, sad but unfortunately realistic even given Len's character and probable desire to look after her instead - so many and very few of them with a happy ending is just too far-fetched.

To me giving happy endings might have made it seem a little bit more of a parody of EBD's writing but in a modern society than it reads (from the synopsis) at the moment - no matter what near death experiences/ broken families (for whatever reason)/ difficulties one encounters, things will always end well because this is the CS, no matter how implausible that might sometimes seem.

And a lot of that is probably wrong because I haven't read it XD Apologies if so.

Author:  Lottie [ Mon May 11, 2009 7:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Having read the synopsis a few years ago, I'm very firmly in the 'Never read it and don't want to!' camp. Re-reading it today hasn't changed my mind. It just doesn't fit with the cosy CS world, and the way I think EBD would have forecast the future for her characters. I've enjoyed the other fill-ins, prequels and sequels, although I do think some fit better than others, but this one just doesn't do it for me. I did notice that, so far, nobody loves the book. That must say something about it!

Author:  KathrynW [ Mon May 11, 2009 8:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Am I the only one who loves it? It's so hilariously awful that it's the only fill in I've ever read more than once - a lot of them I don't even finish. It's definitely my favourite by far.

Author:  Pat [ Mon May 11, 2009 8:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

If i read it like a drabble it's fine. I can't see it as a normal fill-in/extension though, because of the characterisation.

Author:  Nightwing [ Mon May 11, 2009 8:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I've only read that one chapter available on the transcript site, so I apologise if this comment is wildly off-base!

I agree with others that there didn't seem to be any real love for the characters from the author; to me, there also didn't seem to be any love between the characters. OK, so I'm prepared to accept that Jo might, one day, maybe succumb to a mental illness which makes her completely obsessed with the school (is she meant to have Alzheimer's...?) but if this did happen, how could Jack be anything other than a loving and supportive husband to her? And how could she ever be anything other than a loving mother? She's more like a screaming parody banshee of P&P's Mrs Bennett than anything like herself.

Really, to me, this book was the worst kind of fanfiction - where the author doesn't have the talent to invent their own characters, so they use someone else's to tell stories which bare no resemblance to the source material. There are other fics which deal with the same issues CGGU deal with, and they do it in a way which suits the source material far more than Williams' contribution does!

Author:  Clare [ Mon May 11, 2009 8:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I remember the last time this came up and someone asked if it was much different from the character bashing that goes on in the drabbles on the CBB. I'd say it's very different, because there's no sign that MW even likes the CS series, and is just exaggerating character flaws or putting the characters in totally unexpected situations and watching them sink or swim. As already mentioned, she just seems to have taken the names of central characters and then drawn out of a hat random bad things to happen to them!

That's not to say bad things do not happen in reality. But as others have said, the characters seem to totally go against their portrayals by EBD. I also feel that this book is poking fun at the adult readership of the CS series, and I would not really recommend reading it because it does leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Author:  Lesley [ Mon May 11, 2009 9:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I have not read the book - so apologise in advance for any inaccuracies - however from all I have read and heard about the book it's not one that I want to read. As a writer I feel very strongly with and for my characters and would be very wary of reading a book where the supposedly known characters act in ways so completely illogical to them. Some have said that it is no different to some of the zanier drabbles - but none of the crazy drabbles get published as a CS book. All the other fill-ins/sequels/prequels be they private publication, GGP, Bettany Press or other, have at their base characters that you can recognise and that are written in the same spirit as EBD and with the same love. While horrible things can happen to any family, having everything happen in one book and while making so many characters act in ways against their nature as written by EBD - it seems wrong.

Author:  Pat [ Mon May 11, 2009 9:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I think that's the main problem - the lack of love. Both between the characters and for the characters. I can accept that the idea was to be amusing, but it doesn't come off. Or at least, it doesn't for the majority of people.

Author:  Samantha [ Mon May 11, 2009 9:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I disliked this book, mainly because it seemed just too unbelievable. I also felt very strongly that I had read the whole of the Margot storyline somewhere else - possibly one of the autobiographical ex-nun stories ("Through the Gate"? I may well misremember). I thought the whole book was very derivative and just no fun.

Author:  Amanda M [ Mon May 11, 2009 10:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I bought this book and looked forward to reading a continuation of the CS series. I bought it before I knew about the CBB and so wasn't forewarned! I really disliked it. The characters were just put into such miserable positions, and I can't recall a single character that was characterised realistically. To date, this is the only Chalet School book that I have got rid of and no longer have a copy of.

Author:  Miss Di [ Tue May 12, 2009 4:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

To be perfectly honest I don't think CCGU is any worse than what happens in some of the drabbles on the CBB.

I'm another who doesn't hate it (CCGU that is) because I could just see it happening if they were all dragged into the Real World.

Author:  JS [ Tue May 12, 2009 6:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Quote:
To be perfectly honest I don't think CCGU is any worse than what happens in some of the drabbles on the CBB.


I'd back you to an extent on that, Miss Di, in that I think CGGU follows what is a bit of an orthodoxy (if you can have a bit of an orthodoxy!) among some adult fans, whereby Mary Lou is horrible and Joey is a nightmare while the only really decent character is Hilda! For those of us who always took the books at face value, this came as quite a shock. Lots of these issues were hammered out recently on Sunglass's very interesting Joey-bashing thread, so I won't say any more on that.

On the other hand, I think that CGGU exaggerates it to the nth degree! And not really terribly convincingly. I didn't, however, get the feeling that MW was laughing at grown-up CS readers at all and surely she wouldn't have gone to the trouble of reading the whole series (and she obviously knew it well) just to poke fun. I think she probably (and, from the reactions on this thread, mistakenly) thought people would be laughing along with her.

Author:  Carys [ Tue May 12, 2009 8:17 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I've never read CGGU but would love to as it sounds like a farce, which if taken with a pinch of salt could be very amusing! Is there a transcript out there?

Author:  JellySheep [ Tue May 12, 2009 10:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I'm quite divided on CGGU. There are elements I really don't like about it, such as the things that Just Wouldn't Happen, like the Mary-Lou business, and how she has Sybil, in particular, behave. The fact that Erica and Marie-Claire are never mentioned is rather odd. The amount of bad things that happen does seem a bit much, and it would be better if there were more positive bits to leaven it somewhat, but there are also some moments which are well done, like when the triplets go to visit Miss Annersley, or Joey's funeral, and parts which I think do take a realistic course, like Margot's storyline. I think if there hadn't been the background of the CS series it would have worked better: while I was reading it I was split between finding it hard to put down (like a soap opera, I suppose) and not being able to believe in quite significant parts of it. It does cause the problem that it colours how we see the characters anywhere else: it's hard to go back to a state of not knowing how she has them behave. I'm not entirely convinced that MW actually hates the CS, or its fans, but she does have some rather peculiar interpretations of some characters, and I'm not sure how well she really knows the series or has a feel for it. Has she written anything else that isn't based on existing characters?

Author:  JB [ Tue May 12, 2009 10:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

In the interests of public service (and if I wasn't doing this, i'd have to work), i've had a look on Amazon and Google. MW has written a chldren's book called "Clare and Effie" for Honno Press in Wales, completed Jane Austen's "The Watsons", written poetry collections and several biographies on women writers.

I would say from the list on Amazon that she's a mainly academic writer.

If you've a copy of her 1984 "Women in the English Novel" gathering dust on your shelves, used copies on Amazon are selling from £64. :shock:

Author:  Caroline [ Tue May 12, 2009 11:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

KathrynW wrote:
Am I the only one who loves it? It's so hilariously awful that it's the only fill in I've ever read more than once - a lot of them I don't even finish. It's definitely my favourite by far.


I wouldn't go quite so far as to say I love it, but "hilariously awful" just about sums up my feelings. It's a madly improbable (in CS-context, anyway) character assasination of just about everyone in Chalet-Land. I don't remember is being especially well-written or well-plotted, and MW seems to have ended up heaping every misery that she can think of on to "her" poor characters (the Margot story line is the one that always sticks in my mind...) just for the heck of it.

But it's all so ridiculous and bad-soap-opera-ish that I just can't take it remotely seriously.

She should have written it on here - it wouldn't have seemed even vaguely remarkable amongst all the other non-EBDish, CS-characters-grappling-with-the-real-world, character-bashing drabbles...

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Tue May 12, 2009 12:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Miss Di wrote:
I'm another who doesn't hate it (CCGU that is) because I could just see it happening if they were all dragged into the Real World.


But I can't see what happened to them as ever happening because i do come from a large family and have never experienced everyone in the family having such doom and gloom. And my family was pretty sheltered in our upbringing. I think that's what did it for me. It was just too unbelieveable. I didn't hate it unequivacally and parts I actually thought weren't too bad or showed potential, but I do take issue, when the characters are so beyond what an author created. I tend to agree with what someone quoted- "Be careful where you tread, for you are treading on my dreams"

Author:  JackieP [ Tue May 12, 2009 12:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Miss Di wrote:
To be perfectly honest I don't think CCGU is any worse than what happens in some of the drabbles on the CBB.


I do agree with this, but in a published book I feel you somehow have to expect more, and the departure from what seems to be the true characteristics of the characters makes you feel let down, somehow.

In one way - I feel that the situations in the book are realistic, but by using EBD's characters, and not making up her own, MW has made a mistake. Perhaps if she had made up OCs, then it would be a better book. But at least the book ends on a note of hope, even if it seems to be missing from the rest of it.

Sunglass - please don't let this put you off reading the fill-ins, the GGBP/BP published ones are more truer to the characters and the series than this is.

JackieP

Author:  Sunglass [ Tue May 12, 2009 1:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Pat wrote:
If i read it like a drabble it's fine. I can't see it as a normal fill-in/extension though, because of the characterisation.


Maybe that's the difference in the way I come at it - I don't see Merryn Williams's book in the context of CS fan culture at all (although it seems entirely plausible that she is, or has been at some point on here, in contact with some of the darker drabbles which don't do dissimilar things to CGGU, after all - if you are still here, MW, come out and talk!) So I simply don't feel that she has any ethical responsibility to EBD, or to the CS characters as EBD wrote them. (CGGU is from the late 1990s, isn't it? Had the CS fill-ins begun to appear by then?) It's not as though she'd been hired by EBD's estate to carry on the series, like Geraldine McCoughrean was chosen to write a Peter Pan sequel for charity (or, for that matter, the numbers of anonymous ghosts who make up the Virginia Andrews 'brand' since the death of VA...) I think she's free to do whatever she likes with the series - and she's clearly a writer who is interested in playing with other people's stories, if she's also 'completed' Austen's fragment The Watsons. (She's a decent academic writer, from what I remember of her Hardy book, which I read a long time back.)

I confess to being personally fascinated with novels that reach back into previous novels and alter their reading and characterisation, like Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, which completely rewrites elements of Jane Eyre. Or there's Joan Aiken, who writes what she calls 'Austen entertainments', in the style of Jane Austen, and around 'untold' bits of Austen's plots. So, she rewrites Emma from Jane Fairfax's perspective with Emma figuring as a spoilt, attention-hogging brat, or a sequel to Mansfield Park, in which she kills off or banishes lots of central characters, and has Mary and Henry Crawford, the villains of M P, emerge as strongly sympathetic. A lot of fan fiction seems to do similar things, resurrecting dead characters, 'correcting' things the fan writer thinks the author got wrong - there's an entire strand of Harry Potter fan fiction which views the Slytherins as unjustly maligned by JKR and reimagines the series from a sympathetic Slytherin perspective, for instance. I could imagine the appeal (has anyone ever done it?) of writing a 'parallel' book to Rivals from, say, Gipsy Carson's perspective, which would give a sympathetic Saints-POV take on the same events, and would show the Saints' culture shock at their new environment, and feelings of resentment at what could be seen as the CS's air of smug superiority at how integrated it is by comparison...

I would see CGGU as emerging from the same kind of impulse, re-examining bits of familiar novels from a different perspective, from someone thinking 'How on earth can a busy professional in her forties still be skipping about declaring herself an eternal CS girl? Can Joey be developing some kind of mania?' or (as lots of us have said here on and off) 'Reg seems like a bit of a selfish thug, who doesn't see Len as a human being, only something he wants - can their marriage ever be happy?' The only thing I do find puzzling about CGGU is that it's a bit monomaniacal itself in its efforts to introduce realism to the series - yes, I'm an adult, who lives in the world and makes the usual moral compromises, and I can see that EBD's view of life in the CS books is pretty sanitised, but to inflict such a deadeningly grim fate on every single character seems like a massive over-reaction and over-kill. It's why I wonder about MW's motivation for writing and publishing her book - it seems to me (though my memories of it are vague) that it reeks of genuine offence, even anger, at EBD's take on life, rather than a desire to be comic.

Sorry for essay - the topic interests me!

Author:  mouse [ Tue May 12, 2009 2:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I read the book after the extracts of it printed in FOCS. The part about one of the main characters, was it Con?, meeting Betty Wynne-Davies intrigued me.

Afterwards I was left wondering if the author had gone out of her way to select an extract which would mislead us via the magazine or was it just chance something safe was selected.

I find I can enjoy the book once I disassociate it from the chalet school. It is one of books I keep for those times I crave a miserable read as I can skim read to follow a few characters and ignore the rest.

I found Margot's story quite interesting and wondered how likely it would be in the 1960s.

Author:  JenniferG [ Tue May 12, 2009 2:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I don't consider it a Chalet School book, to be honest. The characters have the same names, but they're not the same people at all.

I can't say I enjoyed CGGU - as other people have said, it was so unremittingly grim! Just not my type of book at all.

Author:  Billie [ Tue May 12, 2009 7:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I've not read this, only the synopsis and reviews, so there's not much I can say about it. Someone before mentioned Thomas Hardy, and that's what I thought while reading the synopsis - it reminded me of reading Jude the Obscure - you think it can't get any grimmer, then something else happens, until the whole thing comes across as so miserable it is farcical. Not sure I'd want to read the whole thing though. I just don't understand her motivation for writing it.

Author:  topcat [ Tue May 12, 2009 8:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Spent 20 minutes waiting for a train thinking more about this! Background first - I read and loved unreservedly all the CS books before I was 12 and then did not look at them again till my daughter was rising 10 when I tracked most of them (pb obv) in charity shops and she (albeit child of the 90s) loved them too (and I re read them). Now in 21st century I found CBB by accident when googling something entirely different. I have really enjoyed reading all but the most Joey bashing drabbles and today I stopped to think about why I do not like them, and really dislike CGGU. In the CS world, which was then and is now, I accept, rather too good to be true, we see EBD firstly writing stories that did and still do, even though dated, touch a chord with young readers (and as we know still have an appeal to the more mature cough). She was writing to make money of course but to do so she needed to entertain. This she did well but if you look at the books as a whole, over and over again she suggested an underlying belief in what which could be (rather grandly) described as redemption. Thus, a major example, long after expulsion Thekla writes to Mademoiselle to say that she "deserved all that had been said to her and telling how it had indeed been a safeguard to her." Much of the action in the books is on a lesser scale but over and over again EBD wrote a tale wherein someone became more caring or considerate and that occurs because of the school/Joey. Furthermore, EBD seemed to have approved of people getting their 'comeuppance' so to me Joey being packed off to Penny Rest is not to be a sign that the world revolves around a spoilt and overindulged Joey but rather that EBD needed a plot device for her favourite raconteur to learn, and spread the word, that Annis's aunt had been properly 'dealt with'. MW does not seem to have either of these themes in her book at all.

I accept that because it is fiction, and children's fiction at that, the happy endings are perhaps more frequent than in reality but then i know someone whose great uncles, all 7 of them, went to fight in the 1914 -18 war and they all came home unscathed not even shell shock yet how many novels would have them all dead! EBD would have had some survive but MW would have topped the lot

OH dear I have run out of time and still not finished - sorry

Author:  Nightwing [ Tue May 12, 2009 10:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Sunglass wrote:
I confess to being personally fascinated with novels that reach back into previous novels and alter their reading and characterisation, like Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, which completely rewrites elements of Jane Eyre.


To me Wild Sargasso Sea is the exception to the rule when it comes to these kinds of books - it beautifully written and stands well on its own, and is written to be a modern novel exploring more contemporary themes. So many 'sequels' to classic books are written by modern authors who ape the style and themes of the original books and seldom hit the mark.

I suppose you could argue that MW is doing more or less the same thing, but while Jean Rhys takes a character who is instrumental to the story, but who is one-dimensional and whose history isn't really known, and gives her a fuller characterisation and believable reasons for the character she becomes in Jane Eyre, MW takes characters who aren't one-dimensional and whose histories are fully known and makes them completely different people.

I guess the CGGU seems, if anything, quite self-indulgent, in the way that all fanfiction is - I mean, at bottom, I assume most drabblers are writing because it amuses ourselves, and the fact that it also amuses other people is a wonderful bonus! But I wouldn't dream of publishing my drabbles, because, well, I know they're self-indulgent and I wouldn't want to charge people money to read them. Other fill-ins and sequels don't seem nearly as self-indulgent, probably because they're written for the purpose of selling and therefore the authors try as hard as they can to write for their audience, sticking as close to EBD's canon as they can.

It sounds like MW is capable of writing works which stay close to the original author's work, judging by the Amazon reviews to her 'The Watsons' - Austenites are very picky and yet she's had a pretty positive response. So I guess what I'm asking is - who, exactly, did MW expect to be buying her book? Because all things considered it seems like a personal project that she decided to share, or decided to turn a profit on (or both...)

Author:  Alison H [ Tue May 12, 2009 11:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I thought that some of it was quite good - so long as it was read as a drabble-type story, rather than as an actual sequel. I'm not keen on books meant to be definitive sequels to classic stories written by other authors: that awful sequel to Gone With The Wind annoyed me so much that I still fume when I think about it, and after reading a dire "sequel" to Jane Eyre and one to Pride and Prejudice I've vowed never to read any more!

I find the breakdown of Len and Reg's marriage convincing, although not the idea of Reg running off with Mary-Lou which is really pretty silly. I also like Margot's story, and I find Con's problems with her career and personal life entirely realistic. Some of the characters - Mary-Lou, Sybil, Grizel - just act entirely out of character, though; part of the story gets out of hand and too OTT-80s-soap-opera-ish; and the treatment of Joey is just bizarre. And, whilst I realise that there's no point writing either a book or a soap storyline in which everyone just gets up, goes to work/school, comes home, has their tea, watches a bit of telly and goes to bed - how many schools have as many disaster in any one term as the CS does in the books written by EBD herself? - there's just a bit too much misery in parts of this.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed May 13, 2009 9:39 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Quote:
And, whilst I realise that there's no point writing either a book or a soap storyline in which everyone just gets up, goes to work/school, comes home, has their tea, watches a bit of telly and goes to bed...


I actually read a surprisingly 'normal' book a couple of weeks ago. There was no murder, no out-of-the-ordinary happenings. The main excitement was when the young man - who the older lady had been playing with and had now got bored with - was accused, by said old lady, of stealing a teapot, which he hadn't. It did make a nice change.

That isn't to say that there was no plot. A lot of books could be written in a normal way without being dull - there doesn't always need to be a different happening on every page. And certainly none to the extent that MW seems to write them.

(Just thinking about 'sequels', Reginald Hill wrote a very good ending for Jane Austen's unfinished work 'Sandtion'. It's called 'A Cure For All Diseases' and I would really recommend it, though knowing a bit about Dalziel & Pascoe before you start might help)

Author:  MJKB [ Wed May 13, 2009 12:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I haven't read the book, but have got a clear idea from the synopsis and from the comments on the board. I don't understand why someone would take apparent pleasure in corrupting what are, after all, fairly innocent, albeit idealised characters from a much loved series. There doesn't appear to be anything in the way of tongue in cheek either, which would have softened the blow. What if Charles Tritten (?) had tainted Heidi's character, and turned her into some horrible, evil madame operating out of the Uncle's hut - would MW regard that as fair game? (Mind you, thinking about it, it might be quite funny, Heidi and the goats......)
Sunglass and Chubbymonkey, I'd love to read the Watsons and the Sanditons, are they both in print?

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed May 13, 2009 5:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I bought a copy of 'Northanger Abbey' which included three of her short stories - 'Lady Susan' being the other one. It's published by Oxford University Press, available in Waterstones. Hope that helps!

Author:  MJKB [ Wed May 13, 2009 6:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Thanks, but did you not mention that someone had finished the story? Someone else, I'm too lazy to search, said that there is a good sequel to Sanditon too. I adore JA, and like Sunglass (I think), read the sequels to P&P and Emma. They were execreble in my opinion, absolutely shocking.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed May 13, 2009 6:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Quote:
Someone else, I'm too lazy to search, said that there is a good sequel to Sanditon too.


That would be me :oops: Sorry. 'A Cure For All Diseases', Reginald Hill.

Author:  MJKB [ Wed May 13, 2009 7:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Great. Thanks a million.

Author:  LizzieC [ Wed May 13, 2009 11:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

One of my biggest problems with CGGU is that once I had read it I couldn't unread it, or erase it from my mind. Ever since reading it CGGU has coloured how I read all the other books or view behavior of the characters, and that bothers me. If I had known what CGGU was about before I'd brought and read the book, I probably wouldn't have bothered, but I purchased it in my days before the CBB. I finished the book, because I find it difficult not to finish books, especially when I've paid for them, but since then it's stayed firmly on my bookshelf. It never comes out for a re-read.

As to what bothers me specifically about this book? Well, it's pretty much what everyone else has said bothers them. It's unremittingly grim, the characters are very much not in character and it's done with no sense of any affection for any of the characters. I especially don't buy Jack's suicide and, though I'm no fan of Len/Reg, Reg's becoming so completely horrible.

Author:  abbeybufo [ Thu May 14, 2009 9:36 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Thankfully I read it long enough ago now - when it first came out - that the details are very hazy - and long may they stay that way!
As Lizzie says, it is very difficult to 'unknow' things, but time [and increasing age :wink: ] have fudged most of it, and as I said in my earlier post, I haven't got it any more to refresh the memories, which is a good thing, as I might have been tempted to look at it again for this discussion :roll:

Author:  Sunglass [ Thu May 14, 2009 10:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Nightwing wrote:
I suppose you could argue that MW is doing more or less the same thing, but while Jean Rhys takes a character who is instrumental to the story, but who is one-dimensional and whose history isn't really known, and gives her a fuller characterisation and believable reasons for the character she becomes in Jane Eyre, MW takes characters who aren't one-dimensional and whose histories are fully known and makes them completely different people.


I suppose I was thinking less of Bertha/Antoinette, but of what Rhys does with completely reinterpreting Rochester, who is a major figure in Jane Eyre, but who is let off the hook by Bronte in various ways, given that he's a wife-imprisoning, compulsively-lying, serially-adulterous would-be bigamist. (And the fact that when he first meets Jane, he has no intention of even offering her a bigamous marriage, just seducing a penniless teenage employee for kicks...) Rhys shows him not unsympathetically, but makes it plain that all his tales of Bertha's infidelities are his own paranoid fantasies, while he's actually sleeping with her maid on the honeymoon. Yes, it's an unusually good prequel, but I would see, I suppose, it as in the same line of country as the kind of thing MW did much more crudely in CGGU (admittedly my memories of it are now faint) by, say, offering a different set of rationales for certain elements of Joey's character.

Nightwing wrote:
So I guess what I'm asking is - who, exactly, did MW expect to be buying her book? Because all things considered it seems like a personal project that she decided to share, or decided to turn a profit on (or both...)


I think that's a good point - it puzzles me, too. I wonder whether it did in fact sell well. It's one of the reasons I wonder about her motivation in carrying out a sort of grimly kitchen-sink realist reinvention at such length... It sometimes seems like a private grudge that got out of hand, and somehow made it into print!

MJKB, or anyone else who was talking about modern Austen sequels - I've never read Merryn Williams's completion of The Watsons, and virtually all of the faux-Austens I've glanced at are awful beyond belief, but Joan Aiken's are honorable exceptions, particularly her Mansfield Revisited (Indigo Press, 1984), which is clever and funny and has Austen's moral toughness and irony, and a decent approximation of her style - and it's impressive in managing to rehabilitate two fascinating villains from Mansfield Park! Maybe the difference is that you get a real sense that Aiken has written it out of a complete fascination with what might have happened next to the characters, rather than a desire to catapult them into a different world by making Fanny and Edmund's marriage abusive, or giving Tom Bertram syphilis....

Author:  MJKB [ Thu May 14, 2009 7:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Sunglass wrote:
rather than a desire to catapult them into a different world by making Fanny and Edmund's marriage abusive, or giving Tom Bertram syphilis....

From what I've read in the synopsis of CGGU, I think it's more likely that MW would have inflicted the syphilis on to the virtuous Edmund! (I won't even think about what she might have done to the saintly Fanny.)

Author:  Jools [ Mon May 18, 2009 1:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Just checked on MW's webpage and she states CGGU as a 'semi serious' novel. There is no mention of her attitude towards the CS.

However, I did like this novel -just didn't chose to regard this as a Chalet School fill in. Twas a bit mournful but as someone else mentioned earlier - if she is a Hardy fan she likes dark, depressing novels with few happy endings. And Len did get to end up with a nice man at the end! :lol:

Author:  Caroline [ Tue May 19, 2009 11:46 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

mouse wrote:
I read the book after the extracts of it printed in FOCS. The part about one of the main characters, was it Con?, meeting Betty Wynne-Davies intrigued me.

Afterwards I was left wondering if the author had gone out of her way to select an extract which would mislead us via the magazine or was it just chance something safe was selected.


Something in between, I believe. I have heard A&C say that if they had seen the whole thing they wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole, and that they felt very misled / used / upset about being almost tricked into including it and were worried that people might think they endorsed / approved of the final book.

But whether MW deliberately selected a sanitised extract to submit or whether it was in fact an early excerpt / draft / version / chapter and she hadn't yet written the more extreme bits, I don't know. I can't quite believe she would have set out to mislead or upset people....

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Wed May 20, 2009 7:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Caroline wrote:
I have heard A&C say that if they had seen the whole thing they wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole, and that they felt very misled / used / upset about being almost tricked into including it and were worried that people might think they endorsed / approved of the final book.

But whether MW deliberately selected a sanitised extract to submit or whether it was in fact an early excerpt / draft / version / chapter and she hadn't yet written the more extreme bits, I don't know. I can't quite believe she would have set out to mislead or upset people....


If MW didn't go out of her way to upset people, then why destroy and change the creation of a much loved author or series. I would accept that excuse if she had written stand alone characters which people were upset by, but she deliberately chose something someone else created and wrote what she wanted and then used a sanitised extract to attract CS fans. I don't see how she couldn't realise that people would be upset by it. At least when I bought it the reviews I read were mixed and I was given a heads up that you either loved or hated the book.

Author:  Tor [ Wed May 20, 2009 9:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Quote:
I don't see how she couldn't realise that people would be upset by it. At least when I bought it the reviews I read were mixed and I was given a heads up that you either loved or hated the book


This is an interesting point - when CGGU was first published, the world of 'fanfic' didn't exist in the same way it does today, and MW's motivation and approach must also have been different to e.g. drabblers on this forum (as the comments system add an element of fandom self-regualtions thorugh ongoing criticism/audience appreciation). And her target market would also have been more naive. As you say, Fiona Mc, coming to it with an expectation of the content means you read it in a different light than perhaps you would if you bought it after having looked forward/wished for a 'continuation' tale for the CS for a long while. Those were dry days for CS fans, and CGGU is a far cry from your typical FOCS story!

Even more interesting, however, is MW publicising CGGU in FOCS. I hadn't realised this - so she actually approached A&C with an extract? Again, it begs the question of MWs motivation in writing CGGU, and it *does* suggest that she was aware the content of her book would upset some/many CS fans by selecting those sections least likely to offend. However, by doing so, she would be deliberately cultivating an audience that she (presumably) knew might be upset by the final product.

Was she just being shrewd in her marketing? I don't buy Carolines (v kind) get-out-of-jail card that she didn't deliberately mislead!!! I keep thinking of Sunglass' earlier comment that there is some feeling that MW is mocking the CS fan as well as the playing with the story itself....?

Whatever the answer, CGGU certainly generates more interest and debate than any of the other fillers it seems!!

Author:  Caroline [ Wed May 20, 2009 1:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Tor wrote:
Was she just being shrewd in her marketing? I don't buy Carolines (v kind) get-out-of-jail card that she didn't deliberately mislead!!! I keep thinking of Sunglass' earlier comment that there is some feeling that MW is mocking the CS fan as well as the playing with the story itself....?


I'm not sure any of us are in a position to say what MW did or didn't intend when she submitted the section of CGGU to FOCS (or when she wrote it, come to that).

Perhaps it wasn't even a book at that point she submitted it, but a short story which she later expanded (I've done that - with Juliet - partly to see if anyone would be interested and partly becuase it was just a short story - I had no intention at that point of writing another full length book at that time). Perhaps it was aleady a book and she wanted to publisise it to the most obvious target audience and therefore chose what she considered to be the most suitable / acceptable excerpt. Maybe she deliberately set out to deceive FOCS into publishing it, taking advantage of their naivety in not asking to read the whole thing...

Actually, I can also quite believe she didn't realise so many readers would find CGGU so very upsetting / distastful. I can't quite believe it myself, even now. Provocative, yes. Not their cup of tea, yes. Not in keeping with the canon CS, yes (and it never pretends to be - although I can see, of course, that the FOCS excerpt doesn't make this clear at all). But actually distressing? Not for me - it's too... (what was the phrase used earlier? oh yes) ...hilariously awful.

OK, I'll stop defending MW now.

Author:  Tor [ Wed May 20, 2009 3:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Quote:
Perhaps it wasn't even a book at that point she submitted it, but a short story which she later expanded


That's true - I assumed from the earlier comment that the bit in the FOCS mag was from the finished book, because people used the term 'extract', but re-reading the earlier comments I can see that whilst it's called an 'extract' now, *then* it may not have been!

I was randomly speculating (because of course you are also quite right that we can't really know anyone's motivation/intentions) on the subject simply because I found it interesting that MW might have had an inkling of the response CGGU would receive by her selection of a more 'palatable' section of the story. However, that idea doesn't hold any water if it was published before she went on to write the rest!

I don't really understand how people get so upset about it either - but I have a high joey-bashing threshold! Saying that, I'd rather get my J-bashing fix from here than re-read CGGU.

Author:  Sunglass [ Wed May 20, 2009 11:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Tor wrote:
This is an interesting point - when CGGU was first published, the world of 'fanfic' didn't exist in the same way it does today, and MW's motivation and approach must also have been different to e.g. drabblers on this forum (as the comments system add an element of fandom self-regualtions thorugh ongoing criticism/audience appreciation). And her target market would also have been more naive.


I think that's a fair point - today's online fanfic culture generally tends to be much more hedged around with warnings about content. You know you get a certain kind of thing on a particular community which specialises in it, and even then a piece of fiction will generally be behind an LJ cut or similar with warnings about sexual explicitness or character death etc, so you know what you're getting if you choose to read. The CGGU equivalent would come stuck all over with warnings about being grim and angsty, taking liberties with canon characters and multiple character deaths etc, but presumably that wasn't at all obvious to someone who thought they were picking up another CS book.

I think the point about today's fans being a bit more savvy is true too. They are so used to the existence of large numbers of fanfics which completely reinvent/kill off/regender/unmarry/give an extra head to their favourite characters that I don't think any one fic has the kind of shock-value CGGU still clearly has for CS fans!

Author:  Loryat [ Wed May 27, 2009 6:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I have not read this but would really like to just to see how awful it is! I have read the excerpt on the transcripts site, and I didn't find it very believable or well written. To me, the idea of Con so violently advocating abortion (and this is in the sixties?) just isn't very believable. In CS Con is depicted as a really devout person, not just someone who thinks such-and-such because she's been told to, and I can't see her doing such an about turn, even after her sudden immersion in RL, as to be trying to persuade her devout sister to have an abortion.

The synopsis makes it seem very melodramatic and while maybe it seems less so if you read it as a book instead of in a couple of pages, it does seem very relentless and bleak, and a bit juvenile. Maybe what it reminds me of most is Valley of the Dolls.

While I don't necessarily think that MW needs to even take into consideration the feelings of CS fans, or the feelings of EBD if she was to learn that someone had mauled her characters this way, she should have tried, if she was using CS characters, to make them behave realistically given the outlines of the characters in CS, and from the synopsis it really doesn't look as though she has.

Another thing that I think she didn't take into consideration is the fact that EBD was writing for children, not adults, and over fifty years ago, so obviously things like affairs, suicide, and abuse aren't going to be major factors in her books. Wheras the title seems to imply that EBD should grow up along with all the characters that MW appears to torture.

Basically, although I am really curious to read it, I just can't see what the point of it was.

Author:  Tor [ Sun Jun 07, 2009 11:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

Quote:
To me, the idea of Con so violently advocating abortion (and this is in the sixties?) just isn't very believable.


Gosh, i don't remember this at all! However, I think there are a large number of pro-choice Catholics, so don't see this as unreasonable. Con was always devout, but had an element of individualism that always makes me think she wasn't prone to dogmatic thinking. I always see her as the most likely of the triplets to have embraced RL in the 1960's, and was never really unhappy with her storyline in CGGU (though I'd have liked her to have had more instant success!).

Author:  Josette [ Sun Jun 07, 2009 6:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

For me, it isn't so much Con's storyline that is the problem as the inner thoughts of hers that we are presented with for most of the narrative. It isn't so much "this is how Con could have ended up feeling" as "this is the way Con though and felt (about her family, religion etc.) all along" - and it just isn't! Whereas Len's and Margot's personalities were just about recognisable - Len sinking under the weight of her own sense of duty: Margot's bull-headedness steered in the right direction by her vocation (initially at any rate - my memory has become a little hazy on the finer details and I've no intention of reading it again!)

Author:  Loryat [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Chalet Girls Grow Up

I discovered a copy of this in a shop in Edinburgh but it was £8 so I didn't buy it, but I did read a couple of chapters. It wasn't very well written IMO (what's the deal with the punctuation coming after the speech marks? eg ",) and it just seemed like MW was being a bit merciless (strange thing to say about totally fictional characters, but that's how I felt).

The Con abortion thing, it's not that she's advocating freedom of choice, just that she is so vehement about it, even though Len is against it. I can't see the Con in the books ever being that way. Con in EBD is sweet, Con in MW is a bit of a cow.

Josette wrote:
For me, it isn't so much Con's storyline that is the problem as the inner thoughts of hers that we are presented with for most of the narrative. It isn't so much "this is how Con could have ended up feeling" as "this is the way Con though and felt (about her family, religion etc.) all along" - and it just isn't!

Exactly!

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