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Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7676
Author:  abbeybufo [ Sun Apr 11, 2010 5:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
The Chalet School and the Island is set between Three Go and Peggy. It was first published by Chambers in 1950, as Peggy would be; Fardingales was also published in this same year. The first change is tackled in the opening chapter, and is of course the fact that the CS must move from Plas Howell because of the drains – a favourite reason for schools to move from their premises, and one that Elsie Oxenham had used in The Girls of the Abbey School (1921).

The following synopsis is from the NCC site, and more detail is available by clicking on their ‘Spoilers’ link at the bottom of that page.

Quote:
After a bout of mystery illnesses, the drains at Plas Howell, the school's home, need to be seen to. As the work may take up to a year, a new home must be found. After turning down several unsuitable offers, an offer finally comes that suits everyone - The Big House on St Briavel's, an island off the Welsh coast. Meanwhile, Dr Jem Russell has taken most of his family, with the addition of Margot Maynard, to a conference in Canada.

For the most part, the school is excited by the move and all the changes it will bring, especially the prospect of water sports. Unfortunately, Annis Lovell, after a term at the school, has still not settled down, and sets out to cause some trouble. Annis declares that she will make Bill and the Abbess thankful to be rid of her come the end of the term, and sets out to fulfill her threat. She is isolated from the rest of the school after refusing to apologise to Mademoiselle Lachenais for rudeness.

There is another discontented soul - Cherry Christy resents a school coming to live in her home, while she and her family must move. Her sister Dicky, however settles happily in the school. The school meet Kester Bellever and visit the birds on his island. Feeling that her Aunt Margaret resents looking after her, Annis Lovell decides to run away and is soon in great danger.


Annis’s life will change even more before the end of the book, and Joey’s being sent away for ‘a change and a rest’ enables her to overhear the dénouement of Annis’s story as she had wished.

    Did you notice this theme when you first read the book?

    Are all the changes bad ones? Which are the good changes, and why could some be said to be good or bad? – or both!

    What other instances of change or its contrary did you notice in the book?

Please discuss below these, and any other points you wish to raise.
Author:  Alison H [ Sun Apr 11, 2010 5:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
For me, this is the book in which Madge is shoved out of the picture and never really comes back into it - boo! During the course of the next few books, Joey (temporarily), Grizel and Robin are also packed off abroad, but I really do miss Madge and Jem in the Swiss books. & I never find Margot's delicacy very convincing, because it all happens off screen.

I can understand EBD deciding to move the school at this point. Armishire was a safe haven during the War but didn't give much scope for dramatic adventures and rescues, and at this stage she must still have been waiting to see what happened in Austria. The story with the drains isn't the greatest ever plotline, but it serves its purpose. I can't, however, accept that Plas Gwyn's foundations needed work doing on them at exactly the same time as Plas Howell's drains did: I have these visions of Joey somehow damaging the foundations with gunpowder or something :lol: .

It's nice to see Miss Norman back, but Bill's comment about how good it is to have an old teacher back and how hard it is to deal with people who don't know about the School's traditions grates on me, and so does the book with Jo harping on about "always being a CS girl". I like the book generally, though. I love Tom Gay in this one: she's such a kind, thoughtful person, without ever seeming interfering in the way that certain other people do. & Cherry is an interesting character: it's a shame that she never became a fully-fledged member of OOAO's Gang as she looked set to do. & I like OOAO & co in this book too - the Impertinent Questions scene in which all the kids end up having a huge scrap is very un-CS-like but comes across as being very realistic - and I wish EBD'd kept Phil Craven in the series as she worked very well as a nemesis for Mary-Lou.

I don't quite get why nearly everyone (in CBB-land, not CS-land) fancies Kester Bellever, but never mind ... :lol:. Michael Christy is much nicer IMHO (except in, I think, Bride when he pretends to use Gaynor's teddy as a school prize), although it's not until the later St Briavel's books that we see him spending a suspicious amount of time with Hilda :wink: .
Author:  Pado [ Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
I love the island setting - much more exciting than Armishire and fraught with potential peril as tides rush in and swift currents dash away. I remember being terrified for Annis when I first read the book as a child, and still have a weird simultaneous attraction/creepy feeling about Kester Bellever. (He's yet another of EBD's eccentric males, the only other options apparently being authoritative doctors, already-spoken-for-spouses-of-natives (does Michael Christie fall into this category?), limited intelligence handymen and ineffectual parent/guardians.)
Author:  Laura V [ Mon Apr 12, 2010 6:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
I was never able to get into this book. I don't like Kester Bellever and all his bird fascinations (reminded me too much of the birdman who used to visit us at primary school) and I still find it difficult to understand how Annis wasn't more seriously hurt in her escapade. The island setting does make a change a scenery but its still my least favourite CS location.
Author:  Nightwing [ Mon Apr 12, 2010 9:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
I think the island setting was very limited. It worked for the first few books - Annis' escape in Island and the storm in Peggy - but the school just feels so isolated. I'm pretty sure there was a village on the island (?) but apart from the Christies it feels like the school is the only building there. In the Tirol and in the earlier English locations, the school still has that 'family' feel - not just because the school is small, but because we get to see the girls interacting with the locals, and through Joey and Madge and their families we get to know the setting. But to me, Island is the point in which the school becomes a world into itself, which becomes more apparent after the move to Switzerland.

I love the Christies, though - they were an interesting family, and both Dickie and Cherry were strong characters. I'm sorry they both disappeared.
Author:  mohini [ Tue Apr 13, 2010 5:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
When I first read this book, I was a bit bored. MAybe because I read PB. But after reading other books where there was mention on CS on Island, I started rereading it with new interest to find out all the plots mentioned.
Not knowing much about England, I could not find any reason of moving the school. I thought EDB did it for the sake of story line.
O liked the description of the house and the island though I wish there were more adventures of girls getting stranded due to missing ferries and high tides.
I like Christies specially Dickie.
I did not like Annis running away because I could not understand the reason.
Which brings a thought to my mind except for the MAynard/Russell/Bettany clan, weren't nearly all the girls whose aunts and cousins and relatives are mentioned, very unlucky?
Annis and her aunt, Carola and her cousin, Katherine's eccentric Aunt,MAry Lou and her weak mother and dominant granny, Verity with her aunts. Polly with her old guardians, Lavender and her doting aunt.......the list is long.
Yes there are normal people but they seem few or are not mentioned.
I like to read the book now and try to find out how the characters were depicted in the earlier books.
Tom remains my fave character.
I wish she would have been the head girl at one time or other
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Tue Apr 13, 2010 2:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
I love Changes for little things like the somewhat unlikely coincidences that link Joey to new characters - like it turns out Kester Bellever and Jack were in military hospital at the same time during the war, and Dickie Christie wrote Joey a fan letter years earlier. (Did Joey have an excellent memory, or just not get that many fan letters? :D ) The new characters are nice - I'm a big Kester fan, because of his knackered trousers and sandals, and that he breaks in on a BBC ad break to broadcast the news that Annis is safe! - and Dickie is lovely and Cherry Christie interesting, although why, again does EBD have one of the mistresses say that 'it's difficult to say' what Dickie and Cherry's relationship is!?

I like the island setting, and the way it allows for swimming and boating - though it does seem mildly eccentric for Joey and the others to have bought a full quotient of school boats specifically intended for sea use, given that the School never intends to be away from Plas Howell for more than two terms!

Tom and co are lovely the way they look after Annis when they know she's unhappy and trying to get expelled, though Tom seems to have heard full Annis story through a lot of authority figures being terribly indiscreet. Her uncle is the local GP of where Mrs Bain lived, and he told Tom's father, who passed it on to Tom, who then passes it onto the other Fifth formers (but refuses to let anyone tell the Head... :? )

I think the Annis storyline is well done, especially her climb up the cliff. But, even though we discover at the end that the aunt has been embezzling Annis's money, I don't find the letter that everyone says is so awful it makes Annis run away all that bad.

Even without the financial double-dealing, Mrs Bain is a nasty piece of work, and could have been a lot more sensitive in what she says, but it's hard to argue with her main point: Annis, who is clever, needs to work harder at school, because she will have to make a career for herself, and Mrs Bain will no longer be able to take financial responsibility for her after the end of her third-level training. That seems to me fairly uncontroversial in itself! Also, isn't it interesting that all of EBD's 'bad aunts' - Mrs Bain, Carola Johnstone's cousin, Lavender Leigh's aunt - are all women who travel a lot, and prefer not to have a permanent home? In Mrs Bain's case, it's just that she moves around between hotels and boarding-houses in southern England, but EBD seems to make being on the move a trait of some of her sillier/more insensitive guardian figures!
Author:  MJKB [ Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
Sorry, I must be very thick, but isn't Changesa book in itself? I'm not sure, therefore, why the title of this thread is Changes - The CS and the Island.
Anyway, like a good few other people, I never liked the School on St. Briavel's. One of the reasons may be that it marks the virtual departure of Madge from the series. I don't like the description of the house, it seems far too small to accomodate the School and those army huts sound very ugly indeed. Plas Gywn is such a beautifu, elegant house by comparison.
Kester Bellever bores me to death, but then I'm not a fan of natural history, and certainly not birds. The Christie girls are lovely, especially Dickie. She comes across as a strong and dependable type, mature for her age as well, which begs the question as to why she has to take second place to Prissy Peggy in the next book when she is clearly quite a bit older and has been in a higher form.
Author:  abbeybufo [ Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
MJKB wrote:
Sorry, I must be very thick, but isn't Changes a book in itself? I'm not sure, therefore, why the title of this thread is Changes - The CS and the Island.


Sorry - Change/Changes is one of the themes that we are discussing the books under this time around - I think the 's' on the end is probably extraneous and I've removed it now from the title of the thread. But there will be other books discussed under this heading - though probably not Changes itself!

The idea of having the themes is to allow us to think about and discuss the books from a different POV then the general 'looking-at-each-book-as-it-comes-in-sequence' way we discussed them last time round, so the theme the book has been/will be placed under may not always be the most obvious one.
Author:  Laura V [ Wed Apr 14, 2010 3:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
For me Island is the book which starts the change in the CS series, ie. not as good as they were!
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Apr 14, 2010 3:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
Laura V wrote:
For me Island is the book which starts the change in the CS series, ie. not as good as they were!


I do like it, but I couldn't help noticing on this re-read how much reminiscence about the 'good old Tyrol days' there is in it! Part of this makes sense in terms of plot, because Miss Norman comes back to the school and there's a bit of catching up, and Cherry Christie asks Joey about the plot of Nancy Meets a Nazi, but it does also give a sense of a school (and a series) that's more than slightly conscious that its glory days are gone... :cry:
Author:  MJKB [ Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
As I've already made clear, I don't particularly like this book or the period during which the School was situated on the Island. I always hoped the School would return to Tyrol and thought that Switzerland would come a close second. It didn't.
Author:  Alison H [ Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
I think that EBD was trying to make the best of things. The situation in Austria wasn't resolved until 1955: when Island was written, I get the impression that she was hoping to move the school back there ASAP - in fact, I think Jack and Joey mention the possibility in the first chapter - but in the meantime was looking for somewhere with more scope for adventures and rescues than the safe haven of Armishire.

I don't find the Swiss books a patch on the Tyrol books, but I'm not sure how well things would have worked out had the school ended up back in Tyrol. By this point, the school was becoming very insular anyway, it'd lost its cosmopolitan feel and I'm not sure how happy the publishers would've been had there been a major focus on Austria and Austrian characters given the change in attitude towards Austria in Allied countries in the post-War years, and sadly EBD's standard of writing was declining anyway. So part of me's glad that the Tyrol years were left as a golden era.

I'm just wondering where else she could have tried. Maybe a Malory Towers-esque setting on the coast of Devon/Cornwall, which was Madge and Joey's home turf? Cream teas, pasties, and people getting stranded in currents in the sea like that girl at MT (Amanda?)? Or maybe the Lake District would have worked well.
Author:  cestina [ Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
Alison H wrote:

I don't find the Swiss books a patch on the Tyrol books, but I'm not sure how well things would have worked out had the school ended up back in Tyrol. By this point, the school was becoming very insular anyway, it'd lost its cosmopolitan feel and I'm not sure how happy the publishers would've been had there been a major focus on Austria and Austrian characters given the change in attitude towards Austria in Allied countries in the post-War years, and sadly EBD's standard of writing was declining anyway. So part of me's glad that the Tyrol years were left as a golden era.


I do so agree with you Alison. There is a magic about the Tyrol books that I think EBD would have found hard to recapture in the latter part of the series.

Island was the first CS I read so I have a very warm spot for it in my heart.....
Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Apr 14, 2010 7:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
Alison H wrote:
I'm just wondering where else she could have tried. Maybe a Malory Towers-esque setting on the coast of Devon/Cornwall, which was Madge and Joey's home turf? Cream teas, pasties, and people getting stranded in currents in the sea like that girl at MT (Amanda?)? Or maybe the Lake District would have worked well.


:lol: If you knew how boring Devon was... No nice doctors around here, that's the problem.

I don't particularly like 'Island'. When I was younger, it was always one of the first books that I never tried to re-read - I'd usually manage to drag myself through 'Exile' and beyond, but by the time I got to 'Island' I was just bored. Not that I have a short attention span, or anything!

As an adult reader, I think that the changes are interesting to discuss, but I don't think that they do anything for the plot. I wonder if EBD had known a) how long the war would last and b) all the (improbable) changes the school would have to go through whether she would have ever moved it from the Tirol, war or not.
Author:  MJKB [ Thu Apr 15, 2010 3:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
ChubbyMonkey wrote:
I'm just wondering where else she could have tried. Maybe a Malory Towers-esque setting on the coast of Devon/Cornwall, which was Madge and Joey's home turf? Cream teas, pasties, and people getting stranded in currents in the sea like that girl at MT (Amanda?)? Or maybe the Lake District would have worked well.


I'd have been happy with that because I enjoyed the Plas Gwyn era with its beautiful old mansion withs it Chinese carpet! A move to a castle like building in Cornwall, or, perhaps, Yorkshire, where there would be more scope for snow storms as well as sea storms. The currents around the North Sea could be the setting for many a rescue.
Author:  Josette [ Fri Apr 16, 2010 2:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
I quite like all the birdwatching stuff now, but that's because I'm interested in that nowadays! I've got a feeling I skipped most of Kester Bellever's talk at the time - it can come across as a bit "textbooky", like some of the info on Switzerland in the later books.

That said, I did like the new setting, and I thought Annis's escapade was really effective - I was as exhausted as she was by the time she was safe.
Alison H wrote:

Quote:
I'm just wondering where else she could have tried. Maybe a Malory Towers-esque setting on the coast of Devon/Cornwall, which was Madge and Joey's home turf? Cream teas, pasties, and people getting stranded in currents in the sea like that girl at MT (Amanda?)? Or maybe the Lake District would have worked well.


Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts House (which is either by Windermere or Coniston, can't remember which) housed a girls' school during the war - the photographs immediately made me think of CS: IIRC they also flooded part of the grounds to make an ice rink during that time! I've always thought the Lake District would be a perfect setting for the CS.
Author:  Alison H [ Fri Apr 16, 2010 2:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
It's at Windermere. It would definitely make a wonderful setting for the CS!
Author:  sealpuppy [ Fri Apr 16, 2010 7:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
Bodelwyddan Castle in N Wales became a girls school from the 20s to the early 80s - a castle would have been great fun. But I always liked the idea of the island; mind you, wasn't it supposed to be Caldy Island in RL? There's a monastery/abbey/ruin there, isn't there? That could have been imported to the story and been a useful storylinep; the pirate treasure seemed a bit 'stock theatre' to me.

I can't be doing with Kester Bellever; never liked beards and sadly, last time I read it (last year?) I could only see Bill Oddie, however hard I tried. It's not an image to stir the senses, I'm afraid. :(
Author:  Abi [ Fri Apr 16, 2010 9:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
Kester Bellever? :heart: :heart: :heart:

I do like the Annis storyline in Island, and I liked the island setting, but that could be because it was one of the first I read (and my very first in hardback!), which I find tends to give me a soft spot for a book. :)
Author:  Fiona Mc [ Sun Apr 18, 2010 4:40 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Change – The Chalet School and the Island
I actually really liked this book. I liked how nice Tom, Bride and co were with Annis and befriended her the way they did. And I really liked this group of Prefects. I actually wish we had seen more of them. I preferred Dickie in this book than all the others because I don't think she retains her friendly niceness when she joins Peggy and co the way she does with Gay and Jacynth. (the way she speaks to Natalie in Oberland about having to speak German was just plain striaght out rude). I do like the idea of the island and all the swimming and boatng they get to do is a lot of fun
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