About book The Head Girl Of The Chalet School (1998)
On the whole, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was at the peak of her authorial powers when she first created the Chalet School series. In the Tyrol, everything about this quaint, reassuring, wonderful universe was still fresh - it could get a bit outlandish, in the style of school stories with a healthy dollop of adventure thrown in, but the characters were real and the setting quite glorious. And so, The Head Girl Of The Chalet School is very much a great installment in the series, focused this time on erstwhile troublemaker Grizel Cochrane as she tries to make good in the titular post in her beloved school. It's also a sad, if rather lovely, little transition into a new era for the school: when former headmistress Madge Russell (nee Bettany) acknowledges that, once Grizel and her compatriots leave, the school will no longer be quite hers any longer, we at least get to see the old girls all back again one last time.That being said, Head Girl was never one of my favourites from this era. I enjoyed reading (and re-reading) it, but never sought it out the way I do some of the other earlier titles. Perhaps it just felt a bit disjointed, with Grizel's spiky character disappearing after the first couple of chapters into Brent-Dyer's attempt to reform her once and for all. Of course, the best thing about Grizel is that she's precisely the kind of character Brent-Dyer talks about in this book when describing the writerly aspirations of her own favoured character, Joey Bettany - Joey sets foot on the road to becoming a professional author when her paper children start to become real, and refuse to do what their author tells them. Grizel - tough to love, desperate for affection, difficult, sarcastic, hard, honest, honourable, selfish Grizel - is Brent-Dyer's finest creation, though you get the feeling it wasn't always intended that way. It's only four books into the series, and you can tell already tell Brent-Dyer's trying to reform Grizel, a series-long effort that will never quite succeed because the character is so perfectly credible a troubled young human being. And because this Grizel disappears a little into the Head Girl she must become, the story feels a bit humdrum, even though plenty happens. (I had forgotten what a dreadful first impression the otherwise delightful Cornelia Flower makes on the school... and readers!)Read the GGBP edition this time, and was delighted with the restoration of three whole chapters that have been sliced out of the earlier paperback editions. These chapters might not add a lot in terms of incident (those come in the chapters that weren't cut: like the burning hotel in Salzburg, the lunatic who wants to kidnap schoolgirls to be his fairy princesses!, Grizel's madcap jaunt to the Falls of Rhine etc), but they're rich with the kind of detail and character work that Brent-Dyer is so very good at layering into her narratives.
The first original Chalet in which Madge isn't head - although you'd scarcely know it for the first half of the story, as she seems to nip up and down the Sonnalpe every other day. After that she's 'busy'.In this book, EBD solves the problem of the new girl who isn't a decent sort by having her kidnapped by a madman and discover some salt mines. Apart from this, there is lots of Chaletish stuff going on - old girls get betrothed, staff get married, it snows, it's very hot (there's a reason EBD doesn't normally put two terms into the same book) - and the story is really about Grizel's journey from uncaring rebel to tophole head girl.It's not a hugely convincing journey. She does indeed become a tophole head girl, but the uncaring rebel inside never really goes away and, as the rest of the series shows, comes back to the fore quite quickly. But then, I've never understood why Grizel kept going as a music mistress. She could easily have just taught two or three girls music, and spent the rest of her teaching time running hockey practices or tennis coaching. Even Rosalie Dene referees the odd hockey match as a staff member but Grizel seems forever condemned to teaching a subject she hates to girls who aren't terribly good at it.This is of course all in the future. But the future does keep harking back to this book: Grizel touching her scar, references to Cornelia's stormy first term, Deira. And here we have the first Sale of Work for the San, and Miss Annersley and Matey now on the staff. So it's in this book that the foundations are laid for the Chalet School of the future.Plus, of course, we get peasants head-banging and break-dancing at a wedding, and an entrance to a cave which is a 20-minute gallop back to the Chalet for Rufus but an eight-hour hike for anybody else. It's just a hint, really, of the heights the Chalet Series will eventually attain.
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Fourth in the Chalet School series for teenagers, set in the Austrian Tyrol. In this book, Grizel Cochrane is made head girl for two terms. The staff are not sure that she will cope, particularly when her temper makes her do something irresponsible shortly before she takes up her new role.However, Grizel determines to succeed. Her two terms as head girl are enlivened by a revengeful prefect, a snow fight which turns nasty, various weddings, an abduction, a trip to Salzburg that has an unpleasant ending, and a surprising discovery. All good stuff. Great characterisation, interesting plotlines, and all the more enjoyable to read in hardback! It's many years since I read this, even in the abridged paperback version, and I'd forgotten most of it.
—Sue
