Merry and Emma
I always thought my affection for Antonia Forest was a dirty little secret - proof that I'd never grown up, but if you two like her I feel safe in coming out of the closet. I haven't read the Shakespearian ones but my favourite is 'Peter's Room' which is about the Marlows, but not set at school. It's actually about writing, in a way. The children hear about the little books the Brontes created when they were children, and create a narrative of their own in which they explore their secret fears and longings. Well worth reading if you haven't, and if you can get hold of it. Is she still in print?

Naomi

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Can I add Raymond Carver, and J G Farrel's 'The Siege of Krishnapur'. Oh, and 'The Diary of Nobody' which no household should be without.



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Sorry: Farrell

Richard Brautigan, Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Carter, Italo Calvino.

Weird, they all start with 'B' or 'C'.

Naomi, they're not still in print, except that a small publisher has reprinted Falconer's Lure and Run Away Home, and I suppose if that works, they might do others. You can pick up the school stories for peanuts second hand on Abe Books, because Puffin sold them by the ton, but I paid a good deal more to get my hands on Peter's Room - yes, wonderful - and a lot more than that for The Players and the Rebels, which is the second of her historicals. I balked at the price of the first, but haven't seen it since, so I wish I hadn't.

One of the reprints had an essay by her in the front, but I wish I hadn't read it, because what I found an entirely ignorable whiff of reactionary-ness in the books , changed how I felt about them once I'd read her opinions undisguised by fiction. But the psychology is still extraordinarily subtle and acute, and her prose is terrific too. The Players and the Rebels can still make me cry, but then I'm a historical fiction junkie.

Emma

Emma
Many thanks for this info - and apologies for not reading your first post more carefully - you did say that the some of the non-school ones were in print.

Naomi

It's so nice to discover another A F fan. Interestingly, her entry in the old Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature was rather sniffy about her as 'upper-middle class' and so on, but the more recent one pays more attention to just how good she i at her best.

Emma

the psychology is still extraordinarily subtle and acute

Oh, well said! That's it exactly. Lovely to meet some other AF fans - a rare breed, it seems to me. Nicola Marlow is one of my favourite characters in fiction. Always wondered if she went on to marry Patrick.. but AF was above all, not cliched.

Yes, Nicola's a great character, though I do wish AF didn't have to be so beastly about Lawrie to throw her into relief. I think she probably did marry Patrick, didn't she?(and converted to Catholocism, presumably) One of the things she's so good at is teenage sexuality (no actual sex, of course, but that's not the interesting bit any way); the way Patrick and Ginty get together, and so on. Oddly, the later non-school ones go off a bit, I think, whereas The Attic Term is one of my all-time favourites. What is it about boarding school stories that have such longevity?

Emma

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Hmm. Too early. Catholicism

I think boarding school stories are popular because something in us craves an extended sleepover with our girlfriends (that's now we're adults) and (for child readers) makes them long to be part of a little mini-adult community where they are away from parents and have committees and responsibilites and so on. I wanted to go myself from the moment I read Enid Blyton's stories of Whyteleafe and Bold, Bad Elizabeth

I agree that AF's stories where the Marlows are at school are more successful than the ones which take place in the holidays, I found the Marlows and the Traitor rather weaker than the others. Yet Peter's Room is rather magnificent, both for the Gondal story (since I too used to live half my life in some other imagined world and dragged others into it if I possibly could) and also in the development of the Patrick/Ginty story. I would sell my soul (or at least my husband) for an undiscovered AF set in a 'missing' school term

How about Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond novels? I fell in love with Francis Crawford in my teens and still re-read them from time to time, admiring her complexity, her vast-ranging knowledge and her ability to engage the reader's emotion and knowing that if I live to a hundred I could never create what she did there. ('something to aim at' Though in later life I have realised my hero is perhaps not as perfect as I once believed he was... perhaps a solid dose of Philippa spread over a few decades helped him grow up a bit Nearly 'utter satisfaction'.

Autumn Term is in print, though:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0571206409/qid=1142331444/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3_3/203-5682251-9583917

I actually read it just recently, and enjoyed it very much.

So it is. Fredegonde, you've a treat in store if you decide to explore the others. I read them all in order fairly recently, and it's interesting watching her style developing and becoming much more individual.

Emma

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Aha, it's a Classic now. Quite right too!

Though I don't think he's a 'perfect writer' I hold Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song as one of the most outstasnding reading experiences of my life. Sustained, gripping brilliance. I remember I read it back to back with In Cold Blood, and I'd recommend anyone to do the same (ICB 1st of course).

In case I've not rattled on enough about Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma is a pretty good read.

Pimp: The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim is a stunningly good book.

Chester Himes - wonderful, excessively wonderful.

Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. (Nothing like the humourless dreadfulness that is Brideshead Revisited)

Pete





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outstanding

Emma, yes, I'm planning to read the rest of the books as well, and I'm looking forward to them. I've only just discovered boarding school fiction; it never interested me as a child, but now I can't get enough! Never too late, eh?

(Nothing like the humourless dreadfulness that is Brideshead Revisited)

Humourless dreadfulness??? You're talking about one of my 'perfect' books! (I haven't read Sword of Honour yet, though, so if it's even better -- well, I certainly won't complain...)

Sorry Frede