jennyanydots's review
4.0
Malory Towers and Back to Malory Towers, by Enid Blyton. This was the full 6 books in the series published in 2 volumes so I'm counting it as 2 instead because they were so quick to read. I spotted them second hand and knew they'd be coming up on the Children's Book Challenge at some point, so got them while I could. I was sorting out some stuff on my bookshelves yesterday, and suddenly decided to just read a few pages, in preference to the books I was already part way through (I realised this morning that a friend mentioned them in passing when we went out to a lecture last week, which explains it!) and the next thing I knew, I'd read both of them in one day. So, they're fast paced, engaging, and lively then! I last read them about 25 years ago, and remember once asking my parents if I could go to a boarding school as a result, because she made it sound so much fun. I know others are going to end up reading them at some point for the CBC, so I don't want to give away too much - for those who don't know the books, each one takes place during one term of the school year at a girls' boarding school down in Cornwall, and follows Darrell and her friends from 12-18. As I got to the last few chapters, I had to go back and check the publication date. The series originally came out between 1946 and 1951, which surprised me. Maybe it's a hangover from having recently read about extraordinary career women in the 50s, but I was really struck by the student's future plans. Cambridge only counted women as full members of the university in 1948 (and yes, I did just google that to write this review), but you had 4 heading off to university, someone training as a nurse, several heading for glittering careers in the arts, one planning to compete in the Olympics and two going into business together. It had even been suggested earlier in the series that the main character could consider becoming a surgeon like her father. None of this was treated in the book as though it was groundbreaking and new. One of the most common criticisms of Enid Blyton's books is that they were old fashioned, even as she wrote them, and in most of her adventure ones, the girls make the tea and keep out of danger, which annoyed me even as a kid. This felt refreshingly different, and I'm sorry I hadn't read them in so long.
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