A bevy of boarding schools
Two books, two movies, and a ridiculous browser game
Stout Alice shook her head. “I still can’t believe it. Murders. Two of them right under our noses.”
“I know.” Dour Elinor shivered. “Isn’t it marvelous?”
—The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, by Julie Berry
Hi, friends,
I hope you’re all doing well despite the state of everything.
I’m doing my best to continue noticing Happy Things—birds building nests, wild turkeys being jackasses in the backyard, checking in with friends—and not end up in The Abyss due to focusing purely on the world burning down around our ears. So with that in mind, I’m continuing to actively work on finding and savoring small moments of delight in books and movies and podcasts and food and outdoorsy things and so on.
Elinor picked up a sketchbook and began to draw. “Men might say poison isn’t sporting.”
“Yes, and men think that organizing parties of dozens of riders and hounds to chase down one poor fox is sporting.” Louise snorted. “Men’s opinions are irrelevant.”
Dour Elinor shaded her paper briskly with a charcoal. “Tell that to Parliament.”
—The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, by Julie Berry
The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, by Julie Berry
Ely, England, 1890.
Shortly after a seemingly usual Sunday dinner at St. Ethedreda’s School for Young Ladies, the students are somewhat put out when their headmistress and her rather awful younger brother suddenly drop dead—and not of natural causes, but of poison.
Rather than contacting the authorities—which would result in the closing of the school and all of the girls being sent home to their various unhappy households—the girls decide to bury the bodies in the garden, and to continue on as before.
But it isn’t long before things get out of hand—one of the girls is forced to start masquerading as Mrs. Plackett in order to answer various questions from the neighbors; they find that the state of her finances wasn’t nearly as solid as they’d assumed; it turns out that Mrs. Plackett had a beau; AND they know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there’s still a murderer around.
A darkly comedic historical murder mystery farce set at a boarding school??? When I picked up The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, I assumed it would be a slam dunk—everything about that premise is 110% My Jam.
But… in this case, very unfortunately, not so much.
There were things I liked about it, for sure—moments and character beats and certain interactions and descriptions and lines of dialogue—but as a whole, I just did NOT connect with this one, particularly on an emotional level. Heavier on style than heart, maybe?
About halfway through—when the girls started interacting more with the other residents of the town and the mystery aspect kicked into higher gear—I found myself warming more to the book. And by the end, I was invested enough that I had pleasant warm fuzzies about where it left most of the characters. So I’m not mad that I read it, but it’s not one that left me swooning for more.
As I’m still trying to put my finger on what, exactly, it was that didn’t work for me: If you HAVE read it, let me know how it went for you, and what it was that did—or didn’t—work for you? It’s driving me kinda bonkers.
Martha felt dizzy trying to interpret his maneuvers and finally determined to flee the next time his back was turned. This she did, and collided headlong with Dr. Snelling, who was on his way to the refreshments.
“I say!” The doctor glared at her and brushed his waistcoat and jacket vigorously, as if they might now be speckled with young lady crumbs.
—The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, by Julie Berry
The Girl with the Glass Bird, by Esme Kerr
This one, meanwhile, had me from the opening two sentences:
Edie crouched on her bedroom windowsill, training her binoculars on the three boys by the stone pond. Their names were Lyle, Jason, and Tom, and she hated them.
And by about the halfway mark, it had me hoping that there was a sequel. (I checked, and there is one: it’s called Mischief at Midnight!)
The Girl with the Glass Bird is about eleven-year-old Edie Wilson, an orphan who gets sent to a boarding school to pose as a student, but to act as a detective and spy. She’s supposed to get to the bottom of whatever is going on with Russian princess Anastasia Stolonov, whose father is convinced that she’s being harassed, but can’t prove it from afar. Edie is instructed to accomplish this without anyone—including Anastasia!—realizing what she’s up to.
For some reason—the premise (which made me think of a middle-grade Fingersmith, minus the romance) for sure, but also the cover art, maybe?—going in, I was convinced that this was a historical, but it’s NOT, it’s a contemporary, with cell phones and everything! But since the school is very Anti-Tech, it feels like a historical anyway, to the point where I almost wondered if there was a draft of it at some point that WAS set in a different era.
ANYWAY. I loved it? I loved seeing Edie learn to navigate a very new environment, and I loved seeing her get to know the other girls—both as peers AND as suspects. I loved seeing her start to question everything she’d been told, and I loved seeing her question everything she’d previously ASSUMED. I loved that the book—and characters!—explicitly acknowledged power dynamics, especially in regards to children and their guardians:
“I’m not afraid of anyone,” Edie said quickly. It was like a religion with her, to state this as a fact.
Miss Fotheringay smiled. “Let me rephrase that. You are not afraid of anyone, but your cousin is your guardian and this puts him in a position of power over you. It may be that on his visit here he used that power to make you give up your part in the school play. Why he should do this, I have no idea, but I do know that some adults have a foolish, ignorant belief that everything outside the classroom is an unnecessary distraction.”
Edie’s eyes flashed agreement.
And I loved that, mystery aside, at its heart, this is a story about two lonely girls becoming friends. It’s set—as so many boarding school stories are—in a big old drafty building, but it’s cozy as all get out, and I can’t wait to read the sequel.
[Digression: Sometimes I think adults should read more middle grade to remind themselves that children deal with so much of the same baloney that adults do—in terms of inequality and marginalization and complex social/cultural stuff—but with an added level of powerlessness that comes from often being dependent on the very people who are wielding power over them, ugh.]
Girl with the Glass Bird:
Mischief at Midnight:
Random recommendation!
For Wordle/Quordle fans: Semantle.
Even though I am very bad at it and only manage to solve it once every three or four days, I can’t stop playing this one, I love it so much.
From the Washington Post: “According to Semantle’s rules, if a player’s guess is one of the nearest 1,000 normal words to the target, it’s given a rank. If not, you’re “cold.” As the game’s instructions explain, “normal” here means non-capitalized and non-hyphenated words in the extensive list of English words Semantle references to randomly select its daily solution.”
More Boarding Schools:
Still more Boarding School Movies:
The Awakening (2011, Nick Murphy, watched on Shudder): England, 1921. A woman who makes her living exposing fradulent mediums heads to a supposedly haunted boarding school at the request of one of the teachers.
Pros include: Slow burn haunting, slow burn romance, creepy dollhouse, Jimmy McNulty’s butt. Cons include: Clearly not super memorable, as halfway through I realized I’d seen it before. (But I wasn’t upset about watching it again, it was a solid pick for a rainy Sunday.)
The Beguiled (2017, Sofia Coppola, watched on Netflix): 1864, Virginia. An injured Union soldier is taken in by the residents—teachers and students—of a Southern girls’ school. Complications ensue.
Pros include: Hoo boy, Colin Farrell is an attractive gentleman, and the whole cast is extremely aware of that fact, as is the camera. This is basically F Around and Find Out: The Movie, as the first half involves Ole Colin romancing everyone in his orbit and the second half involves everything going to hell. Super atmospheric, lots of flowy dresses, lots of hilarious polite sniping between the girls.
Spoiler: If I were incapacitated and Nicole Kidman was displeased with me and turned to someone and said, “Bring me the anatomy book,” I think I would die of fright right then and there. Tip: This movie is EXTREMELY dark (visually), I would advise watching it in a very very dark room, good grief.
Cons include: I mean it’s a Civil War story featuring an entirely white cast.
Got more boarding school stories for me? Let me know, especially if they’re scary!
More soon,
Leila
Rereading my review of Prickwillow Place, I wondered why it had been marketed to MG because the prose was at times "utterly turgid." (Wowwww, 2014 me. Wow.) I recall being mildly concerned that the girls MUST have known they wouldn't get away with anything, but by the middle, when they started to connect more to each other, and the reasons behind WHY they were doing things, I felt the novel hit its stride.
I have, to my horror, discovered Worldle... and I am SO very bad at geography I feel like I *ought* to play it...