Rita Coatts

Mary Prescott, a dreamy young bookworm with a decided taste for exciting adventure fiction, is sent to Hill Top School by her mother and stepfather in this British children's novel from 1936. Her reading habits soon become an issue, and headmistress Miss Hood herself must step in when Mary smuggles a romance novel into chapel, forbidding her from reading "rubbishy literature." Now allowed one historical tale per week, Mary soon finds herself more involved in school matters, making both friends and enemies amongst her fellow students. She also finds herself involved in her own exciting adventure, as she is drawn in to the mystery of nearby Lowland Hall, deserted since its owner, suspected of murder, absconded to foreign parts. All is not as it seems at Lowland however, and Mary and her friends are soon caught up in a most unexpected series of events...

The first school story I read from Rita Coatts - subsequently, I have read her Facing It Out!: A Story for Girls - Book Worm: The Mystery Solver was a title I selected largely because of its title! As a bookworm myself, one who also occasionally indulges in some "rubbishy literature," I was instantly sympathetic toward Mary, and rooting for her to triumph in her new school experience. There's plenty of unlikely incident here, of the sort that school story aficionados will instantly recognize, but there is also plenty of more realistic social conflict amongst the girls. I don't know if it was the intention of the author to communicate such an idea, but I also appreciated the theme of a bookworm discovering that reality too can provide exciting experiences. This can be a difficult novel to track down - I read it in the rare book room of the university I attended, some years ago - but is one I would recommend to fans, provided they can obtain it, as being quite a fun, lighthearted example of the genre.… (mais)

Rebellious Suzanne Holt, outraged that her guardian and aunt had broken faith with her dead parents, who always promised that she would never be sent to boarding school, is looking for a way to escape from what she perceives to be her impending imprisonment at Woodlands School. Desperate Jasmine Miller, on the run from her cruel and abusive step-mother, who has turned her into a drudge since the death of her father, is looking for a place where she can hide. When the two girls meet on the train, after Jasmine jumps into Suzanne's car at the Junction, the irrepressible Miss Holt has an idea: they will switch places. Jasmine will impersonate Suzanne at school, thereby gaining a safe place to disappear, while Suzanne will make her way to her old Nannie's home in Clacton, gaining her independence and thumbing her nose at her aunt. The best laid plans have a tendency to go awry, of course, and although Jasmine succeeds in becoming "Sue," a new girl at Woodlands, Suzanne finds herself entangled with a traveling gypsy family, and no closer to reaching the safety of her old nurse's home as the months go by. As "Sue" comes to love school more and more, finding a group of loyal friends in 'The Irrepressibles,' Suzanne is tricked by gypsy couple Rob and Min into thinking she has lost all of her money (stolen by Rob, of course), and must stay with them in their caravan, earning her keep by dancing at various fairs around the country. But when "Sue" is told the startling news that Suzanne's parents, believed drowned in a tragic shipping accident off China, have been discovered alive, on a desert island, and that she (believed to be Suzanne Holt) is shortly to be removed from school by her Aunt Bridge, the terrified girl runs away from Woodlands, making for Nannie's home in Clacton herself. But where is the real Suzanne? And can this hopeless muddle ever be set right...?

Although Facing It Out is only my second book from Rita Coatts - the first being the marvelously titled Book Worm: The Mystery Solver - I get the sense that her school stories must all feature these kind of (extremely) unlikely adventure plots. After all, in Book Worm the eponymous heroine solves a decades-old mystery case, clearing the name of an innocent man, and reuniting him with his lady love after many years. Why shouldn't this book feature schoolgirl impersonators, runaways, and adventures off with the gypsies? Although ostensibly the story of both girls, the bulk of the narrative is given over to "Sue's" experiences at Woodlands, for which I was grateful. Although the depiction of the romany here isn't as bad as it could have been - Rob and Min are deceitful, but they are also clean, and not terribly unkind; while another member of the community helps Suzanne to escape - it still made me cringe with its stereotypes. The school story aspects themselves weren't all that unlikely, with many of the standard "new girl must find her place" plot elements. I thought that it was fascinating that the 'Irrepressibles,' the group of four girls - Olive Brown, Peggy Seymour, Phyllis Knight, Bee Poulton - who eventually make "Sue" one of the own, imagine that there could be a racial component to the obvious secret that their new friend is keeping. When discussing it amongst themselves, Phyllis wonders if perhaps "Sue's" mother wasn't "all white," if perhaps she has "a touch of the tar brush" in her. It seems an odd thing for British schoolgirls at an exclusive boarding school in the 1930s to be wondering about, but then Peggy's response - "what is a touch of color?" - seems atypically accepting as well. Despite the absurdity of the plot, and the inclusion of some outdated (or, in the case of the Romany, perhaps not so outdated) ideas, I found that I enjoyed Facing It Out, whose titles refers, not just to each girl's effort to win through a set of trying circumstances, but their eventual decision to return to Woodlands together, and face out the resultant scandal. Recommended to fans of the girls' school story, particularly those who enjoy a bit of the surreal in the mix.… (mais)