24 Jul 2001

Changes for the Chalet School (by Elinor M Brent-Dyer)


I have just finished re-reading yet another of Elinor M Brent-Dyer's prolific series about the Chalet School.

In this book, 'Changes for the Chalet School' the School prepares to leave St Briavel's. This is a fictional island off the coast of Wales where they have been for a while during the war.  Now at last they are planning to return to the Oberland.

There's not a lot of plot in this book, despite the rather extreme changes ahead. Instead it's very much a formulaic school story. There's a bit of light relief when the girls visit the Cadbury factory in Birmingham, although too much educational detail for my tastes. There's also an amusing episode when they have some trouble with pigs at night...

By the time I was half-way through I realised it had only been a year since I had read this book, but I kept going anyway.

Not very exciting.  Worth reading as part of the series if you're a fan, but not really recommended as an introduction to the Chalet School.

You can also read my somewhat longer review of 'Changes for the Chalet School' which I wrote after re-reading again, twelve years later. 

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