Janie of La Rochelle (by Elinor M Brent-Dyer)

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I have been enjoying reading through the ‘La Rochelle’ series by Elinor M Brent-Dyer. I had only read two or three of them previously, so was very pleased to have been able to acquire them all over the past couple of years. I have just finished reading ‘Janie of La Rochelle’, the sixth in the series (out of seven). I don’t recall having read this before, although it's possible that I read a hardback version as a teenager.

The book focuses, unsurprisingly, on Janie, youngest of the three Temple sisters who were introduced in (and the main focus of) ‘The Maids of La Rochelle’, set in Guernsey. Janie is about to be married at the start of this book, and learns that her husband-to-be, Julian, has managed to buy the house where she and her sisters were so happy in the past. It seems a bit autocratic that he makes such a huge decision without consulting Janie; but she is so delighted that it doesn’t matter too much.

I like the character of Janie. She is intuitive and warm-hearted, but she’s also full of liveliness and quite prepared to behave like a teenager at times. Several of her friends and relatives comment that she seems too young to be married, despite being in her twenties. She evidently very much enjoys married life, and doesn’t seem to mind Julian telling her to rest, or take it easy, or generally be in charge of what she does. But the book was published in the early 1930s, intended to be contemporary, so perhaps that’s not surprising.

There is a very large cast of characters.. For anyone who had not read the earlier books in the series they would be bewildering; even having read the earlier five in the past six months, I did not remember who was whom. The lengthy Atherton family appear in all the earlier books, although only a few of them have important roles. The Willoughby family (seven offspring) are the focus of ‘Seven Scamps’, and the Raphael family (three girls) are the focus of ‘Heather Leaves School’.

While these other families live in mainland England, they all come regularly to Guernsey for long summer breaks, and are regularly in touch with Janie and her sisters. In this book several of them get engaged or married, and I entirely lost track of who was whom. It didn’t much matter. Romance is clearly in the air, and Janie is delighted when any of her friends fall in love with people she knows. As a young teenager, I might have found this warm and romantic, but as I couldn't really remember who was whom, it mostly left me rather cold.

Unfortunately, too, this book doesn’t have much of a plot or focus. It just charts what happens in Janie’s life during her first year of marriage. There’s plenty of socialising and a few domestic incidents. But there’s no real conflict, and the only problem of note happens mid-way through when Janie’s two young nephews vanish. There’s quite a moving scene when they’re eventually found, and another, later in the book, when Julian’s grandmother has a serious talk to Janie. But nothing out of the ordinary happens - and the last-but-one chapter, possibly intended as a surprise, contains something I had guessed would happen several chapters earlier.

Elinor M Brent-Dyer had some quite progressive views about education for the era, which are - to some extent - demonstrated in her much longer (and better-known) Chalet School series. But her views on raising babies and small children are very old-fashioned and rather harsh, in my view. All the families in the book are in a position to have not just maids and cooks but nurses or nannies for their babies, and they are brought up with strict schedules. Small boys, according to the author, must be spanked when they misbehave; she is quite scathing about the idea of talking to them, or reasoning with them.

I’m glad I have this book, and will no doubt pick it up again next time I read through this series. I plan to keep a list of the various families in the earlier books, too, next time around. But of all the books in the series, this is my least favourite so far.

Having said that, it’s a useful background to some of the Chalet School books. In its Guernsey era, the two series meet; Janie and her sisters become friendly with some of the Chalet School folk, and their daughters eventually go to the school. But as a book in its own right, it’s not great - and definitely not recommended unless you have read at least some of the earlier books in the ‘La Rochelle’ series.

Review copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews