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I last read ‘A chalet girl from Kenya’ almost ten years ago, and had pretty much forgotten the storyline. It’s 33rd in the original series, and covers the third term of the new Swiss branch of the Chalet School. So it follows directly on from ‘The Chalet School does it again’ which I re-read at the end of October.
This book was first published in 1955 and features a young and very likeable new girl called Jo Scott. But we don’t meet her at the start. Instead the book opens with a letter from Jo’s rather fluffy mother, a former student of the school, to Joey Maynard. Joey learns that she has an unofficial goddaughter who is fourteen, and about to join the Chalet School. The Scotts - Paul and Maisie - work in Kenya, but are concerned about the political situation there, so they want their daughter safely in Europe.
We then meet Jo herself, on the school train and then a coach. Josette Russell has been asked to look after her, and the two bond quite well. Josette is Joey Maynard’s niece, also named for her. Josette is part of the ‘gang’, a group of school middles who are mostly generous, outgoing and helpful, although it’s quite exclusive.
Much of the book covers day-to-day school events as Jo Scott settles in. She’s been to boarding school before, and she’s a sensible girl, unlike her mother. Part of the reason for her being sent away to school was that she worried more about finances and the future than either of her parents did, and they wanted her to have a more normal teenage life. Despite being a thoroughly nice girl who works hard, she manages to clash with one of the prefects, but this thread rather peters out towards the end.
There’s a very moving section towards the middle, however, when worrying news comes out of Kenya. Jo isn’t told at first - the only person with a radio big enough to get international news is Joey Maynard, and she doesn’t want to worry her goddaughter unnecessarily. But eventually Jo has to be told that her mother has been seriously injured and her father missing, after an attack on their farm by the Mau Mau.
Elinor M Brent-Dyer kept her books grounded in reality, referring from time to time to world events that impact her girls. The school’s move out of Austria (in ‘The Chalet School in exile') was due to World War II. They’re now in Switzerland as it’s safer there. I wouldn’t have known anything about the Mau Mau uprising and might have thought it was fictional if I hadn’t read (and re-read) Marcia Willett’s excellent trilogy that starts with a tragedy for three young children in ‘Looking forward’.
Joey Maynard is at her best in this book, in my view. She cares for her family of eight, and also gives love and empathy to others who are suffering emotionally. She sometimes comes across as rather pushy, but I liked her very much as she does what she can to help Jo (and others). She’s also in loco parentis when Jo does something dramatic later in the book and strains her shoulders badly as a result.
There’s an ongoing thread, introduced in an earlier book, involving a small girl in the nearby Sanatorium who has been very weak, and has to undergo dangerous surgery. Brent-Dyer’s grasp on medical matters is rather vague, and it’s not made clear what exactly Leila’s illness is. The San mainly deals with TB patients, in an era before antibiotics were so widespread, although I had thought they would have been used by 1955.
As the summer term nears its end, with temperatures rising surprisingly high, the girls are able to have afternoons at a lake not far away. They also plan an end-of-term extravaganza, with a flower show and games. There’s rather too much detail about this, as is typical with these books, but it rounds off the term nicely.
Overall, I thought this a nice addition to the series, although it probably appeals more to adults like me who read these books as teenagers than to today's more sophisticated teens. I have a hardback edition which was once my mother’s, but apparently the Armada paperback wasn’t cut at all. Unfortunately it's not currently in print, and even the Armada paperbacks can be extremely expensive.
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