First Term at Malory Towers (by Enid Blyton)

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It’s that time of year, nearing the end, when I realise I haven’t quite managed the 100 books I planned to read during the year. I’m not far off: 94 completed, and a couple I’m reading slowly that I should finish on December 31st. But that still meant I needed to read four books in about six days… and I knew I wasn’t going to read much on Christmas Day. Time, I decided (as happens most years) to find a few childhood favourites: shortish books that I can read in just an hour or two, without any undue mental strain.

Glancing at the books which a 12-year-old friend has borrowed in the past couple of years, I spotted the Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton. As a teenager, those were my favourite books. I read them all regularly, but as far as I can tell I hadn’t read them since 1992. So I pulled out ‘First Term at Malory Towers’, and finished it this morning.

I knew the overall plot, of course. 12-year-old Darrell Rivers goes to boarding school for the first time. She’s a kind, honest girl who is enthusiastic about life, good at swimming, reasonably hard working. She makes friends, enjoys playing a few ‘tricks’ on teachers, and gains a great deal from her time there. But I’d forgotten most of the details of the book.

In particular, I’d quite forgotten the storyline involving Darrell’s friend Sally, who is a new girl at the same time as she is. But Sally, unlike the wise, intuitive person she becomes, is a morose, withdrawn person in this first book of the series. She answers questions in monosyllables and keeps to herself. Darrell becomes friendly with the lively and mischievous Alicia, and would mostly have ignored Sally but for a letter from her mother, who has met Sally’s mother and baby sister. But Sally denies that she has a sister…

There’s also the timid Mary-Lou, who is scared of everything. Darrell is rather scornful,and though she’s not as outspoken or unkind as some of their classmates, she finds Mary-Lou a bit irritating. However that’s nothing to what they all feel for the spoilt, unintelligent Gwendoline who thinks a great deal of herself and tries to manipulate people and circumstances to suit her own purposes.

Caricatures? Undoubtedly. But Darrell is a realistic person, whose main flaw is a terrible temper that she can’t control. It gets her into trouble in the course of the book, more than once. I hadn’t remembered that. Nor had I remembered that, despite the rather basic style, there are a couple of very moving scenes in this book.

Enid Blyton wasn’t the greatest writer, but she had quite an insight into character, and the reasons that some people were jealous, or unkind, or thoughtless. As a book intended for people of around nine or ten and upwards, I think it’s remarkable in the way it helps build understanding of those who may be different from us. Through Darrell’s eyes we start to see that being afraid is nothing to be ashamed of, that people can’t be coerced into changing who they are, and that violent behaviour in a bad temper can lead to potentially serious consequences.

Indeed, I liked the book so much that I immediately pulled its first sequel off my shelves, and will read that next.

The book is set in a girls’ school, and is obviously intended for girls, but any keen reader could benefit from the books which are appropriate for anyone of about eight or nine and upwards. These books have been reprinted many times, and I understand a TV series has recently been made to introduce a new generation to Malory Towers.

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