Third year at Malory Towers (by Enid Blyton)

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I loved Enid Blyton books as a child. I discovered more of them as I approached my teenage years, and as a teenager my favourites were the three school series. I liked them all, but Malory Towers had the edge. As an adult I would still occasionally dip into one or two of them for ‘comfort’ reading. I’d almost forgotten about them when my young granddaughter discovered them as audio-books. 

So, as I’ve been rereading many of my favourite authors over the past seven or eight years, I decided to reread Enid Blyton. I read and enjoyed ‘Second form at Malory Towers’ last month, and have just finished its sequel, ‘Third year at Malory Towers’, which I last read over twelve years ago. 

Darrell is the main character again; she’s now fourteen, and is in the third form, with Miss Peters as form mistress. Her best friend Sally is in quarantine, and her parents have agreed to pick up a new girl, an American called Zerelda whose grandmother is a friend of Darrell’s grandmother. 

Zerelda is a caricature - I assume deliberately so. She drawls - American accents were somewhat frowned upon in the 1940s when this book was written, apparently - and she not only puts her hair up in imitation of a film star, she wears heavy make-up. She looks about twenty, though she’s not yet sixteen. And at first she’s put in the fourth form. Unfortunately, her work standard is mostly quite poor, and she doesn’t fit in at all with the rather studious girls in her class. So she’s moved to the third form, where she is greatly admired by the shallow Geraldine. 

Zerelda’s passion is acting, and she loves Shakespeare. She’s convinced that she’s going to be a great actress in the movies, and that she shouldn’t have to worry about boring things like maths and history. However, she’s also very good-humoured, never taking offence no matter how rude others are to her. I couldn’t help liking her despite her odd appearance.

There’s another new girl, Bill (Wilhelmina), who is likeable and open, and passionate about horses. She has her horse Thunder with her, and finds it hard following school rules. She has seven older brothers, and has previously shared their tutor. So her standard of work is rather patchy, excellent in some subjects, but not in others. And her mind is almost constantly filled with riding. 

Alicia is still quite hard; she can be self-centred and intolerant. But she can also be a very good companion. Her friend Betty is also in quarantine so she and Darrell go around together for the first few weeks. Jean is still the head of the form, Mary-Lou still quiet and loyal. And there’s Mavis, who was apparently new the previous term, and who has an amazingly powerful voice. She knows it, too, and talks all the time about when she’s going to be an opera singer… 

I vaguely recalled the characters and some of the story-lines. But despite that, and despite the sometimes poor quality of the writing, I enjoyed the story very much. I quickly got into it, and found it hard to put down. Somehow, despite the obvious caricatures, the people feel real - and it’s not just that I’m feeling nostalgic about my childhood. Despite having been created nearly eighty years ago, many of their issues and ethics feel up-to-date, relevant to today, even if some of the solutions are a tad too simplistic.

What surprised me was how very moved I felt in a couple of places: in particular the scenes when Bill disobeys rules because she’s worried about her horse. There’s some humour, too, which I had also forgotten, and which made me smile. Mam’zelle Dupont is a delightful caricature. It’s not a difficult read, of course; it was intended for girls of about nine to thirteen, and it’s only about 160 pages in my paperback edition. I finished it in a couple of sessions. 

These books are regularly reprinted, and apparently still have a market for children, mostly girls, of around 8-10 who are reading well and want good stories with interesting people. While they won’t appeal to adults who didn’t come across them as children, in my view they are an excellent addition to the more modern fiction intended for this age group. And of course for adults like myself who grew up reading Enid Blyton. 

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