Prep and Ecstasy

If you like boarding school books, don't bother with High Jinx. Read the unabridged, uncensored version of today's Tots to Teens column.

No lesson from this school story

Tots to Teens: By DAPHNE LEE

BEING a fan of boarding school stories, I got very excited when I read the blurb for High Jinx by Sara Lawrence (published by Faber this September): It’s starts, “Jinx Slater is delighted to have reached the giddy heights of the Lower Sixth at Stagmount, England’s most exclusive school for girls.” 

Most promising, considering the author went to Roedean, actually Britain’s most exclusive boarding school for girls and Stagmount, the blurb goes on to reveal, is situated in Brighton (as is Roedean).

However, two chapters into the review copy, I realised that High Jinx is not all I’d hoped it would be. 

It isn’t really a boarding school story. It’s a teenage novel a la Gossip Girl and The A-List set in a boarding school. So, the only midnight feasting involves large amounts of booze and plenty of Ecstasy.

Okay, I know it's unreasonable to expect 21st century teenage girls to think of nothing but hockey and the end of term play, but ... well, is it really unreasonable? If Harry Potter can go through six years of boarding school without popping an E (he has a wand for crying out loud - if Melvyn Burgess was the author of the series, Harry would have, by book three, conjured up a whole harem, complete with a mountain of hashish: Harry Potter and the Dance of the Seven Veils, anyone?), I don't see why Jinx Slater can't. It's fiction, after all. Anything can happen. Nothing can happen (nothing but spotted dick and histrionic French mistresses - and I do mean the pudding and teachers).

One of the reasons I like boarding school stories is that I like reading about boarding schools. I like the details about dormitories and common rooms, games and prep, prefects and mistresses (a boarding school with teachers instead of masters and mistresses is a second-rate one). 

It’s a fascinating world, both familiar and alien. It’s school with a pyjama party every night. Sort of. 

The uniform, the rules, the tight-knit community, all offer a sense of security and belonging. Unless, of course, you happen to be the difficult, rebellious girl whom nobody likes. 

They would not have approved of Jinx Slater at the Chalet School (Elinor Brent-Dyer), Malory Towers (Enid Blyton) or the Jane Willard Foundation (the school in Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s Dimsie books). They would probably have tried to reform her. Darrell Rivers (from Malory Towers) would have lost her temper with Jinx and smacked her. Jo Bettany (Chalet School) would have killed her with kindness.

What would Darrell, Jo and Dimsie have made of Sarah Callender, the heroine of The Passion Flower Hotel? What, indeed, would Jinx have thought of her? The Passion Flower Hotel (by Rosalind Erskine) is a boarding school story that I have yet to read, but desperately want to. Set in a boarding school called Bryant House, the author (really Roger Erskine Longrigg) is, apparently, faithful to the style and content of traditional boarding school books except that his schoolgirls, instead of staging an adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper for the library fund, decide to line their own pockets by selling sexual favours to the boys from a neighbouring school. 

They form The Syndicate and set up a bordello, in Bryant House's basement, called The Passion Flower Hotel. Their advertising slogans are "The Syndicate will meet your needs" and "Actions speak louder than words". Services fall into three categories: "Vision Only", "Touch" and "Nothing barred short of la penetration".

It sounds shocking, and it probably was quite a daring book for its time (published by Pan in 1962), but I don't think it was meant for children/teens. A review in Britain's The Sunday Times said, "an OUTRAGEOUS PLOT (by Nabokov out of Angela Brazil)." However, it's (I'm told) a whole lot tamer than most current teenage novels (the sort that deal with sex, that is), including High Jinx. I don't doubt it. I recently read Rainbow Party and was, once again, flabbergasted (and a little grossed-out) by the whole premise (think girls, think boys, think different coloured lipsticks, think oral sex). I do think though that it wasn't the sex that I found distasteful, it was the style of writing and the attitude of the characters: in both cases, flippant and dismissive. Also, the characters were shallow, vain, selfish and stupid.

Sarah Callender, by all accounts, is attractive, smart and enterprising - in fact, not unlike Dimsie and Darrell and Jo. She just uses her charms and talents in a way that would make those three young ladies faint away in horror. I've searched online for The Passion Flower Hotel and it's available for under RM40, exclusive of postage. Considering what I've spent on my out-of-print Dimsies it's a small price to pay to cheer myself up after the disappointment of High Jinx.

Comments

[Jay]

I go to the most exclusive boarding school in ireland and it is all about booze, weed, cocaine and designer handbags. i guess boarding schools have just turned into that JK Rowling just didnt want to admit it.