Clare of Glen House by R. A. H. Goodyear

This review was originally published on my other blog in 2007.

This book was published in 1955, according to Amazon.uk. Every so often I get the urge to read more British school stories and this is one of them. It is quite interesting to me to compare the behavior of kids that many years ago to the behavior of kids now. Of course, the observations are only as good as the authors are at writing about them, but you can get a general flavor of how things were then.

Clare of Glen House is not, first of all, a girl. Clare is his last name. In most of these British school stories the boys are referred to by their last names. Brothers are often referred to with the further appellation of "junior" or "minor", although the brothers themselves usually call each other by their given names. In this case, the younger brother is called Jourdelle minor and he is a trouble maker extraordinaire. Jourdelle minor, also called Pipit, gets into one scrape after another and is frequently bailed out, not by his older brother, but rather by Clare, who is in the same form as the older brother.

Young Pipit can never quite figure out 1) how he manages to get himself into one scrape after another and 2) why Clare seems to always bail him out. Clare, a good and kind student, is also a premier athlete. So, as is also typical of these stories, there is a good deal of sport in the story as well. This time football and track and field. Clare is also one of the least well off students in the school. He has little money to spare and due to his generosity to Pipit, he is anticipating having to miss a key game, because he can't afford the train fare to participate in the match. But at the last minute, some of his generosity to Pipit is repaid and he does manage to make the game, where he acquits himself very well. He ends up meeting the father of the Jourdelles who years earlier saved his own father from jail. This turns out to be the reason he has been so helpful to Jourdelle minor.

The British school stories often follow this pattern - with the story revolving around sport, pranks, and honor. The younger or weaker boys get themselves into trouble and are gradually pointed toward maturity through the acts of older or more honorable boys.

This was a satisfying read, if not especially outstanding.