If you were following my Twitter feed or my Facebook earlier today you would have noticed me complaining about reading a book instead of listing books. It’s totally my own fault and I have no-one else to blame but I’ll try and blame the author…let’s see how I go.

I picked up The Chalet School in Exile by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. All I was going to do was look at the publishing date so I could get some idea of a price for it, seriously, but I took a look at the first couple of pages as they weren’t in such good condition and ended up on the first page of the book. Bad move, very bad move. The Chalet School books are seriously good books, I won’t claim to have read all of them as there are around 60 books and some of them are hard to get but I have read a fair few and they are addictive reading.

The Chalet School books are essentially about a private girls school set in the Austrian Alps until 1938 when they relocate to the island of Guernsey. The Austrian Alps is supposed to have very good air and be very good for people with delicate health. The founder of the school, Madge Bettany, has a 12 year old sister who is delicate so she kills two birds with one stone by setting up a school there, thus providing herself with a job and a career. Madge Bettany is a tyrant for good manners and teaching girls the important things in life and these include a good education in topics such as languages (they alternate using French, German or English as the main language of the day), history, geography, science, sports, needlework and being good all round people.

During the life of the series, Madge marries and has children, her twin brother marries and has four children but as they live in India (which is considered a bad place for children at that time) the children live with Madge and Jo (her younger sister), Jo also marries, has children and becomes an accomplished author – at this point you can speculate on whether the books she writes are written about the school, it is certainly suggested within the books.

There are many students and they all have their quirks. Many of the younger ones like playing tricks or bad grammar and are told off in no uncertain terms. There are accidents, illnesses and so many other things that I couldn’t possibly write about them all in one blog. I’m over 400 words and I haven’t even begun to tell you why this particular book took over my morning.

The Chalet School in Exile starts its journey in mid-March 1938 just at the time Hitler invades Austria and draws it into the Third Reich. It’s both an interesting and horrific time in history. In this book Madge and her husband, Jem, are looking at the school and whether it’s safe to continue. Jem is worried while Madge is not which was typical of that time, many people didn’t think there would be a problem and were proved so wrong. During half term they move the school nearer to the sanitarium run by Jem as they feel this is safer but found nothing was safe as Jo’s adopted sister, Robin, tried to save a Jewish man from being beaten. The girls with her help and they all find themselves unable to go back to school. They are smuggled out of Austria very quickly and move to Guernsey where they stay for a while until Madge sets up the school on the island. They have all sorts of fun and games including a spy and the birth of Jo’s children. That’s all I’ll say about the plot as it’s very involved and there’s so much in it. If it was being written now then it would not be limited to 190 pages but would be much bigger and I suggest would be 400+ pages.

This particular book is a spellbinder, I’ve read it before and couldn’t put it down then so I have no idea how come I thought today would be any different. It was written in 1940, only a year or two after the events it’s talking about and is aimed at children. There are many difficult concepts but then again, those were very difficult times and the children in Britain would have known bombings, food shortages, having to grow your own food and so much more. They would have heard about the war and would have known some of what was going on. It was quite clear in this book that people had some knowledge about the concentration camps and some of the other atrocities that were going on, some of the spouses of Jo’s school friends somehow made it out of a concentration camp and to Guernsey. The writing is good and some of the harder concepts are glossed over so younger children should be able to cope with them, it will open up a whole slew of questions, though. It is a page turner, I couldn’t put it down as I had to turn over the page and find out what was happening next, I know I’ve read it before and had a really good memory of it but I still had to find out what was on the next page, the only time I looked up in the entire book was to look up one name so I could place it in a historical timeline.

I have 14 more Chalet School books to be listed. I do hope I don’t have the same problem with them otherwise I’ll be a long time listing.