Antonia Forest Fans ...

Damn it, saw this thread title and thought it was going to be about a new reprint of all her books .

OK

The Kingscote books were the first boarding school books I read that actually rang true. The characters are fully rounded with strengths and - sometimes pretty huge - weaknesses and yet I was captivated by all of them, even the ones I disliked.

I am obsessed with books about big families, and the Marlow dynamics are among the most fascinating of any I have read.

The Christmas play at Wade Minster is one of the most festive things ever written, along with the Christmas carols at the manor house in The Dark Is Rising. I have to reread it every December .

I was always Team Nicola, I think because she was a singer, like me (but also because hers is the point of view in the Kingscote books). Love Rowan as well, and I longed for a big brother like Peter (or a boyfriend like Patrick ).

Well, their general blonde and blue-eyedness is mentioned right at the very beginning of Autumn Term, which was the first one I read, so no. I took it for granted! Though I will say that I don;t have a very strong sense of what any of them look like, apart from being blonde and blue-eyed, basically 'nice-looking' according to Mrs Merrick, and apparently tending to thinness.

I think I struggle with who's straight-haired and who is curly, and who wears their hair short and who long which I think we're only told once, in that same passage. I think Ann is one of the curly ones, isn' she there's the bit in End of Term where she's combing her hair with difficulty after she washes it, and Nicola thinks she should wear it loose to play Mary in the Minster.

Though I've always found it slightly odd that at the beginning of Run Away Home (I think) Nicola registers Giles across a station platform and before she recognises him as her brother, thinks that he's 'fairly gorgeous'.

Does anyone else struggle with accepting that all the Marlow children are fair-haired? (In fact, I can't remember if Peter's hair colour is ever mentioned, but all the girls are described as blonde.) Giles and Ginty, OK, but surely Karen and Rowan have dark hair, and in my head Nicola is definitely dark too, so Lawrie must be. Sorry, AF, you got it wrong!

I felt it was more unfair that Lawrie basically whinges her way into getting the Idiot Boy without paying for it.
It's fair enough doing swapsies for cigarette cards, but Mrs M should have put a foot down and told Lawrie that was too much and she would have to pay them back the money.

I remember that one too! The lurching fortunes of the Marlows are the only real betrayal that AF only ever planned one book at a time, I think, but coming up with in-world explanations is more fun.

Badger Books currently have End of Term in stock, as well as the Sally Hayward continuation.
www.badgerbooks.co.uk

Was anyone on here around on Trennels for the great ‘Was Pam Marlow unreasonable and unfair to liquidate the family tiara and spend the proceeds on a well-bred pony for one child and an exquisite hunter for herself?’ debate? Got very heated, that one.

Try Archive of Our Own, Trennels

I read a very good short fanfic about Miranda and Jan Scott meeting again as adults, but I can’t remember where I found it or what it’s called.

Lucy Mangan called her "Jane Austen for children".

There is fanfic..........

Huge Forest fan here! She is an unrecognised genius. I love her because her characters are real, complex, recognisable people. Lois Sanger and Tim in particular are both fascinating.

I've bought copies of all of them through Girls Gone By Publishers as they were re-released, apart from the school stories that were available second-hand (in very battered and falling-apart copies!) I think even the GGBP editions are hard to get hold of now though, second hand, but I think they re-release them again at times.

Hi AF fans

Do you all own much loved old copies or are any back in print? Last time I looked, I found Autumn Term, but didn't read it, knowing how frustrating it would be to read, enjoy then...No more.
I'd enjoy them even more in kindle or similar!

I'm currently rereading all the home books as I know them much less than school ones. One I was excited to realise I'd never read at all (Run Away Home). I find them harder to get into than the school books but very rewarding once I do. Now I have twins of my own I'm finding the Nicola/Laurie relationship particularly interesting.

Love these books.
My favourite characters are Rowan, Nicola and I do like Patrick.
Never liked the “home” ones as much as school but maybe I need to read them again.
Don’t understand why they haven’t been reprinted.

I was given Autumn Term when I was about twelve, and have been happily re-reading the books for over sixty years.

I really like the invented language in Thuggery. It's actually really clever when you look at it. It reminds me of A Clockwork Orange.

AF is a genius. I know she only ended up writing children's books by accident having decided it would be easier to be published as a children's author, and she could switch to adult books once she'd a foot in the door but even though I read them far too young to fully appreciate them, I still think their moral and cultural sophistication, and the acuity of their characterisation more than stands up to most decent writing for adults. Apart from anything else, I owe so many bits of knowledge to her the poetry that insufferable gold-eyed-- Patrick recites on the ride back from Wade Minster, the rules of cricket (I'm not from the UK), the plays of Shakespeare, the Brontes' imaginary worlds, hunting, falconry, the navy, Anglicanism, pre-Vatican II English Catholicism etc etc.

I don't think I can choose a favourite (other than not The Thuggery Affair) but I love set pieces like Nicolas playing Juliet and Viola, Patrick and Nicola riding over to Wade Minster at half-term, Patrick weeping at the classical concert and discussing cheating at exams with his mother and Claudie afterwards, the various school plays, Nicola and Lawrie at that local talent festival, Miranda's Dress, the diving competition at the regatta, Nicola cutting her hand on the four-leaved clover in its locket, and the various Christmases.

I love Forest even though there are such excruciating scenes of embarrassment - it took me 20 years to re-read the Guide Court of Honour scene. My favourites would be Attic and Cricket Term, Peters Room and the Thuggery Affair. Jukie strikes me as very like Patrick only from a poor background.