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Original poster

I need a Chalet School fix

282 replies

Dilbertian · 15/12/2021 15:50

Please help:

Where can I download a Chalet School book? I'm astonished that I cannot find any as ebook.

(When you're under the weather, nothing quite hits the spot like a bit of EBD escapism.)

OP posts:
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15
FelicityBeedle · 19/12/2021 14:40

@helpadvicewhateverneeded
Yes they do! I wonder who that could be strokes chin thoughtfully and stares in mirror

Howyoualldoworkme · 19/12/2021 14:40

Loads of good free stuff on here including masses of Abbey books that I became slightly addicted to Grin They seem to breed even more than the Chalet School and are all called Jan or Joy or Rose!
You do need a kindle though.
www.fadedpage.com/

helpadvicewhateverneeded · 19/12/2021 14:36

Someone on here has a Dropbox account they can share which has (whispers) every book in!!!

FelicityBeedle · 19/12/2021 14:32

Oops nuns!

FelicityBeedle · 19/12/2021 14:16

Maybe they can share Margot’s portion between them, mums don’t inherit do they?

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 19/12/2021 14:12

Imagine the inheritance arguments.

AIBU to be very hurt by this? My father was killed in a space-related accident and my brothers and I were left to fend for ourselves in a hut. A very kind family who were on holiday nearby took us in and we were told we were now adopted members of the family. They are very comfortably off. My adoptive parents are now dead and it turns out our adoption was never legally approved, so our so called 'siblings' are saying we are not included in the will...

FelicityBeedle · 19/12/2021 14:04

Oh I think I’ve read that tropes one before, very funny! Didn’t she technically adopt the Richardson children and another set too?

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 19/12/2021 13:54

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/ChaletSchool

This says 11. Very funny analysis of the Maynard offspring, btw!

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 19/12/2021 13:45

I remember those. Did they have something to do with country dancing?

Nomoreusernames1244 · 19/12/2021 13:44

I also enjoyed the abbey school books, they don’t seem as well known as the chalet school?

Need to dig out the copies I have and see if I can find more.

FelicityBeedle · 19/12/2021 13:41

How many children did she end up with in the end? And does the include her ‘adopted’ ones?

I also find Biddy so bizarre, originally she’s shipped to the village school but they later decide she’s too bright for that and the whole school adopts her

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 19/12/2021 13:13

Oh yes, I doubt very much I knew how to pronounce it as a child!

-ough is a right bugger for pronunciation.

Slough (place), bough, plough
Slough (off, e.g. dead skin), rough, tough, enough
Furlough, though, dough
Through
Trough, cough
Lough (Irish loch)
Thorough, borough

And another one when you add in ought, wrought etc.

As you were!

ArblemarzipanTFruitcake · 19/12/2021 13:00

But 'furl off' would be a much better way to pronounce it.

Corbally · 19/12/2021 12:30

My smugness was tempered by the fact that I’m pretty sure that as a child CS reader I pronounced it ‘furloff.’

ArblemarzipanTFruitcake · 19/12/2021 12:14

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

How many other CS fans felt smug last year when the rest of the world was learning the word 'furlough' for the first time?

Grin

I first encountered it in 'What Katy Did Next' - yes, I felt smug Grin
Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 19/12/2021 12:11

How many other CS fans felt smug last year when the rest of the world was learning the word 'furlough' for the first time?

Grin
Corbally · 19/12/2021 11:57

@Dilbertian

Yeah, the all-knowing, ever-forgiving Joey and her absurd fecundity. Weren't all her family ridiculously fecund? The series is gorgeously escapist, but she took suspension of disbelief just that little bit too far.
Dick and Mollie used to intrigue me — these young, warm-hearted likeable characters who just kept pumping out babies in India who were expressed back to Europe to the Die Rosen nursery at a rate of knots.

I mean, I get that it was normal for Raj Brits to send their children ‘home’, but they were conceiving so compulsively that they once left two born-close-together babies at the Sonnalpe on the same furlough, and while ‘mercurial’ Mollie seemed mildly tearful about it, she immediately cheered up by giving Joey a typewriter!

Original poster
Dilbertian · 19/12/2021 11:50

Yeah, the all-knowing, ever-forgiving Joey and her absurd fecundity. Weren't all her family ridiculously fecund? The series is gorgeously escapist, but she took suspension of disbelief just that little bit too far.

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Corbally · 19/12/2021 11:29

Books!

Corbally · 19/12/2021 11:29

@Dilbertian

A Leader in the Chalet School, Rivals of the Chalet School and Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School.
Rivals and Eustacia are two of my favourites, along with Jo Of and Lintons — still in the endearing, smallish stage, Joey hasn’t morphed into the icon of untouchable awfulness she becomes later, and the girls do normal things like go out to buy apples from the apple woman and have disastrous walks which involve them climbing mountains and showing up the Saints.

But I think my favourite thing about the early books is that no one is endlessly reminiscing about the good old Tyrol days because they’re still happening (I mean, by the Swiss books, I just wanted ONE current CS girl to say ‘Yeah, how quaint — maybe move on now?’ to Joey, or a triplet to roll her eyes about Mamma’s embarrassing reminiscences), and also Joey didn’t have any children whose number and varying colouring she could boast about yet, she was just a schoolgirl who was popular and had a nice voice but was also a bit of a twit some of the time.

I wouldn’t have minded if she boasted about her successful book, but 11 kids just makes you speculate about the state of her pelvic floor…

Taytocrisps · 19/12/2021 10:34

I'd love to re-read the Christmas scene from 'The School at the Chalet' where they spend Christmas with Frieda's family.

Original poster
Dilbertian · 19/12/2021 10:30

I've also been dipping in and out of this article about girls' school stories. Interesting. But not escapist.

www.ju90.co.uk/his.htm

OP posts:
Original poster
Dilbertian · 19/12/2021 10:28

A Leader in the Chalet School, Rivals of the Chalet School and Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School.

OP posts:
Taytocrisps · 19/12/2021 10:20

@Dilbertian

Thanks for the Abe Books tip. I've ordered 3 books - 2 of which I have definitely not read. But I'm going to have to wait to read them! It's just not fair. I'm poorly and I want to read them nooooooowwwww 😭

I'll probably be well again by the time they come!

So which three have you ordered? Don't keep us in suspense.
Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 19/12/2021 09:49

The insufferable Robin singing Joey back from the jaws of death, everyone suspected of having TB and being subjected to fresh air, creamy milk and a trilingual education, but never actually developing it, weirdly sickly religious interludes, an obsession with cakes and curtseying etc. Fabulous.

Nailed it! As has spending your life alternately sedated and pregnant. I think it shows that EBD never married or had children herself. I was also not hugely surprised to learn that the boarding school she set up and ran herself (in England, not the Alps, disappointingly) was not very successful.

I've got dozens of them, mostly in ancient paperback form. I think I may have read the lot. I used to buy them with my pocket money when they were all still in print as very cheap Armada paperbacks. Didn't know then how heavily abridged they were, but as far as I can make out a lot of the abridgement relates to the endless descriptions of the shows, concerts and sales of work, so no great loss.

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