I need a Chalet School fix

[Dilbertian]

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.)

I think they're moving through them, and they will all be up at some point in the not too distant future...

Just stumbled on this .. can I have the kindle link books too ! Love the chalet school books which I read when young but cannot find any here nowadays even at the second hand book stores. Was re-reading the ones on faded pages but just didn’t want to stop 🤭😅
thanks !

I think we learned a few months ago that the fabulous lady who'd had the e-books no longer has them! Unfortunately, the publisher does very rare, limited runs, so the books are hard to find and expensive. They struggled with the ebook process and gave it up. So, it's faded page and second hand market for now! If you learn of any, though, share! I'm all caught up through faded page and really wanted to read the next ones too - they're just about to go back to the Tirol!

I think you’ll just have to wait for the rest to go up on Faded Page. I’m fair,y sure I had the Word document transcripts years ago, probably via the CBB or other defunct DS site, but probably several laptops ago…

cannot find any here nowadays even at the second hand book stores. Was re-reading the ones on faded pages but just didn’t want to stop

I've worked my way thru the Faded Page ones and am now buying secondhand on ebay (then reselling when read). Some are weirdly expensive (the Kenya one, Joey & Co In Tirol - over £20!)

They are still very available if you know where to look . . .

Girls Gone By are reprinting them, they sell directly from their own website.

There's a Facebook group called Chalet School Sales and Wants. Paperbacks go for very little, hardbacks dependent on condition etc.

There are also a few dealers like Gill Bilski who sell online. Abebooks and Ebay are good sources. Sometimes find them on Vinted too.

I'm half way through the first book which I got as an email to my kindle from a free site.

I hardly dared admit this but I'm so disappointed in it. I adored all the books as a child, and I still joke that they had a big impact on my European world view.

But this one at least is so badly written. It's clunky and almost feels like a poor translation rather than it was written in English. Has anyone else found this?

The kindle books are not approved by the EBD estate - her publishers have said they have complained to Amazon about them. I’ve not seen any of them but they could easily be poor transcriptions from somewhere.

It wasn't a kindle book exactly - it was a pdf or something from a website someone mentioned on here.

Yes those are often pretty poorly proof read. Not a proper release by a publishing house.

It doesn't feel like a proof reading issue - I'm not seeing typos or grammatical errors. More that the whole sentence structure feels heavy and the chapters are so long winded - irrelevant details and little conversations or descriptions that don't seem to add anything.

Maybe I need to get my old set next time I'm at my mum's!

Is it a late book? After the first few, the ones set in Switzerland get progressively more leaden. I think she was at her best in the early Tirol books, then got second wind with the rise of the Nazis and the need to address what was happening in Europe in the context of her characters and settings. The dreaded Mary Lou drags things down once she turns up. In my opinion.

irrelevant details and little conversations or descriptions that don't seem to add anything

In a way that's part of the charm for me. An odd comparison, I know, but it's a bit like Cathy Glass's memoirs, where she gives a detailed step by step description of going up to the loft to get an old cot out and that sort of thing.

Fair enough @ArblemarzipanTFruitcake

@DeanElderberry it's the very first book. It makes me smile how they keep bumping into new families who just need a boarding school to take their girls off their hands!

My new take on that one on my most recent re-read what just what a stinker Grizel's father was. Her stepmother was abusive, but his marrying her without mentioning a daughter was appalling. Grizel is an interesting character imo - she is let be a bit awkward right through till middle age, and there's always a feeling that her childhood experience had harmed her. I wonder did EBD know someone in that situation.

The dreaded Mary Lou drags things down once she turns up. In my opinion.

Mary Lou was OK in the English/Welsh books, where she was bumptious but was regularly squashed for her own good. It was after they moved to Switzerland she could do no wrong, and became insufferable.

Many of the parents were terrible.
Juliets abandoned her
Robins dad basically did the same.
Eustacias weren't deliberately bad, but emotionally neglected her
Dick and Mollie... the leaving your babies on a different continent thing seems incomprehensible these days... was that really a thing?

I agree that’s likely to be EBD, rather than a corrupted text file — I agree with a pp that this is part of the series deeply silly charm for me! The endless descriptions of dainty dormitories, exotic bread twists and milky coffee, the error-filled snatches of French and German from supposedly native speakers, the endless iterations of the trilingual system and charming foreign niceties like curtsies (which is quite funny when you read the first couple of books where all the Austrian girls are desperate to have the school be as English as possible), the cult of Saint Joey, the spirit of the school, and her earphones and fertility, followed by the cult of the insufferable Saint Mary Lou, and cello-voiced Hilda, whose ‘eyes had never yet needed glasses”…😀

In many ways, they are colossally dreadful books, especially after the move to Switzerland, where the setting is leaden, the storylines get madder, and EBD’s views on The Youth of Today start to really interfere with her depicting of teenage girls, but they’re still compulsively readable.

Brits living in India did certainly routinely send their children ‘home’ as the physical and ‘moral’ climate were considered unhealthy for European children, but generally nowhere near as early as EBD depicts Dick and Mollie regularly doing, where they seem to be regularly depositing babies and toddlers in the Die Rosen nursery. Generally they were sent back to boarding school at seven or so.

I assume EBD wanted to populate the Die Rosen nursery to make it look as though Madge and Joey hadn’t just chucked in a fully and busy life at the CS to twiddle their thumbs at the Sonnalpe? It’s always seemed mildly puzzling to me that, although Joey was never university material, that her only idea for her life after leaving school is the quickly-abandoned idea of going to be Elisaveta’s lady in waiting or ‘continue singing lessons and help with the babies’.

her only idea for her life after leaving school is the quickly-abandoned idea of going to be Elisaveta’s lady in waiting or ‘continue singing lessons and help with the babies’.

I wondered if EBD introduced the lady in waiting idea as a possible way of 'rounding off' the series and then abandoned it when she wanted to continue it. It doesn't seem a profession that would ever have been compatible with Joey's temperament.

I met someone, born in India, who had been left with her grandmother in England when she was very young, and she was fairly insistent (and resentful, more than 70 years later) that it was because her mother enjoyed the parties and dances and didn't want the burden and bother of a small child round the place. She had lived in Kashmir, and I got the impression that she ached for the country more than for her flighty mother.

My understanding is that what usually happened people (men) got six months furlough every six or seven years, came home to England then with their families, and left whatever small children they had at that stage with any extended family members who could be persuaded to take them in.

Perfect recipe for building a class of emotionally damaged adults.

The furlough thing stopped in the early 60s once it was possible and affordable to fly back to the UK in a day or so, and people working 'out east' got regular annual leave like everyone else.

I'm reminded of Sara Crewe, sent to that miserable boarding school in London.

I can understand a bit at school age... but the bettany kids were toddlers.

And didn't see their parents again until they were teenagers or near about?

@Corbally what a wonderful description of the detail I loved. I’m remembering the cubicle curtains! I loved both Jo and Mary Lou. I remember wondering what a silvery voice sounded like (Verity).