A long way from Verona, by Jane Gardam

This was another book I sneaked in while I was simultaneously reading Ken Livingstone’s memoirs. Although a very different read, it was chosen for the same reason as Goodbye Mr. Chips, in that it is fairly short and relatively undemanding.  I have always enjoyed Jane Gardam’s books, and a longer-term project is to read her “Old Filth” trilogy again; I read the final book quite recently, but it was too long after I read the other two and I couldn’t pick up all the threads as I would have liked to do.

A long way from Verona is an early book. It is too simple to say that it treats of a schoolgirl’s life during the Second World War – that makes it sound very straightforward and a period piece, whereas it is much more penetrating – and much funnier – than that. I suppose that Jane Gardam is often thought is as a women’s writer, which is as unfair as such a label usually is, but I would be interested to hear a man’s view of the book. My schooldays came a while after those of the book’s protagonist, but some of the pleasure was in the depiction of school life, the sudden friendships and fallings-out, the pang of recognition of the stifling atmosphere of a single-sex school and the spinster teachers.

Perhaps I should be comparing it to Goodbye Mr. Chips... It is only now that I realise I had chosen two school-based books to read successively. But Jane Gardam is infinitely more to my taste than James Hilton and much more complex; it is dated in that it is set in a time that most of us do not remember, but it certainly isn't out-of-date.