Clementina

by Eileen Dunlop

Daisy feels that her vacation in Scotland is being ruined by her forced companionship with the strange girl Clementina, until mysterious events link her to another Clementina two centuries ago.

Genres: Young Adult

156 pages, Library Binding

First published October 1, 1985

About the author

Eileen Dunlop has lived in Scotland all her life. Born in Alloa, 13 October 1938, she was educated at Alloa Academy and Moray House College, Edinburgh.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Little Free Library find, read two months ago on a road trip and forgotten. But I did mark some passages!

"... she had been bridget's friend for long enough to know that she was only easy to get along with if she was not contradicted."

The Heart of Midlothian is to be read for school.

"But Daisy saw nothing, nor cared; the burden of other people's hatred lay on her heart like a cold stone."

" Daisy knew now that unhappiness made people nasty who weren't nasty by nature."

[MountainLaurel · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's been probably four or five years since I read this, but I remember that I thought it was really weird and kind of creepy. Having grown up a lot since then, if I read it now I probably wouldn't be quite as freaked (at least not at some of minor curse words used and that sort of thing), but I remember well enough to know that the story is very odd, and I think two of the main characters (who are in love) end up dying in a barn fire which was set by some jealous girl.

Or something.

Yep.

[LuAnn · Rating 3 out of 5]

As usual for Dunlop, this book is well-written with characters who act in realistic and flawed ways (except the title character which drives the plot). The animosity between Clementina and Bridget is disturbing while Mrs. Graham's indifference to parenting doesn't help. But that's what make for the realism. Unlike other Dunlop books I've read, this one is told as a flashback set within a frame story ten years later with the protagonist still agonizing over events, again, realistic. Overall, the story is well-done though disturbing, rather like Dunlop's The Maze Stone. When the jacket blurb on Dunlop's books mention "danger" or "sinister," the reader has been duly warned!

[Shanu · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am really surprised at what rating I am giving to a book by Eileen Dunlop. I liked her book Ghost by The Sea, and it was still readable but this book was total nonsense!!!I am quite shocked by the absurdity of this story. Anyways avoid it at any cost as it will be a total waste of time

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘It’s coincidence. Only coincidence, Daisy. You do believe that, don’t you?’ But Daisy can’t shake off the feeling that something connects Clementina Rattray, sharing her modern holiday in a remote Highland forest, with the Clementina and the Rattrays who lived there two hundred years ago. Is history destined to repeat itself?

Eileen Dunlop is a mistress of unsettling the present with uncanny echoes of the past, and here she is on excellent form. Daisy’s world is emphatically that of the 1980s, when the book was written, and also that of an awkward teenager surrounded by difficult people and imperfect adults who don’t understand and are incapable of solving the problems of their children. Dunlop never fully explains the supernatural happenings in her books, but offers possible suggestions which her characters - and readers - can choose to accept. Here the landscape provides an oppressive background, which I’ve certainly experienced in Highland pine forests, but the whole story is framed by a flash forward, as though in this book Dunlop is compelled to assure her young readers that Daisy will come out the other side. I particularly liked the final revelation that allows us to forgive some difficult behaviour and the hint that what happened in the past will never be fully known.

[Joanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for the Spring Challenge. We were supposed to read a book that has a character with the same name as our mothers. I was just looking for a book with a Tina in it when I came across this one (my mom's real name in Clementina so it was perfect.)

Daisy is invited to go away with her friend Bridget and her mother. They're spending a month in another part of Scotland at a new time share spot. Bridget's mother has decided it would nice to invite an orphan to stay with them for the month too-the orphan's name is Clementina. Strange things start happening when Clementina seems to know all about events that took place 200 years ago in a nearby tower.

The story was creative and I probably would have really liked it if I read it when I was 12 (as is intended)-not bad.

[CLM]

Daisy's summer vacation in Scotland seems ruined when her mother invites Clementina to join them, an orphan haunted by events that occurred in the 18th century.