The Attic Term

The Marlows #9

by Antonia Forest

One illicit telephone call to her boyfriend leads Ginty Marlow into deep waters. Soon she is deceiving her friends so that she can make regular calls from the secretary's office. But one night her rule-breaking gets her more than she bargained for.

Genres: Childrens, School Stories, Fiction, Young Adult, Boarding School, British Literature

261 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Antonia Forest was the pen name of Patricia Giulia Caulfield Kate Rubinstein. She was born in North London, the child of Russian-Jewish and Irish parents. She studied at South Hampstead High School and University College, London, and worked as a government clerk and a librarian. Best known for her series of novels about the Marlow family, she published her first book, Autumn Term, in 1948.

Reviews

[Daisy May Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The penultimate in her series featuring the Marlow family, Attic Term is split mainly between Ginty and Lawrie / Nicola. They're back at school. The twins are planning their form entertainment and Ginty is telephoning A BOY in those moments when people think she's in the bathroom, the corridor, running an errand and, what's worse, is that she's phoning THAT THERE BOY from the secretary's office.

This is a bit of an odd book to review for me as I've never been able to read this series in depth or sequentially. I adored Autumn Term, I had a bit of a baffled moment during that one Marlow book where (I think Nicola maybe?) got eyed up by a Dodgy Man With Obvious Ill Intentions, and that one with the sailing boat to France (?) was kind of epic but really confusing because I'd just read Autumn Term and then there's several of the other titles I've never read. My Marlow knowledge is, at best, patchy.

What I can say with some clarity is that The Attic Term is a beautifully written book. Forest, despite the occasional stentorian mention of DRUGS, writes with a very sharp clarity. She's quite superb in writing girls; girls who are bordering on adulthood or others who are just revelling in their younger sister status. Forest also is superb in writing girls and their interactions in that curious feudal system known as the boarding school. The moments when the girls are discussing something are a joy to read; the language is snappy, bright, and flows just as quick conversation does. It's visceral writing that's almost underwritten in a way; she makes her point, just, barely, and allows the words to make the impact rather than surrounding them with a host of speech tags, adjectives and window dressing. This is the sort of thing that keeps bringing me back to Forest, that kind of curiously mature skill to her writing which lets me pass up her DRUGS YOBS OMG moments because I'm so keen to see what she does next.

I find Forest an education in writing and I think, it's particularly acute, when we see the notes of growth in the family throughout the series. Even I, with my patchy knowledge of the Marlow family, can see it and I sort of love the relationships throughout. (And one of the things I really love is the way everybody's always "OH ANNE GET A GRIP")

There's a lot of churchiness in this book and it's something I feel frankly unable to comment on with any veracity. What I did find myself doing was something I do when Brent-Dyer gets her church on, I sort of slide past it. There's a lot I can forgive / disregard when a writer is this damn good.

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

This penultimate volume in Antonia Forest's ten-book series about the Marlow family - which alternates between school story and holiday adventure - is the last of the four "Kingscote" novels, and finishing it had something of a bittersweet feeling to it, as a consequence. I've enjoyed reading about the Marlow girls, and their time away at boarding school, a narrative begun in Autumn Term , and then continued in End of Term and The Cricket Term (the fourth and eighth installments of the larger series, respectively). The doings of twins Nicola and Lawrie, and their many friends, are particularly absorbing, and continued here, although the focus widens to include more of older sister Ginty, as well as Marlow neighbor and friend, Patrick Merrick, at school in London.

The Attic Term was absorbing, and - as usual with Forest - peopled with a cast of complex characters, and told with an appreciation for many different narrative points of view. The parallel concerns of Upper IV.A, with their preparations for the holiday caroling service in which they are expected to perform, and of Ginty, missing her injured friend Monica, and engaging in a series of highly illicit phone calls to Patrick in London, somehow seemed to come together - despite having little to do with one another - into a harmonious whole. I enjoyed the references to Frances Hodgson Burnett's Sara Crewe in the story - the Marlow girls are "exiled" for the term to the overflow dormitory in the Kingscote attic, nicknamed 'Sara Crewe' in honor of Burnett's heroine, who must live in a cold garret after the death of her father - as well as some of the discussions of religion between the characters. Tim and Miranda's conversation about Judaism and Christianity, and Patrick and Nicola's discussion of the (then) recent changes in the Catholic liturgy, were quite interesting.

I could happily have lived without the implication, in Patrick's comments about the "diabolical Protestant" services at his Catholic school, that to be anything resembling a Protestant, liturgically speaking, was a degradation. Also, I found Forest's characterization of Ginty - the beautiful but shallow girl, all of a sudden - rather troubling (shades of Susan Pevensie, in the Narnia books, I expect). But despite these quibbles (or qualms?), I enjoyed the book as a whole, am sorry to see the last of Kingscote, and highly recommend the story to anyone who has read previous installments of the Marlows' adventures.

[Sherwood Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I gave in, and read it despite my best intentions to make it last. In this one, the vague hint at the end of The Cricket Term that Ginty is going to test the limits of truth comes to pass. She doesn't turn evil. As always, Forest stays away from stereotyping characters, and so she doesn't offer convenient answers: the evil character is easily squashed because right must prevail.

The characters who want to do right have to struggle, and they don't always win. Patrick and Nicola become more appealing. Ginty . . . turns smaller, through easily understandable steps. Will Patrick stay in love with her? Ginty is obsessed with keeping his interest, all the more because she suspects, deep down, that Patrick has a strong affinity for her younger sister--a bond that she seems incapable of.

Meantime, everything is changing at the school that had seemed so uncomfortably unchanging. And the teachers display more personality than ever before.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazing how much of this school story is taken up with conversations about Vatican-II and Forest's frustration about it. We begin shortly after the end of The Cricket Term: Patrick and Gintie are an item, and, as the summer holidays wind down, Gintie frets about how much she'll miss him while she's at school. When term starts, Gintie continues to feel out of sorts: her friend Monica has had an accident and is missing the term of school, and Gintie isn't performing well on her school teams, and there is no school play for her to star in. She begins to sneak into the school office in the evenings and ring Patrick to assuage her loneliness. Eventually this sends her into hot water, along with her sister Nick, who is in trouble for buying clothes without permission. Like in the other novels, the events themselves seems small and unimportant, but Forest uses them to capture the children's inner lives, and evoke the feelings of youth and of struggling to find one's place in the world. At the same time, Forest is always concerned with religion, and much of Patrick's place in the narrative is his use as a mouthpiece for Forests' negative feelings about Vatican-II (which made major changes to how Mass was said, for example). This weighs oddly on the narrative: where one feels there should be space for Patrick and Gintie to agonise about their relationship, the focus is much more on external concerns. As an adult reader, I found Forest's preoccupations interesting and a little amusing, but I'm not sure I would have been on board with them as a child. All this being said, Forest's school novels are a successful enterprise: full of emotions, believable dialogue, and a sense of place -- though they work within the limits of the genre, they also transcend it. I'm glad I read them.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I finally managed to lay hands upon this, the 4th entry in the Marlows at school part of the series and I have to say, it's probably the weakest of the four and my least favourite.

After the brilliant highs of Cricket Term, Attic Term feels a lot smaller and less interesting in the plot department.
The main focus being on Ginty and Patrick's relationship and all of the illict phone calling that she ends up doing for most of the book. While Nicola and her form are getting up to some smaller scale things that inevitably end up with Nicola getting in trouble yet again.

I could have done with more time spent in lessons and with the younger girls and far less time with Ginty and The Catholic Church! Oh and Patrick's family au pair I could also have cheerfully removed.
Also the talk about drugs and what's on the television tonight felt a bit out of place for me, I'd rather the books had stayed with the time when they were first written rather than jumping ahead like this.

Still, sad that this is the last of the AF school books, I hope to one day get a copy of Spring Term and finish off the set.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so sad I've reached the end of the Marlow books that I own (the 4 school stories). Genius as ever, with its subtle plotting that crescendos to the drama at the end, the interesting conversations about religion and even sex, the way Tim and co put together their carol concert, the additional references this time to pop culture as well as literature (it amuses me that the first book, Autumn Term was published in 1948, this one in 1976, and I suppose we have to imagine that the first is also set in the same time period).

I've ordered a secondhand copy of the final school story that is written by someone else, having seen a few raving reviews, though generally I tend to be a purist, but I can't bear leaving them where it ends in this one haha. And somehow I will manage to get my hands on the other books in between...

[Josephine Draper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I galloped through this book in day, like I have with some of Antonia Forest's other books about the Marlow clan. This book is a strange combination between the 'holiday' books and the 'school' books in the series, combining elements of both. There is the serious, criminal aspect to the story (which we've seen in some of the holiday books), alongside the familiar school dramas - who's on what sports team, sneaking around school when you're not supposed to, the incredible seriousness with which teachers guard the Kingscote girls' pocket money, and of course, the end of term play.

What I love about this book, and have about all of the Marlow books, is the way incredibly minor details become important plot points. Like one of the character's maid (yes, it's a world where house servants are normal) packing the wrong outfit, which leads to all sorts of drama. This really is such clever writing.

There is some fantastic characterisation too. The way the relationship between Patrick and Ginty compares with his relationship with Nicola is played out through the tiniest hints. Right at the end there's a great scene where Esther sees herself as Chuchundra, the musk-rat in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, always creeping around the walls, never confident enough to run into the centre of the room. We see into so many characters' heads through the device of constantly changing narrator, but it somehow works.

I've said a lot of positives, but overall this book was lacking the strong narrative drive in some of the other books, especially The Cricket Term and The Ready Made Family. None of the events in the book somehow seemed important enough to care about. There's also rather too much about the Catholic Church in here for my liking, and sections on that made my eyes glaze over waiting to get back to the actual story.
Characterisation - 10 out of 10. Storyline - not as strong as some books.

[Sibyl · Rating 2 out of 5]

These books have a cult following, and I remember reading other books in the 'Kingscote' series when I was in my teens.

I found reading the fourth book which follow the adventures of the Marlow girls at boarding school, as an adult, extremely odd. Although the book was written in the mid-seventies - and there are references to 'slacks', 'trews' 'pot - plus 'Star Trek' and 'Up Pompeii' on television - it seems to belong more to the world of the late 40s, when the first novel in the series appeared.

The values of self-control, not letting the side down and having a stiff upper lip go unquestioned. Even the less affluent have large houses with home helps, au pairs - and pet dogs, ponies or falcons.

What I found particularly interesting is the way the book deals with sexual desire, even though sex can't actually be mentioned by decent English girls. The Marlow sisters Nicola and Ginty are friendly with a devout Catholic boy (and neighbour) Patrick. Ginty and Patrick are supposed to be girlfriend and boyfriend although the relationship consists mainly of a kind of arch, uneasy, flirtation And, when at school, Ginty keeps sneaking off to phone Patrick. Yet her feelings for her absent friend Monica seem to be just as intense. Meanwhile Nicola, whose younger, seems unable to recognise that there is some (rather different) bond between her and her sister's 'boyfriend'. It is left to Claudie the French au pair who lives in Patrick's household - who makes luscious creme brulee, has a love and sings Piaf song - to begin the work of seducing her employer's fifteen year old son. On the one hand this book is terribly prim. On the other hand it's the story of a seduction which forty-five years later would get someone put on a sex offenders' register.... Register

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another in the series about the Marlow children and Kingscote School, one of fiction's more realistic boarding schools. Subsequent novels follow the family both during term-time at school and at home over the holidays.

Once again, I found it difficult to understand why the girls acted as they did -- I guess the world of English boarding schools circa WWII just isn't in my experience enough to be appreciated.

[Laura Canning · Rating 4 out of 5]

To AF fans: I've put together a guide to Antonia Forest fanfic if anyone would like to take a look: written to acknowledge the first-class AF fanfic out there, and to share it with those who haven't seen it yet. I hope no-one minds that I'm sharing it in reviews of some other AF books here - my motives are altruistic, I do most horribly swear.

A Reader's Guide to Antonia Forest fanfic.

Enjoy!

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

In which Patrick finds out what Ginty is really like, to cheers from those of us on Team Nicola (just that pesky Claudie to get out of the way now). The last of the Marlow school stories, the girls are all noticeably that bit older (in exactly the way 14/15 year olds do suddenly age). The plot is brilliant - beautifully paced, carefully crafted, and utterly believable. But, as ever, it is the characters that put this story head and shoulders above one from any other school story series.

[Leonie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The problem with this book is it makes me want to read the others, and they're all either expensive or downright unavailable. Forest's writing is so fresh and interesting and I love her approach to characterisation.

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Right - yes, I’ve enjoyed this, Antonia Forest’s characters are beautifully drawn. Maybe I missed something, but the way Ginty was dealt with after being caught phoning her boyfriend & supposedly giving him the questions to the next day’s maths exam didn’t quite ring true. And I went back to try & work out who Claudie exactly is/was & her relationship to Patrick’s family & couldn’t sort that out either! & I thought Claudie was frankly creepy at times, I felt. I am v sorry that this is then penultimate book - I would’ve liked to know how the Esther/Nicola relationship was resolved. Think I should’ve given this 3 stars, but Antonia Forest’s plots seem to over come these problems…

[Michael Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given that to remember anything of Vatican II you need to be a) Catholic and b) over 65, it is not surprising that many readers have trouble relating to Patrick Merrick, and to Forest herself.

No one questions that the Marlow family is steeped in the Royal Navy tradition. So look on Catholicism as the Merrick equivalent.

I'm 70 and Roman Catholic. I can say that I can sympathize with Patrick, and find him very believable.

[Katharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this and Antonia Forest’s writing was as good as ever but I was finding the Patrick/Ginty subplot a little dull and was not interested in Patrick’s religious dramas, which seem particularly dated now. Still an excellent read though.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was more unexpected to me. I think Forest - unlike, say, Brent-Dyer - never quite writes the same book twice, but here the story is more broad and more scattered than her previous books.

And yet this is an amazingly constructed book - amazing for something so scattered and varied. Its plots build from minor detail into a cascade of circumstances which mirror each other and somehow reinforce a common theme: how things can be held against a person. It’s impressive, really, how that theme is hammered home.

You have Nicola, who has a school career’s worth of complaints read out from her record, because she bought a dress in a secondhand shop and made a phone call for her sister. You have Patrick, whose school seizes on a misunderstanding to hammer home their theological differences. You have Nicola’s form, who think they are being inventive and find they have missed the point. And you even have Ginty and Esther, who cleverly show different sides of things-held-against-them: Ginty as the perpetual victim, that person who is sure that if you just understood, you’d see things her way, and Esther, who holds things against herself preemptively.

And none of these plots are simple, either. Nicola’s touches on broken rules and drugs and showing Ginty the calls could be made; Patrick’s brings in his parents and the difficulty of standing against an institution; Esther’s calls to mind the back-and-forth of teenage friendships. Even Ginty, who’s the hardest to appreciate, is spectacularly drawn here: the blurb makes it sound like the book is about her phone calls, but she doesn’t make the first one until halfway through, and this is as much about her loneliness - and insouciance - and self-centeredness - as it is about her rule-breaking. “We all thought you were taking Monica Eliot’s absence, on the whole, better than we had expected,” Miss Keith tells her, and in that fairly insulting summation you realize that Ginty - who expects to skate by and if not wants to run away - is a person, too.

And as much as you can say the adults are wrong - or that they don’t have the full story (often because the teenagers involved won’t tell them, because that’s not how it’s done) - that feeling of “but that’s not how it was” pervades the book and reinforces their teenagerhood. That’s not how it was. But it so clearly could have been, and there’s a brilliantly rendered lack of understanding all around.

I don’t think The Attic Term is as good as Forest’s previous school stories. It’s less cohesive, and too sprawling, and the dialogue isn’t as typically crisp: characters talk over each other and use a lot of dated slang and there are pages about the Catholic Church that I skimmed. But even that scattered dialogue comes together in a pretty spectacular ending - one where no one wins, really. There’s no ending, in fact: the story stops because the term ends, but there’s a sense of uneasiness and flux, and that as much as the “how all occasions do inform against me!” theme highlights what a great school story this is.

And there’s something so profound about that - about those little slips and small convictions building into unexpected inevitabilities.

This is too sprawling to be great. But it’s impressive and thought-provoking anyway.

[Kitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

omas žanris (raamatud, mille tegevus toimub tütarlaste internaatkoolis) on see üks suurimaid žanripiiride lõhkujaid, mida iial olen sattunud lugema.

alustuseks toimub ebaproportsionaalselt suur osa tegevust väljaspool kooli ja see on päris suur asi, sest kogu internaatkooliraamatu kontseptsioon toimib eelkõige selle pinnal, et tegu on suletud keskkonnaga. (palju õnne muidugi tänapäevasele autorile, kes peab suutma ära seletada, miks/kuidas pole lastel internetti ja mobiiltelefone; 70-ndatel ja 80ndatel toimuva tegevusega raamatutes on enamasti täiesti välistatud igasugused telefonikõned; ja veel varasemates lugudes on tihti kehtestatud täiesti drakoonilised reeglid isegi kirjavahetustele.) aga siin näidatakse meile kõigepealt lausa mitme peatüki jagu Marlow'de kodust elu suvevaheaja lõpul; ja lisaks peategelasele Gintyle (pluss hulgale ta õdedele) tüdrukutekoolis kirjeldatakse paralleelselt ka ta sõbra Patricku kodust ja poistekoolielu.

ja muidugi see, mis selle loo üldse tööle paneb - Ginty HELISTAB Patrickule. korduvalt. koolisemestri jooksul. ja sellist asja reeglid lihtsalt ette ei näe ja loomulikult tuleb neil sellest jama. ja ma kogu aeg pooleldi ootasin, et keegi noomib neid muuhulgas selle eest, et nad rikuvad internaatkooliraamatureegleid (mitte ainult koolireegleid), sest esiteks kommunikatsioon välismaailmaga ja teiseks, Patrick on POISS. mõned prouad on suutnud kirjutada mitmekümnest raamatust koosnevaid koolisarju, kus ei mainita kunagi ühtegi poissi ega meest ja loomulikult pole ükski koolitüdruk ühessegi neist kunagi armunud :) nii et suht eriline lugu ikka.

last but not least, veendunud katoliiklasest autor kasutab seda raamatut, et väljendada oma arvamust Vatikani II kirikukogu kehtestatud muutuste kohta katoliku liturgias. ja ma ei oleks elus enne arvanud, et tütarlaste internaatkooliraamatu lugemine viib mind mingi kirikukogu otsuste googeldamiseni. (otsused ise tunduvad mulle mõistlikud, näiteks et missat pidada ladina keele asemel mõnes keeles, millest kogudus ka aru saab, ja preester keerata näo, mitte seljaga rahva poole. aga Patricku suu läbi mõistab Forest sellise jama karmilt hukka, sest see, selgub, on põhimõtteliselt protestantism. ma ei hakka institutsionaalset religiooni iial mõistma.) no see ei ole teile Enid Blyton, tõesti ei ole.

[Caro (carosbookcase) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Attic Term was my first foray into the world of Antonia Forest. It is the ninth book in her Marlow series. Of course, in a perfect world I would be reading these books in order, but unfortunately they are a bit hard to find at a reasonable price. While I’m sure one would get more enjoyment out of this book by reading the books preceding this one first, I had no trouble slipping into the series midway through.

It is the start of the autumn term at Kingscote boarding school. Three sisters, Ginty, Nicola, and Lawrie Marlow are assigned to the attic room. Nicola, who was a bit put out at being moved from their usual room ends up liking their new, more secluded space. Despite being happy and settled, she still manages to get into some trouble over the course of the coming term!

Meanwhile, Ginty is having a particularly difficult start to the term. Her best friend at school has had an accident and will not be returning to school for the foreseeable future. Feeling lonely Ginty, takes to making surreptitious phone calls to her boyfriend from the secretary’s office.

This book is very well written with a lot of storylines that fit together nicely. It deals with more mature themes and issues than one would expect from a school story.

Not all of the action takes place in and around the school either, which is a nice break. There are scenes with the Marlow family at home. We also get to see Ginty’s boyfriend, Patrick Merrick at home in London, as well as a walk on Hampstead Heath and a trip to the symphony at the Royal Albert Hall.

If, like me, you did not have the opportunity to read many school stories as a child and wanted to give them a try now, I do not think you could do much better than this one.

[Tassiemouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

My least favourite of the school stories, (though much better than my least favourite of all ' The Thuggery Affair) but as always some winning A F writing in parts despite that. Ginny, Oh Ginny...

[Catherine Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can you make illicit phone calls to your boyfriend and get away with it ??? I’ve loved reading these, great for the holidays.