Secret Places

by Janice Elliott

The story of the adolescent friendship of English schoolgirl Patience Mackensie and German refugee schoolgirl Laura Meiser, set at a British boarding school during World War II.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Young Adult, World War II, Fiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Janice Elliott was a journalist, novelist, and children's author.

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Janice Elliott’s near-forgotten novel is set in the Nottinghamshire of her childhood, it’s the early stages of WW2 and a young girl, German refugee, Laura Meister is the newest pupil at a middle-class, girls’ day school where she meets and begins a fateful friendship with another student Patience Mackenzie. Elliott’s vision of 1940s England is a far cry from the resilient, community-spirited place of conventional, wartime narratives. This is a haunted, liminal space of longing and dashed hopes, riddled with unsettling echoes of the ancient and feral. The school itself, despite its stolid exterior, bears witness to an unsavoury past; located is an unsettled country of women and old men, in which young girls struggle to imagine their futures or any future at all. Patience envisages a life filled with a series of cages progressing from marriage to death. But Laura seems to hold out the possibility of something different, something other. But Laura’s otherness is also dangerous here, as the war progresses and the bombing takes hold, Laura becomes a convenient scapegoat, loaded down with the hatred and fears of the people around her - to some possibly Jewish, to some a suspected German spy. In each fantasy, she is figured as whatever seems most threatening to the social order: the words ‘juden raus’ scrawled on her locker, a swastika daubed on her desk. Patience, meanwhile, is carefully nurtured by her teachers who see in her the possible fulfilment of their own, unrealised dreams. But only, they warn, if she steers clear of Laura and sentimental attachments.

Elliott’s book mingles coming-of-age and lesbian love story with a disturbing account of unthinking prejudice and cruelty. Elliott’s school, her England has an underlying ruthlessness to it, depicted through a mix of realism with near fairy tale, a strange underworld with a hint of enchantment. One in which Laura, fragile, unprotected, becomes symbolic of an increasingly-hated Germany, labelled by those in authority as one of ‘society’s natural victims’ and so, inevitably, mercilessly, marked out for sacrifice: a means of justifying their moral laxity, their dogged refusal to take responsibility for the discrimination playing out around them. The story unfolds through shifting, restless, points of view, there are flashes of piercing imagery, passages of lyrical and, sometimes, fractured prose. There’s an atmosphere of growing unease and intensity but there’re moments too of supple sensitivity. However, it can also be frustratingly unbalanced, the plot itself is overly packed: taking in everything from the ravages of war to the treatment of the interned to madness and suicide - so that it often seems poised on the brink of full-blown melodrama. The ending too is a disappointment, a slow build-up, followed by a fading away, but, for all that, I found it incredibly compelling and distinctive, the work of a writer ripe for rediscovery.

Rating: 3.5

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tend to like books about girls' schools, and this one is about one in England during World War II. The major character is Laura Meister, who is part-German. The elderly women running the school are not very happy about her attending, although their opinion varies from time to time.

A girl named Patience becomes Laura's friend. Laura's father ends up being arrested (much like the Japanese Americas were arrested without being charged with anything, given any trial, or allowed to defend themselves) and in the end works for the government on the U.S. nuclear bomb program.

Laura does get bullied at times, but at times she is almost accepted by the other girls. Near the end of the war, though, the bullying gets worse, especially on the part of the people running the place when they place her in a separate room and keep her away from all the other students.

Those are the main events. Much of the story is just the daily lives of the students, how the girls grow up and develop attractions to boys, etc. The description of how the war was going on and its effects on the girls is also interesting.

[Ria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting and tender story of life at a school during the war years.
The day Laura Meister starts school at Albert lodge life is changed, most especially for Patience Mackenzie.
Her new burgeoning friendship with Laura confuses her feelings and affects her relationships with the other pupils
Friendships, love, hatred, racial division and heartbreak are all bound up in the characters fates.
Slow moving yet a sensitive tale exploring many themes and issues that were kept quiet during war years, this was a well crafted portrayal of how someone's differences can affect who they become and the course of their life.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story about a girl's school set in Nottingham

[John Stotesbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some reviewer of Janice Elliott's fiction suggested that the relative absence of any lasting memory of her fiction is difficult to understand. On the strength of this novel, I would agree. Secret places captures the tone of the mysteries of fear, différence, and uncertainties about a future, any future, with subtle fluency and delicacy. Another significant aspect is its revelation and deconstruction of the impact of the many varieties of personal trauma on both the young and the not-so-young. Thoroughly recommendable. I shall read more of Janice Elliott's work whenever I can find it.