Bright College Year

by Edith Bishop Sherman

"Jan Jones had come a long way from Iowa to college in New England (composite of Smith and Wellesley - called Marlham in the story) - but that first year was a welter of new emotions, new experiences, and temperamental seesaw." -from: Kirkus Reviews

274 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

B. 1889

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wavered a lot in my rating of this book, and I guess it's a 3.5 rounded up to 4. Do I think that anyone without a fondness for vintage college fiction will like this? Realistically, no, but it worked for me. For a work published in 1950, it's charmingly reminiscent of fiction from the earliest days of women's colleges, in that it's solely about celebrating the college experience, without much plot to speak of (which could certainly be a problem for some). The girls in this book love their college traditions (class tree, class song, class cheer, freshman/sophomore basketball game) as fervently as any long ago member of "the class of 0-"). The only major difference is that there are lots of modern (ie mid-century) details: girls listening to jazz loudly on radios late at nights; boys who expect to neck on dates; the girls pulling all-nighters typing up papers (I don't think any of the nice girls of the class of "0-" ever had to stay up much past 10 to complete their work). Another piece of social history is that the girls are fiercely indignant that the editor of the college paper is "leftist," and have a brief burst of condemning communism, which they only seem to have heard of vaguely, but are certain is terrible. The dawn of McCarthyism more or less dates to 1950.

A big reason why I hesitate to give this a whole-hearted 4 stars, is that once again Edith Bishop Sherman has a created a character whose whole identity, including her name, revolves around being fat. In Upstairs, Downstairs: A Boarding School Mystery for Girls, she was called "Fatty." Here her nickname is "Hefty." At one point, our heroine, Jan, begs a mean girl to not provokingly call Hefty, Myrtle, her given name, because she prefers "Hefty." And in the same breath, says, and could you also please not tease her about being fat? She's very sensitive about it! My brow is still furrowed in perplexity over that one.