My Friend Annie

My Friends #4

by Jane Duncan

My Friend Annie takes the reader back into Janet Sandison's childhood. It opens as the death of her mother shatters the bliss of her Highland home. Janet migrates with her father to grimy, lowland Cairnton, where she meets the hateful and stupid Jean, soon, alas, to be her step-mother-and pretty Annie Black.

Years of unhappiness are relieved by holidays among the unchanging loveliness of Reachfar. But while at school, Janet finds out about Annie's profession-a discovery that troubles her strong sense of right and wrong.

Genres: Fiction

464 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Jane Duncan was the pseudonym of Scottish writer Elizabeth Jane Cameron, best-known for her My Friends series of semi-autobiographical novels. She also wrote four novels under the name of her principal heroine Janet Sandison, and some children's books. She was born in Renton, West Dunbartonshire and brought up in the Scottish Lowlands where her father was a police officer, but much of her childhood was spent in the Highlands on the Black Isle in Easter Ross, on her grandparents' croft "The Colony", the "Reachfar" of her novels. She graduated in English from the University of Glasgow and did various secretarial jobs before serving as a Flight Officer (Intelligence), WAAF during World War II. Afterward, she lived in Jamaica for ten years, returning to Jemimaville, near "The Colony", in 1958 as a widow. In 1959 Duncan became something of a publishing sensation when Macmillan Publishers announced that it would be publishing seven of her manuscripts. The "Reachfar" (My Friends) series is narrated by Janet Sandison and follows her life (which in outline parallels that of the author) from the World War I period through to the 1960s, depicting the people she encounters and showing how her crofting upbringing influences her in whatever society and geographical location she finds herself.

Reviews

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Janet is uprooted from her family croft of Reachfar, northern Scotland, and settled with her father in a mining town near Glasgow. If ever there was an out-of-place replanting, this is it. The hidebound attitudes of the town of Cairnton are plumped right into the house with them, in the person of Jean, their housekeeper. For all the years Janet lives in Cairnton, Jean is complaining that Janet is "not like ither folk!" while Janet's complaint about the townspeople is that they never had a thought that somebody else hasn't thought for them. Janet sails through the local Academy as its top student, which only makes it worse in the townsfolk's eyes because she is "too much for the books to be natural".

So where does Annie come into it? Annie is a neighbor child, and no one in the town realizes that Annie too is thoroughly out of place in Cairnton. Even Janet thinks Annie is just an exaggerated version of Cairnton. It takes their mutual friend Hugh to clarify this relationship, very much later in life.

I read MY FRIEND ANNIE in high school, and didn't appreciate it at the time. Now I think it is as wise as most of the others. I gave it the 3 stars for two reasons: The repetition of information from other books, which is needed to clarify the development of the characters. The sheer rage I sometimes felt at the people of Cairnton, because I felt such empathy for Janet.

[Alexis Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these books although they were written a long time ago! Jane Duncan a Scot, who lived in the Caribbean,for many years, wrote her books in the linen cupboard because her husband didn't approve. These are funny gentle books that lift your spirit. Duncan also writes as Janet Sandison.

[Fiona Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Friend Annie takes our narrator, Janet Sandison, out of her comfort home at Reachfar in the Highlands and places her, bereaved at the age of ten after her mother's death, in a town near Glasgow with her father. Here we meet the formidable Jean, housekeeper and then new wife to Janet's father, Duncan. Whilst this fills in more of Janet's back story and also continues the story where we left it in Monica, it is a book about marriage. Twice and Janet cannot get married as Twice is already married and his wife won't divorce him. So, in late 1940s, Janet and Twice commit to living together as if married and her books takes a forensic look at the institution of marriage, of prostitution, and of morality around both of these forms of engagement. In this regard it is quite enlightening and does mirror Jane Duncan's own experience as she and Sandy Clapperton could also not get married. It queries and challenges who is to judge the rightness of different relationships. It is also about how two people can grow to really really dislike each other and the portrait of Jean is clearly based on Jane Duncan's own stepmother, Kirstie, where there was no love lost.

It is a book about childhood and how innocence is lost, how friendships develop (or don't in the case of Annie!) and can be tested, and how life throws a curve ball. It also takes us to St Jago, for the first time, and we meet the characters who will become such a great part of Janet's life going forward.

[Cassandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do enjoy these books, just as I would enjoy sitting down with someone who would tell me all about their life the way that the narrator of this book tells the reader about hers. And as always, the glimpses into the past are amazing to me; not just the obvious, the opinions about disability, marriage, and class, but that sense that I have touched the mind of a person who is not performing, although of course she is, she is writing a novel.

This one is weaker than either Muriel or Monica, in part because Duncan is having to balance what the readers of the others know about Janet's life, with the fact that the reader of this book may not have read the others. Jean, Janet's eventual stepmother, makes no appearance in the earlier books, and I could see Duncan stretching to explain that; I would assume the true reason is that she hadn't developed that part of Janet's history yet, but since (of course) Janet knows all her own past, it doesn't quite fit together within the narrative, no matter what gets said about how much Janet despises Jean and thus erases her from her own memory and thought. The same thing with Hugh; it is very appropriate that Janet would not think to ask for Hugh's help when (in Monica) she is paralysed, but at the same time I saw Duncan having to account for it, with Twice's comment that it was ridiculous she never mentioned the connection. It works well enough, but only barely.

One thing I find interesting, considering these books as a writer, is how Duncan seems to work thematically above all, although having said that it is not as though I can pin down the themes of each book into a sentence or two. But I do see how the story of this one fits all together, and how putting some of the pieces into earlier books would not have worked, even if as memoir it would have made more sense to keep things chronologically together.

[Ika Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the fourth volume of a 19-book series which I think of as a single, serial, work. I've written longer reviews of Book 13, My Friend My Father (here: no spoilers for the series), and Book 19, My Friends George and Tom (a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... masses and masses of spoilers), as well as some brief reflections about Book 18, My Friends The Misses Kindness (a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... again, massive spoilers for the series) and Book 16, My Friend the Swallow (a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..., spoiler-free).

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the first 2/3 of the book -- the voice of all the characters is delightful. I expected it to be a Scottish version of Anne of Green Gables, and it was in a way, but the character was more real and the conflict in the relationship with Jean was quite interesting.

There came a point where she started to summarize too much material and I wondered why the book hadn't just ended. It started to ramble. Just when I was losing my patience I read, "I am probably long-winded and repetitive enough by accident without deliberately being so." It seemed so much like a friend realizing she was telling too much detail in a story, but thinking it was necessary, that I was able to forgive her and push forward to the end of the book. I'll probably try a few of her other books when I need a quick light read.

[Jean Labrador · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another wonderful book by Jane Duncan. I get excited each time I meet one of Jane Duncan's new friends, and this was no exception. After reading so many of this author's semi - biographical novels, the author revealed a huge, huge secret that she had never revealed before about herself and husband, Twice (Alexander Alexander). The writing is flowing and her characters real. As Ms Duncan writes her stories, she reveals a great deal of her inner self and character with her interactions with these friends. In this case, Annie is actually not a true friend and reveals herself as a vapid, small minded bully who is only interested in one thing, Annie.

If you enjoy British novels, or are a fan of D.E. Stevenson, you will treasure this book.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane Duncan's life in Glasgow with her father and stepmother. Interesting.