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Pauline
Pauline, a thoughtful, orphaned English schoolgirl, struggles to adjust to her new life when she is sent to live with her well-intentioned uncle and his family.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1965
About the author
Margaret Storey
35 books11 followersMargaret Storey is the author of several books for children. Neil Gaiman has cited her as an influence: "Margaret Storey is more or less out of print these days, alas. I loved her when I was about seven or eight, and am looking forward to finding out how much of her stuff has wound up in mine."
Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey write under the pen names Susannah Stacey and Elizabeth Eyre.
Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey have written many books together, but the Elizabeth Eyre pen name seems only to have been used for the Sigismondo series of novels.
She lived in south west London
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 16, 2012
When Pauline's father dies, there isn't enough money for her to stay at her beloved boarding school so she goes to live with her Uncle Harry and his family. Although well intentioned, they do not share Pauline's interests - they aren't readers, they give her little privacy, and they immediately disapprove of the friends she makes at a local day school where, a gifted student, she feels right at home. One particularly memorable scene occurs when Uncle Harry insists Pauline drink milk, which makes her ill, and acts as if she is making up stories to get out of it.
Luckily, Pauline's cousin Paul finds his parents and siblings annoying too, and this provides her with an ally and creates a much needed bond between them. However, when Uncle Harry decides that her school friends are preventing Pauline from acclimating to her new family, he tries to have her held back in school just as Pauline is trying to win a scholarship. This is too much for Pauline to endure, and she runs away.
Interesting to note that Storey is one of Neil Gaiman's favorite authors, although I don't know if he ever read this book.
Luckily, Pauline's cousin Paul finds his parents and siblings annoying too, and this provides her with an ally and creates a much needed bond between them. However, when Uncle Harry decides that her school friends are preventing Pauline from acclimating to her new family, he tries to have her held back in school just as Pauline is trying to win a scholarship. This is too much for Pauline to endure, and she runs away.
Interesting to note that Storey is one of Neil Gaiman's favorite authors, although I don't know if he ever read this book.
Want to Read
July 7, 2011If CLM gave this book 5 stars, I must read it.!
November 6, 2025
It's one of those well-meaning books that was probably enjoyable enough when it was written, but which doesn't strike me as a perennial classic, i.e. I was bored pretty much constantly until I gave up on it.
I'm a Charlotte's Web or Howl's Moving Castle kind of reader when it comes to kid's books, so that period in the 1960s/70s where it was all the rage to write about children with "issues" of some kind (broken homes, a disease, runaways, alcoholic parent, etc.) was not my favourite. This seems to fall firmly in that camp: poor Pauline has ended up with her aunt and uncle's family, and because this isn't a Joan Aiken novel they aren't trying to lock her in the attic and steal her fortune, they mostly want her to drink milk and be happy.
Despite being well-meaning, they're pretty dreadful: they won't allow their son to have roller skates, or be friends with a boy who argues points with his own father (and the father doesn't mind). It's hard for me to relate to, in a world where now I would think we should be glad his friends aren't gang members or intravenous drug users. And the author isn't treating this like the parents are especially weird (they're not Amish, for instance), so it just isn't very relatable now, nor are the games the family plays, or the Rompers the children wear at school. And that's fine, per se, I've read many books where the concerns of the characters are no longer specifically relatable—there was a great to-do in Queen Lucia about a tableau, which we no longer perform for fun—but for this to work you have to understand why the characters feel as they do, you have to like the characters, you have to enjoy the writing. It needs to be special. This book doesn't do that for me.
Funny how fresh and alive Jane Austen can feel, from 200 years ago, but a book just 50 or so years old can seem stale and frozen. Oh well. On to the next on my massive (4,000+) list of books to-read.
(5* = amazing, terrific book, one of my all-time favourites, 4* = very good book, 3* = good book, but nothing to particularly rave about, 2* = disappointing book, and 1* = awful, just awful. As a statistician I know most books are 3s, but I am biased in my selection and end up mostly with 4s, thank goodness.)
I'm a Charlotte's Web or Howl's Moving Castle kind of reader when it comes to kid's books, so that period in the 1960s/70s where it was all the rage to write about children with "issues" of some kind (broken homes, a disease, runaways, alcoholic parent, etc.) was not my favourite. This seems to fall firmly in that camp: poor Pauline has ended up with her aunt and uncle's family, and because this isn't a Joan Aiken novel they aren't trying to lock her in the attic and steal her fortune, they mostly want her to drink milk and be happy.
Despite being well-meaning, they're pretty dreadful: they won't allow their son to have roller skates, or be friends with a boy who argues points with his own father (and the father doesn't mind). It's hard for me to relate to, in a world where now I would think we should be glad his friends aren't gang members or intravenous drug users. And the author isn't treating this like the parents are especially weird (they're not Amish, for instance), so it just isn't very relatable now, nor are the games the family plays, or the Rompers the children wear at school. And that's fine, per se, I've read many books where the concerns of the characters are no longer specifically relatable—there was a great to-do in Queen Lucia about a tableau, which we no longer perform for fun—but for this to work you have to understand why the characters feel as they do, you have to like the characters, you have to enjoy the writing. It needs to be special. This book doesn't do that for me.
Funny how fresh and alive Jane Austen can feel, from 200 years ago, but a book just 50 or so years old can seem stale and frozen. Oh well. On to the next on my massive (4,000+) list of books to-read.
(5* = amazing, terrific book, one of my all-time favourites, 4* = very good book, 3* = good book, but nothing to particularly rave about, 2* = disappointing book, and 1* = awful, just awful. As a statistician I know most books are 3s, but I am biased in my selection and end up mostly with 4s, thank goodness.)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews