The Impossible Prefect

by Nancy Breary

When Lindsay Dysart, who has never made much effort to follow the rules, is made prefect at River Place School, everyone wonders whether she will measure up. Spurred by the help of the adoring junior students and new girl Jennifer, Lindsay begins well, but when she starts to devote time to creative writing, she neglects her new responsibilities.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Born in Brixham, Devon, in 1907, Nancy Breary was the eldest daughter of bank manager Arthur Henry Breary, and his wife, Edith Florence. Her younger sister, Gertrude, known as Gretchen, was born in 1908, and her younger brother, Gerald, in 1913. The family moved to London when Breary was still a baby, living in Clapham Park, and then Streatham. She was educated at Kingsdown School in Dorking, where she was sent as a boarder, from 1918 to 1924.

Intending to become a dietician, Breary took a domestic science course upon leaving school, but ended up working as a mannequin in a court dressmaker’s shop instead, while also running the family home, after her mother became an invalid. Breary wrote in her spare time at first, eventually switching over to writing as a full-time occupation in 1943, following the publication of Give a Form a Bad Name. Her sister Gretchen, who worked as an illustrator (her work was credited to "G.E. Breary"), was the primary breadwinner in the family, during this period. The Brearys lived briefly in Canada, in the 1950s, before returning to Great Britain in 1955, settling first in Rye, and then Winchelsea. Nancy Breay died, in Winchelsea, in 1988.

Breary was a prolific contributor to the Girls' School Story genre, publishing her first novel, Give a Form a Bad Name, in 1943, and going on to author twenty-six more, concluding with the 1962 Too Many Girls. Although her work does address some of the realities of the school experience - the jealousies amongst the girls, the unpleasantness of being new, and an outsider, the conflict between duty and pleasure - it is rarely intended to be a depiction of "normal life" in a boarding school. Rather, her books offer amusing stories - sometimes almost parodies - complete with many over-the-top elements, from schoolgirl feuds, to secret societies.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Head-girl Rachel Anderson and her fellow prefects - the somewhat malicious Olive Sanders, the ineffectual but optimistic Mary Cooper, the faithful and fair-minded Prue (Prudence) Grenfell, and the forthright games captain Anita Bostick - were all surprised when Lindsay Dysart, a popular and accomplished girl with little regard for the formality of rules, and more interest in her writing than in her fellow students, was chosen by their head-mistress as River Place's new sixth-form prefect. What on earth could Miss Hazell have been thinking?, they wondered, predicting varying degrees of disaster.

And although Lindsay was beloved by the juniors whom she was sent to oversee, juniors who would have done anything to please her, those predictions proved more than accurate, as any number of catastrophes - from the lower forms being caught out, late one night, in the school attic, to a midnight feast that almost ended in tragedy, when the boat on which it was being held caught fire - occurred during her watch. Was it best, as Olive insisted, that Lindsay resign? What about Miss Hazell's secret purpose - known only to Lindsay herself - in appointing such an unconventional prefect...?

The Impossible Prefect was my first foray into the work of Nancy Breary, a prolific mid-twentieth-century girls' school-story author, whose work I have seen compared to one of my (thus far) favorites in the genre, Joanna Lloyd. Perhaps this comparison raised my expectations to too high a level, but I simply wasn't as amused as I expected to be, and found many of the sub-plots - Jennifer Windgate's "daring war" with her twin brother, John; the "frail, pathetic" hand the Lower Fourth sees regularly waving from a passing motor-boat, which they believe belongs to a kidnapped girl; Lindsay's easy transition to published author(!), and her friendship with the repulsive Lois - intellectually unconvincing and emotionally unsatisfying.

As one or the other of these might be expected to compensate for the absence of the other, in this type of work, their simultaneous absence was quite noticeable. Still, I don't want to overstate case. This was moderately enjoyable (hence the three stars), and I believe that fans of the genre (and of Breary) will find much here to entertain them, despite the improbable shenanigans. Given the high praise heaped on this author, by those with greater familiarity with girls' school-stories, I think I will persevere, and try to find some other titles. Perhaps this one just wasn't meant to be a favorite...