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The Exchange
190 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1979
4 people want to read
About the author
Gwyneth Jones
150 books108 followersGwyneth Jones is a writer and critic of genre fiction. She's won the Tiptree award, two World Fantasy awards, the Arthur C. Clarke award, the British Science Fiction Association short story award, the Dracula Society's Children of the Night award, the P.K.Dick award, and the SFRA Pilgrim award for lifetime achievement in sf criticism. She also writes for teenagers, usually as Ann Halam. She lives in Brighton, UK, with her husband and two cats called Ginger and Milo; curating assorted pondlife in season. She's a member of the Soil Association, the Sussex Wildlife Trust, Frack Free Sussex and the Green Party; and an Amnesty International volunteer.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
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July 13, 2024Thanks to Ian Sales, we have info on this one! (blog: https://iansales.com/2018/06/04/readi...)
"Debbie and Claire are sixteen years old and best friends. Except Debbie fancies Michael Grey but is too shy to admit as much, and her friendship with Claire beings to suffer. Which is badly timed as the two are going to spend the summer in Paris with a French family. At the airport – I’m not sure where the story opens; Manchester, I think, as Jones is originally from there – they miss their flight after hiding out when all their friends come to see them off – including one or two unwelcome friends. So they decide to hitchhike to the South Coast and catch the ferry across. They spend a week in Nottingham, working as chambermaids for next-to-nothing at a “hotel” that is little more than an old folks’ home, before doing a runner. When they reach Brighton, after several adventures on the road – and considerably less had they made the same trip today – they get work as cooks in a girls’ riding school for overseas students… before eventually coming clean to their parents over the phone, and finally leaving for France. The novel is told entirely from Debbie’s POV is pretty much about her friendship with Claire, the way it began to unravel at the start of the summer, how it hung together precariously as they made their way south, and the eventual confessions which healed it just before the left for France. I’m not really sure what to make of it. It’s a very late-1970s novel, and some of its sensibilities have not aged well. But Debbie is drawn with impressive detail, and nothing in the plot seems in the remotest implausible. I was, to be honest, expect it to be fantasy, as I seem to remember Jones’s other YA titles from the late 1970s are fantasies: The Influence of Ironwood, Dear Hill and Water in the Air. Although I may be misremembering the first two."
(Thank you, Ian - because those others are the ones I'm interested in). <3
"Debbie and Claire are sixteen years old and best friends. Except Debbie fancies Michael Grey but is too shy to admit as much, and her friendship with Claire beings to suffer. Which is badly timed as the two are going to spend the summer in Paris with a French family. At the airport – I’m not sure where the story opens; Manchester, I think, as Jones is originally from there – they miss their flight after hiding out when all their friends come to see them off – including one or two unwelcome friends. So they decide to hitchhike to the South Coast and catch the ferry across. They spend a week in Nottingham, working as chambermaids for next-to-nothing at a “hotel” that is little more than an old folks’ home, before doing a runner. When they reach Brighton, after several adventures on the road – and considerably less had they made the same trip today – they get work as cooks in a girls’ riding school for overseas students… before eventually coming clean to their parents over the phone, and finally leaving for France. The novel is told entirely from Debbie’s POV is pretty much about her friendship with Claire, the way it began to unravel at the start of the summer, how it hung together precariously as they made their way south, and the eventual confessions which healed it just before the left for France. I’m not really sure what to make of it. It’s a very late-1970s novel, and some of its sensibilities have not aged well. But Debbie is drawn with impressive detail, and nothing in the plot seems in the remotest implausible. I was, to be honest, expect it to be fantasy, as I seem to remember Jones’s other YA titles from the late 1970s are fantasies: The Influence of Ironwood, Dear Hill and Water in the Air. Although I may be misremembering the first two."
(Thank you, Ian - because those others are the ones I'm interested in). <3
Displaying 1 of 1 review