New Class At Malory Towers

Malory Towers: New Class at Malory Towers: Four brand-new Malory Towers by Enid Blyton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Malory Towers is having a moment. The past couple of years have seen theatre adaptations, news of the rights being sold to the BBC, and the publication of this: four new Malory Towers stories from Patrice Lawrence, Narinder Dhami, Rebecca Westcott and Lucy Mangan. It’s worthwhile pointing out now that I come to these stories from a very particular place. I have written about Malory Towers academically. I’m working on an article about it now. I’m not really, I think, the target age group for this volume. That honour goes to new readers, fresh to the series, looking for a way in. It’s very much for the new reader. Not the old one who goes ‘does this volume edit out Darrell lamping everyone in sight or does it keep it in’.

For my tastes, this volume could have done with a little more curation. A little foreword before each story would have been nice; something just to set the scene and tell the reader where they are. The Malory Towers saga is big – and that’s even when you just consider the original texts. If you consider the bind-ups, Pamela Cox’s sequels, the general mythologies about the series, let alone the mythology about Blyton herself, you have a lot to deal with. And I can feel where these stories are going; they want readers to find their space at Malory Towers. They want readers to be part of that, and I love it, but I’d have liked a little more curation.

Having said that, however, some of the stories are excellent. They’re all very good, because I don’t think you get away with not being good in a volume when there are only four authors to begin with. There’s nowhere to hide, and all of the authors set out their stall delightfully. Lucy Mangan is very on brand with her bookish tale, and I very much want Patrice Lawrence to write something longer. Her opener about new girl Marietta strains at the edges of its word count; there’s the promise of something rather brilliant here and I’d love Lawrence to come back to the school story genre at some point. I also had a lot of time for Narinder Dhami’s funny and lively story of new girl Sunita Sharma and Gwendoline’s mistaken identity. Talking of Gwendoline, Rebecca Westcott is unusual and welcome in how she seeks to give Gwen some depth as opposed to making her the punchline. There’s a lot in Westcott’s story to love, though the conclusion didn’t quite work for me.

I think the ‘new girl’ premise stumbles a little the more you go through this volume, though each author is strong enough to make it work for themselves. There is, however, a little note of repetition to certain elements and a slight sense of everybody hitting the same beats. It’s important to note however that Blyton loved this sort of thing and embraced it at every chance she got. It’s also important to note that the school story genre adores these sort of rhythms and so this is very much on point. Now, if I can have that Patrice Lawrence boarding school story?



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