Monica Turns up Trumps by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

Monica Turns Up Trumps by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The more I read of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer‘s connectors, the more I’ve come to realise that she is an author of extremes. She is either very good or very bad, and only sometimes does she land in the middle. Were I a scientifically minded type I’d call this the “Exile-Althea Equation” and murmur lots of things about context of production and the difficulties of a long and prolific writing career, but I am not and so I shall content myself with merely observing this: it’s easy to figure out what you’re going to get. You can feel it within seconds, and by the end of the first chapter it’s definite. You might be getting pink worms and backflipping ninja geography teachers, or you might be getting searing political commentary, but the important thing is this: you know. And I knew within moments of reading Monica Turns Up Trumps that this was relatively early doors Brent-Dyer, and it was good.

Monica Turns Up Trumps sings of first phase EBD; that richness of setting, flawed and lovable characters, a Misunderstanding Father type who is also an Inevitable Doctor (Brent-Dyer bingo! mark your cards!), and argumentative and somewhat stroppy girls trying to figure out who they are in the world. There are not enough stroppy girls in books, and I welcome more. I think we increasingly try to erase girlish misbehaviour – as indeed, do some of the adults in this book – and yet, Brent-Dyer keeps it in. Girls can be idiots. It’s okay. They’re still great.

Plot? Straightforward, and full of delicious Chalet School connectors. Monica is an idiot. She’s figuring out how not to be. Things happen; she turns up trumps. Honestly, there’s no spoiler here: it’s literally the title of the book. There’s an interesting subtext where her brother advises her father on how to handle her – patriarchy in training, perhaps, but I always see something else when it comes to Brent-Dyer and siblings, not in the least because of the childhood death of her brother Henzell in 1912 and Elinor growing up as an only child. There’s always something curiously sad for me about how she leans towards the big, messy families full of love when the parent/ singular child family tends towards a much more complicated representation. A topic for an essay at some points, perhaps.




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