Jean of Storms by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have been thinking about Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s approach to romance, for she was never the most romantic of authors to begin with. She could write romance and beautifully too; that subtle, underplayed need for each other, that quiet recognition that you are not whole without somebody else at your side, but also – she could not. She could be as subtle as a brick, as delicate as mud, and she could write the sort of engagement that might want you to throw your book across the room and though I shall not name the moment, you all know the one I mean.
But then there’s this, a serialised novel for adults first published in the Shields Gazette in 1930, a kind of proto-Young Adult novel in which a hot doctor hovers on the edge of a girl’s life and we all know what’s going to happen at the end of it because a hot doctor only has one destiny in a Brent-Dyer book. It is not subtle and yet, I always find some delicate grace in this firm belief in the goodness of doctors and their eternal strength of character and reading this against Brent-Dyer’s own life always makes me find connections between the (by all accounts horrible) death of her brother and how perhaps in a powerless situation, there is power to be found in the redemptive mark of pen and paper.
There is a lot of heart in Jean of Storms although it suffers from a few too many characters being written in accents (I cannot ever describe this coherently but I hope you know what I mean – I deeply dislike it) and the stereotypes of the day have aged terribly poorly. If you come to this with a young Chalet School fan, it is one worthwhile reading yourself beforehand because they will have questions and rightly so.
I found a rather tender love for the North East in it, a rarity in Brent-Dyer’s other work that I’ve read, and some rather beautiful writing about the sea and life on the edge of the world, being part of it. It is sometimes rather lovely and sometimes rather awful and yet there are moments here that speak far beyond themselves. But then, that’s the Brent-Dyer way isn’t it? Sometimes she’s very good and sometimes she’s very bad and sometimes she’s all of that wrapped into one.
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Daisy May Johnson 
Is this the book with the doctor who feels the need of a woman to sit opposite him whilst he reads the latest books on lung diseases? Last of the great romantics! I didn’t like Jean, because she refused to let her step-niece call her “Auntie”. The poor little kid had lost her mum, dad and step-dad, and just wanted to feel that she belonged somewhere. And it’s such a contrast to the Chalet School books, where kids call parents’ friends, friends’ mums, neighbours and all sorts of other people “Auntie”, which was still the norm when I was a kid.
The Auntie bit is verrrrry strange, as is the whole ‘let’s split the sisters up’ vibe – it’s a lot (!) It reminded me a bit of the whole “sisters-by-marriage” thing and I wondered if there was some sort of real world influence / memory kicking in here. It’s definitely a sticky!