4 out of 4 stars
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Although Home Economics for Girls is firmly set in the 21st century, the title, with its echoes of a 1950s school textbook, cleverly gestures back to the world of the country house weekend party, that traditional setting of so many classic murder mysteries. The opening chapters teem with references to many famous fictional detectives, as well as to a certain well-known board game featuring candlesticks, lead piping and a creepy vicar.
We have two narrators: teenage V (Violet )Tickham and her younger sister, Tabitha Elodie, usually known as Kitty, but also referred to by her loving sister as 'the midge', 'la petite vache' (the little cow) and various other insults too numerous to mention (though she gives as good as she gets, by the way). Kitty is also the self-styled Great Detective. V narrates most of the story, with Kitty picking up any bits that her sister has missed. Actually, in chapters 5 to 7 there is a fair bit of repetition, as Kitty recounts, from her point of view, events most of which we have already heard about from V, with just a few gaps filled in. Entertaining as this was, I was glad the author did not make a habit of it.
The narrative plaits together a number of threads. Firstly, the mystery of how a magnificent home-made cake ended up splattered over the parsley patch. Secondly, the narrators' mother's attempts to revive the flagging family finances by running a murder mystery weekend in the faded magnificence of their country house home. Thirdly, V's intermittent last-minute attempts to prepare for an important practical assessment in “Home Ec” (otherwise known as Domestic Science, or Food and Nutrition). Finally, there is the story of family itself : the two girls, their mother and “the Bastard”, as V calls him. It doesn't take long to guess who “the Bastard” is … ah, but has he perhaps been unfairly maligned? Before the end of the book, dear reader, you will have a chance to decide this for yourself.
The narrative zips along with considerable zest: the pace in the early chapters is almost breathless as the jokes and one-liners come at dizzying speed. All this helps to endear us to V, who some might otherwise be tempted to consider a bit of a spoilt brat, and maybe even a snob. For example, it seems that, for her, the main downside of the family's problems is that they have necessitated the sale of her beloved pony and forced her to become a day girl, rather than a boarder, at her privileged private girls school. This results in her being ditched by her posh friends (undoubtedly hurtful, but perhaps they weren't such good friends anyway) and thereby 'stuck with' other day-girls and scholarship students (that is, those from poorer, lower-class families).
So, V is no saint, and she has some minor faults, too, as a narrator. She is not always entirely level with us, though we're talking sins of omission here, rather than outright lies. In the first instance, she does provide one or two hints that something important is being left unsaid, and I correctly guessed what was afoot before her confession, which is always flattering. The second piece of dishonesty relates to the ending. All I can say, without risking spoilers, is that I accepted the narrator's apology because I regarded the subsequent explanation as entirely satisfactory. All in all, V is a well-developed and well-rounded character. She reaches something of a crisis in the middle of the book, at which point the narrative pace changes, the sparkle fades briefly and her inner vulnerability is touchingly revealed.
Speaking of vulnerability, the blurb on Amazon describes this book as “one for daughters and their mothers” and I would certainly recommend adults sharing it with teenage children, since, although dealt with light-heartedly, there is enough serious material here to fuel some productive conversations. It would also be handy for at least one of the readers to be au fait with the kind of upper-class-Brit slang that comes spattered with gobbets of Latin and French, together with the occasional soupçon of Italian. Failing that, Google (or other search engine of choice) is your friend.
The book was well-structured and professionally edited. I only spotted one genuine error, aside from the amusing ones made in Kitty's narrative - she cannot quite match her sister's level of multilingual sophistication and occasionally gets words wrong such as 'are nouveau', 'blunderbust' and the police 'comfortable' (constable).
There was no one thing I liked best about the book, and nothing at all to dislike. It was so fresh and witty that I scarcely dared to believe that it could end in a way that preserved all those marvellous qualities – and yet it did. Full marks all round. I give it a rating of 4 out of 4 stars and have to say that I shall be looking out for other books in the series, especially the sequel to this one.
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Home Economics for Girls
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