A Vicarage Family, by Noel Streatfeild

Staff review by Chris Saliba

The first in a series of three autobiographical novels by Noel Streatfeild (Ballet Shoes), A Vicarage Family concentrates on the years leading up to the First World War.

The Strangeway family – Isobel, Victoria, Louise and the youngest, Dick – are moving to Eastborne. Their father, a local vicar, has received a new posting. This new job will be good for his career, as it's a bigger vicarage, and could even lead to him becoming a bishop. They are all good and well behaved children, except for Victoria (who we learn in the Streatfeild's author's note is based on herself.) Vicky is argumentative, rebellious and never quite happy. She's resentful of her teachers and somewhat jealous of her sisters, who she sees as being prettier and more talented than herself. For that's her major problem, a mildly existential one: she doesn't know what she's to be in life. Gradually, however, she begins to see that she might have talent as a writer. Her cousin, John, has been giving her books and Vicky has been secretly reading them, even memorising poetry.

While A Vicarage Family reads like a perfectly constructed children's novel, with its well defined characters, differing points of view and naturalistic prose, the book is often suffused with a realism and candour that has the power to shock. Streatfeild, while looking back to her youth during the 1910s, is critical of the mores and attitudes of the times. When Vicky's younger brother Dick is sent to boarding school, it is noted “To neither parent did it seem cruel to send little home-loving Dick to boarding school while still a mere baby.” In another passage Streatfeild writes with a groan of the simple, conservative ways of the vicarage. “God was in his Heaven; the King on his throne; you voted Conservative; the English were the finest people in the world; there was no grey about it - you were right or you were wrong.” The novel also discusses on many occasions the status of women, how little was expected of them, how they were to hope for little for themselves. When the children's father talks about the Suffragettes, active at that time, it is in an angry voice. “They want to behave like men and vote for members of Parliament – which would mean blue murder – the ruin of the country.”

Despite Vicky's many miseries and disappointments, her clashes with authority and self-inflicted wounds, A Vicarage Family still has an idyllic feel about it, of a time when things may have been frustrating, but family in the end was there to protect and cosset you from life's larger dangers. Streatfeild finishes her story in 1914. Suddenly the war appears and the cosy, quite normal world of the vicarage, is turned upside down with a horror never anticipated and little understood.

A Vicarage Family, by Noel Streatfeild. Published by Puffin. ISBN: 9780141368665 RRP: $19.99

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The Bell Family, Noel Streatfeild

Staff Review by Chris Saliba

Noel Streatfeild's The Bell Family, a novel about a poor yet happy family, charms and delights with every page.

Noel Streatfeild started her career as an actress, but when she found the acting jobs drying up, she turned to her pen. Originally Streatfeild was writing novels for adults, but at the urging of her editor, she tried her hand at writing for children and her famous novel Ballet Shoes was the result. The Bell Family is actually based on a radio serial Streatfeild wrote for BBC's Children's Hour. It was enormously popular and ran for six years.

The story, naturally enough, centres around the Bell family who live at St Mark's Vicarage in south-east London. The area is a poor one, but it is bustling and quite cheerful nonetheless.

The Bells are always struggling to make ends meet and the children are frequently trying to come up with schemes for making more money to help out. Their mother, Cathy, is always fretting over not having enough decent clothing to take everyone out for social occasions.

Despite all the family's privations, they stick together and use their ingenuity to solve problems.

Noel Streatfeild herself grew up in a vicarage, and she brings a wonderful realism to The Bell Family with all of its small domestic details. In tone the book is a mix between Eve Garnett's The Family From One End Street and R.C. Sheriff's The Fortnight in September, both novels that deal in the joys and occasional disappointments of family life. This is a novel that charms and delights with every page. It's quite perfect in every way.

The Bell Family, by Noel Streatfeild. Published by Vintage Classics. ISBN: 9780099583363  RRP: $12.99

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Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

Staff Review by Chris Saliba

Three orphaned girls make a vow to become famous without help from anyone else. Noel Streatfeild's classic story draws heavily on her own experiences as a young actress and performer. A cheerful and inspiring book with a feminist twist.

Noel Streatfeild started her career as an actress, but when she found the acting jobs drying up, she turned to her pen. Originally Streatfeild was writing novels for adults, but at the urging of her editor, she tried her hand at writing for children. Ballet Shoes was the result and Streatfeild never looked back. (It's interesting to note that Louisa May Alcott also had no intention of writing for children, until it was suggested to her.)

Like Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Ballet Shoes is suffused with a charmingly naturalistic style. Streatfeild spent 10 years working in the theatre as an actress, and also studied acting. Those long years of experience, the joys and the disappointments of being on the stage, inform much of the text. There is a realism in Ballet Shoes that comes through in the wonderful detail, and an intimacy, a love really, for acting and performing. The reader gets a well-rounded picture of what it must have been like to be a child performer in England in the 1930s. For example, child performers of a certain age had to save a certain percentage of their weekly earnings at the post office.

The story follows three orphan girls, Pauline, Petrova and Posy, who were discovered by their Great Uncle Matthew as babies, a globetrotting collector of fossils. Because of his profession, the girls decide to give themselves the surname Fossil. Pauline, Petrova and Posy are sent to live with Matthew's great-niece Sylvia, and her nanny, Nana, while he goes off travelling again. Uncle Matthew has left Sylvia a certain amount of money to live on, but after a time the money starts to run out and the girls must find ways to earn money.

Sylvia starts taking in boarders, and the girls start training at the Academy to become performers. Soon enough the eldest girl Pauline is earning money, and prospects are looking bright for the others. Much of the novel really concentrates on money matters, household management, female education and making it independently in the world. Early on the sisters make a solemn vow to make a name for themselves in the world, so people will not think it is due to the help of their great-grandfathers (we guess they mean figuratively, as they are orphans). Ballet Shoes, despite is wistful, dreamy title, you could actually describe as a bit of a feminist novel. It's a spiritual guidebook for young girls wanting to strike an independent course in life while also being useful members of society.

Naturally enough Ballet Shoes has a happy ending. The book is topped and tailed with a fanciful invention, the mad professor-uncle who gets the plot going and then brings it to a halt. Inbetween that we are given a riveting, blow-by-blow account of a troupe of young British girls making it on their own, without the help of their great-grandfathers. I enjoyed this so much I was sorry to see it end.

Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild. Published by Collector's Library. ISBN: 9781907360855  RRP: $16.99