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A review by ergative
War Among Ladies by Simon Thomas, Eleanor Scott
3.0
To be honest, I feel like the dedication is the best part of this book:
`TO THE MAN IN THE TRAIN
between Newton Abbott and Exeter, who declared to the Author that all teachers had:
Too much pay
Too little work, and
Too much leisure,
this book, respectfully and without permission, is
DEDICATED'
Not because the rest of the book is bad, but because the dedication is so good. The rest of the book is about a failing girls' school in 1928 England, and the trials facing the teachers, whose lives are circumscribed by some pretty rough working conditions. The fixed salary scale for teachers means that if a senior teacher is fired or laid off, she cannot find a new job, since potential employers are going to hire newer, cheaper teachers instead; and if she is fired or laid off before her pension vests, then she loses decades of 10% salary contributions to the pot. Combine those pressures with a school exams system that may shut down an entire school if the students fail; an incompetent French mistress whose students cannot pass their French exams; and a marking scheme that says any student who fails French cannot pass the exam at all, regardless of her scores in all the other subjects, and you have a perfet storm of scorn and resentment among all the teachers whose careers, pensions, and lives are at risk.
I find that the internal tensions, scheming, and intrigue described in this book are just as exciting as court drama in any work of high fantasy. It's not so much the stakes and setting that I like about political drama as all the machinations and alliances and factions; and you can get those in just about any setting. So those bits were great.
The problem is that this book was clearly not given much editing. There are internal inconsistencies, plot events which are not set up properly, and other plot events which seem to have vastly more substantial importance than they are given. For example, at one point a teacher has a mental breakdown from the strain of all the pressures surrounding the future of the school. This is designed to catalyze some of the teachers into more concerted action, but it would be more effective if, for example, the specific circumstances of the breaking-down teacher had been set up earlier--or indeed if her character had been included in the earlier events of the book at all. As it was, I didn't recognize her name, and her specific pathetic circumstances that rendered her situation so pitiable were related in the same exposition dump as the description of her break-down.
In another event, two teachers arrange to go away for a weekend biking trip, which--when the weekend comes--has somehow turned into a walking trip. This minor inconsistency turns out to be have been motivated by a need for transportation to arise, requirng one of the teachers to be rescued by a love interest. The rescue wouldn't have worked if she'd had a bike. But surely it would have been a simple enough matter to flip back to the previous chapter where she's planning the trip and replace 'biking' with 'hiking'? Evidently not.
Oh, and speaking of the love interest: in a moment of vulnerability and openness he reveals himself to be an anarchist escaped from prison and hiding from the authorities under an assumed name. Goodness gracious me, how juicy! In a world where a teacher getting a ride home from a man is a source of SCANDAL, what on earth will come of such a secret?!!?
Well, nothing, actually. We never hear about it again.
See what I mean? Some editing was needed here.
`TO THE MAN IN THE TRAIN
between Newton Abbott and Exeter, who declared to the Author that all teachers had:
Too much pay
Too little work, and
Too much leisure,
this book, respectfully and without permission, is
DEDICATED'
Not because the rest of the book is bad, but because the dedication is so good. The rest of the book is about a failing girls' school in 1928 England, and the trials facing the teachers, whose lives are circumscribed by some pretty rough working conditions. The fixed salary scale for teachers means that if a senior teacher is fired or laid off, she cannot find a new job, since potential employers are going to hire newer, cheaper teachers instead; and if she is fired or laid off before her pension vests, then she loses decades of 10% salary contributions to the pot. Combine those pressures with a school exams system that may shut down an entire school if the students fail; an incompetent French mistress whose students cannot pass their French exams; and a marking scheme that says any student who fails French cannot pass the exam at all, regardless of her scores in all the other subjects, and you have a perfet storm of scorn and resentment among all the teachers whose careers, pensions, and lives are at risk.
I find that the internal tensions, scheming, and intrigue described in this book are just as exciting as court drama in any work of high fantasy. It's not so much the stakes and setting that I like about political drama as all the machinations and alliances and factions; and you can get those in just about any setting. So those bits were great.
The problem is that this book was clearly not given much editing. There are internal inconsistencies, plot events which are not set up properly, and other plot events which seem to have vastly more substantial importance than they are given. For example, at one point a teacher has a mental breakdown from the strain of all the pressures surrounding the future of the school. This is designed to catalyze some of the teachers into more concerted action, but it would be more effective if, for example, the specific circumstances of the breaking-down teacher had been set up earlier--or indeed if her character had been included in the earlier events of the book at all. As it was, I didn't recognize her name, and her specific pathetic circumstances that rendered her situation so pitiable were related in the same exposition dump as the description of her break-down.
In another event, two teachers arrange to go away for a weekend biking trip, which--when the weekend comes--has somehow turned into a walking trip. This minor inconsistency turns out to be have been motivated by a need for transportation to arise, requirng one of the teachers to be rescued by a love interest. The rescue wouldn't have worked if she'd had a bike. But surely it would have been a simple enough matter to flip back to the previous chapter where she's planning the trip and replace 'biking' with 'hiking'? Evidently not.
Oh, and speaking of the love interest: in a moment of vulnerability and openness he reveals himself to be an anarchist escaped from prison and hiding from the authorities under an assumed name. Goodness gracious me, how juicy! In a world where a teacher getting a ride home from a man is a source of SCANDAL, what on earth will come of such a secret?!!?
Well, nothing, actually. We never hear about it again.
See what I mean? Some editing was needed here.