The Tower Room; Watching the Roses
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Cover Story
The illustration on our cover is taken from Think of an Eel, Karen Wallace, ill. Mike Bostock, published by Walker (0 7445 2250 1, £6.99) - see the article 'Facts... With the Freshness of Fiction' for more about this book and others in the 'Read and Wonder' series. We are grateful to Walker Books for their help in using this illustration.
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I admit to feeling apprehensive when I read 'Egerton Hall School Story' printed on the front covers: all manner of uneasy stereotypes reared up to threaten me.
My fears were groundless. These are excellent books with more to say about the psychology and motivation of their characters than the number of times a week they play lacrosse. The stories feature three characters, Megan, Alice and Bella, and each is given a different volume of her own - Pictures of the Night, Bella's story, has still to appear in paperback.
The Tower Room is Megan's story - her relationship with a male lab technician changes both her perceptions of love and her life: she must leave school and set up home elsewhere.
Watching the Roses is more harrowing, since Alice is raped on her 18th birthday surrounded by the roses on whose symbolism much of the book rests.
The delightful anachronisms of life at a girls' boarding school - Study Teas, prep and the San - contribute to the reader's knowledge and understanding of the forces shaping the girls' lives and provide the sort of books which invite involvement with the storyline - not least through resonances from the original fairy tales on which each of the stories is based.
