Book Review: Girls’ High, by Barbara Anderson

Available now in bookshops nationwide.

This is a republication in the excellent VUP classics series.

I always thought I had read this book, and probably I have. However it came as if new, which was an unexpected pleasure.

The staff of Girls’ High are the main characters, although there are appearances by family members and the occasional pupil. Mostly those from last year’s 4F….

Having worked in a school – although not a girls’ one – I found this book hilariously funny.  Barbara Anderson must have set up a bug in some school staffroom, because it all rings hideously and cringe-makingly true of staff meetings in any school. The undercurrents, the inattention, the minds on almost anything except the matter being discussed – all there in glorious technicolour!

The power-plays, the cliques and relationships, the tensions, the stereotypical teachers are well drawn and infuriatingly accurate. You can, if you are a teacher, surely swap most of this cast of characters for those in your own staff room. Try it!

Nick Hornby said of it, when it was first published:

Even before its first page, Girls High promises freshness and originality: its contents page is simply irresistible. ‘Jenni Murphy thinks about her sexuality’; ‘Sooze thinks about Bryce’s job in the morgue’; ‘Thea Sinclair thinks about the Aerial Survey in 1978’; ‘Miss Franklin remembers the smell of pepper.’One immediately turns to the back of the book, to find a photograph of the woman who thinks about Jenni Murphy thinking about her sexuality.

Chapter headings are these days something of a rarity, but it’s wonderful just to read them, as Hornby did, and begin to wonder, before you begin to read.

It’s more a collection of short pieces than a full-blown novel, I think, but regardless it works well. Towards the end when the annual Leavers’ Play is being planned, the dialogue (always good) goes up a couple of notches and the press-ganging of reluctant staff into full support of the project is again redolent of staffrooms everywhere.

The main characters – Carmen, Sooze, Margot – are credible – but then all the characters are credible, even if stereotypically recognisable. But I don’t mean that in a negative way – it merely adds to the humour, which is clever and sharp.

This book is still a delight and if you have not read Barbara Anderson’s work, I am sure this will encourage you to read further. Highly recommended!

Reviewed by Sue Esterman

Girls High
by Barbara Anderson
Published by VUP Classics
ISBN 9781776562107

Book Review: Portrait of The Artist’s Wife, by Barbara Anderson

Available in bookshops nationwide. 

VUP has a treat for all lovers of Barbara Anderson’s books – new editions of her books Girls High and Portrait of the Artist’s Wife have been published this year.

Portrait of the Artist’s Wife was originally published 27 years ago, in 1992. It has aged well. The themes she explores – the nature of marriage, the place of women in marriage and society, the bone-crunching work of raising children, the rhythms of rural life, the passing of generations – resonate as well in 2019 as they did in 1992.

The novel spans nearly five decades of the life of Sarah Tandy, a talented painter who finds herself married to her childhood friend and the love of her life, Jack Macalister. Jack is an archetypal tortured novelist, a world-class philanderer, and a handy boozer as well. Sarah suffers, silently, for decades as Jack’s needs and wants eclipse all of her own.

Anderson shines a spotlight on the place of women in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s and to a large extent the 1980s and at the end of this book I had to ask myself, things are better now but are things better enough? It would be interesting to see what the fictional Sarah would make of then gender politics of 2019. Sarah had to live with people questioning whether she could continue to paint as a mother – echoes of our own Prime Minister’s experience as she entered motherhood.

The novel follows Sarah through the birth of children, heartbreak and bereavement, the loss of family and friends, betrayals and triumphs. Anderson paints a portrait of Sarah as fully-fledged flawed and brilliant human being – the injustice, the joy, the grief and the shame feel as real as if it were happening to a best friend.

Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, the Goodman Fielder Wattie 1992 Book of the Year, is a delightful read. I found myself re-reading passages several times to savour the artful descriptions and the sharp observations.

Anderson has the ability to write about things in a way that make you think about them differently, look at them differently, and appreciate them so much more. Her microscopic attention to detail doesn’t overwhelm, rather it delivers a gift of insight with every description. Describing a cantankerous caretaker she writes that ‘enraged quivering thatches of hair leapt about his forehead and set single spies across the bridge of his nose.’ [p. 223]

When Sarah is having an argument with Jack, who always found the words when she could not, Anderson describes her plight: ‘Words were no use to her, as always they skidded away from what she wished to say, immiscible as petrol scum on puddles.’ [p. 338]

Unlike Sarah, Anderson’s words have considerable staying power, and well deserve their re-publication.

Reviewed by Emma Marr

Portrait of The Artist’s Wife
by Barbara Anderson
Published by VUP
ISBN 9781776562121