Angela Brazil wrote the book that invented the modern school story - tales told from inside the girls' heads rather than narrated by distant adults. In this, her first novel, a troop of schoolgirls leave their ordinary boarding school for the summer term, relocating to a picturesque manor house deep in the countryside. The move itself feels like an adventure: old walls, hidden passages, a rich history waiting to be explored. But it's the arrival of Monica Courtenay - enigmatic, private, carrying some unnamed weight - that truly sets the girls astir. As friendships form and fray, as secrets accumulate like summer dust, Brazil captures something rare: the intense, all-consuming world of adolescent girls, where a look can wound and a confidante is everything. The mysteries of the manor mirror the mysteries of growing up. Over a century later, Brazil's refusal to patronize her young readers still feels radical.
