Play Up!

In Prunella Plays the Game by Irene Mossop (first published 1929), the game is cricket, hurrah! Although Prunella is the new girl and titular heroine, this book is really about her cousin Jacinth: plain, good humoured and underestimated. St Prisca’s is a boarding school for sixty or seventy girls, depending on which page you believe. The previous headmistress was rather lax and a group of girls, headed by another of Prunella’s cousins, the lovely Camellia (known as Queen) has had things all its own way. The in-crowd run everything to suit themselves and their friends regardless of talent. This has particularly affected Thyra, a brilliant but wayward girl who has never been allowed to shine and has turned to mischief instead. (It's rather cheek of girls called Thyra, Dione and Aveline to tease Prunella about her unusual name.)

The new head, Miss Kestrell (The Hawk, obviously) is determined to get the school to pull together and perceptively appoints Jacinth head of the Rubies, to the amusement of Queen and her set. How Jake builds up a successful cricket second XI, doggedly defending her own decisions and her friends, makes for a very entertaining story with believable characters. Even the baddies are not all bad and astonishingly the girls visit some ruins without getting trapped inside them and have a boating mishap with no one even near drowning. ( Read more... )