Val Forrest in the Fifth

"Oh, I'd like some money!," declares Val (Valentine) at the beginning of Evelyn Smith's Val Forrest in the Fifth, "A pocket-book with a fat wad of notes, or a leather bag of gold!" A not unnatural desire in a young woman whose family had recently lost all their money, making everything from buying stamps to affording the games subscription something of a challenge for the new girl at Myra Dakin's girls' school.

Boarding with Mrs. Wilby - an old school-friend of her mother's - at Dakin Priors, and struggling to find her feet in her new school and new life, Val seemed to meet with ill luck at every turn. Her efforts to reconcile her friends in the Fifth with fellow new student Aileen Ellerton - whose occasional petulance and "mother's pet" show more attitude hid an essentially good-hearted girl - seemed doomed to failure. Her efforts to earn some pocket-money by working as a Latin tutor proved short-lived, and her lovely time camping with some friends ended in disaster, when she was falsely accused of starting a fire. Worst of all - and not unrelated to these other misfortunes - was the fact that Mrs. Wilby seemed incapable of sympathizing with her, and constantly misinterpreted her actions.

An immensely enjoyable tale, with an engaging heroine who does the best she can in circumstances well beyond her control, Val Forrest in the Fifth differs somewhat from the other girls' school stories I have read. Myra Dakin's seems to be a day school, rather than the more usual boarding school, and although school affairs, from tennis games to a production of Twelfth Night, are important, just as much emphasis is placed on Val's non-school environment and activities. The main area of narrative tension, in fact, has nothing whatsoever to do with Myra Dakin's. I have no idea how typical this is of the genre as a whole, but it provided an interesting wrinkle in my reading experience thus far. show less