Book Reviews

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Attain reviews three books – ‘A Desolation of Learning’ by Chris Woodhead, ‘Jinxed’ by Sara Lawrence, and ‘Soldier Oli’ by Kirsty Marvell.

Jinxed by Sara Lawrence
Jinx Slater is back, and the universal agreement among my classmates of the Brighton boarding school that provides the undeniable inspiration for Stagmount is that she and her partner in crime, Liberty Latiffe, bear more than a passing resemblance to some of the notoriously rebellious erstwhile sixth formers which were at the school at the same time as the author.

‘Seventy-five per cent fact’, was the consensus at the start of our recent Jinxed-themed reunion.  Misses Strimmer and Golly – aka Strumpet and Gosh – are reminiscent of the sports teachers who tried in vain to get at least two of us speeding around the athletics track in humiliating elasticated nylon gym knickers, knowing that really we were better suited to the short-lived 10-pin bowling ‘sports option’ with its opportunities for penny-sweet eating and limited physical effort.  There are new characters too: the glamorous if vacuous Russian triplets (festooned in the latest designer gear) and their mysterious bodyguard Igor; Coach D Hanson, the school’s new male football coach; and Jinx’s first love interest, the gorgeous Jamie...

‘But where are the custard creams?’ one of my contemporaries bemoaned.  We used to eat trays of them at break time.  Stagmountians, in contrast, seem too sophisticated to hoover up ten custard creams in as many minutes.  Jinx even keeps half a king-sized chocolate bar in her handbag to eat later.  Handbags?  Keeping some for later?  Definitely fiction.  Not for us parties in penthouse apartments on Brighton’s sea front, with cool, zit-free boys who liked surfing and had their own cars.

What Jinxed did capture for all of us, and what makes it a good read all round, is the intensity of living together, studying together and growing up together.  Something we shared at school but for many is a hallmark of their university days.  As one former classmate noted: ‘I could really take myself back to it and the depth of friendship. There could be furious rows, of course, but they were about silly things: who was going shopping with who, who took all the hot water in the showers, that kind of stuff.’  When we did resolve these rows and actually go shopping, it was a familiar routine: ‘go to Boots, eat chicken nuggets in McDonalds, and then get back in time for Baywatch.’  At Stagmount the girls seem to have oodles of cash to spend on designer brands and almost unbridled freedom, whereas the reality for us was rather more restrained and regimented.

Dissecting Jinxed over dinner at a Fulham brasserie I think even the girl herself might find quite cool, this bunch of old Roedeanians shared a lot of laughs, happy memories, and a certain degree of shock at the antics of Jinx and her classmates.  Oh, and a sense that we might have spent rather more time in the sixth form reference library and done quite a lot more work than they ever seem to do – indeed I think I remember actually writing the very same essay on The Winter’s Tale over which Jinx merely ponders.

One classmate, reading Jinxed under her mosquito net while working in Africa recently, said her jaw dropped at regular intervals and she said to herself ‘B----- ----, we never did that!’  But for all that, the story, the setting, the characters and the details definitely had enough grounding in reality to have kept us reading late into the night, under duvets or mosquito nets.

Charlotte Moore-Bick

‘Jinxed’ is published by Faber, priced at £6.99.  Order online at www.faber.co.uk


Soldier Oli by Kirsty Marvell
Soldier Oli is a short story written for young children to help them understand the experience of a parent going overseas on active service. Living on an army base in Germany, with most of the soldiers on the street deployed to Iraq for seven months, the author Kirsty Marvell felt that some children might not really understand that although their father or mother was leaving, they would eventually come home again.

Soldier Oli is a simple tale written for the most part in rhyming couplets and with illustrations by the author herself.  The buses, boats and planes all have delightful smiling faces and the book features intricate details of army life such as the green bus, the ‘blueys’ (airmail letters) and Solder Oli’s bergen.  For Forces’ children of younger prep school age it may indeed provide some comfort, but I suspect the real value of this rather poignant book is in helping parents navigate an emotional minefield of explaining to their children what it means for their father or mother to be away for months at a time, to not be there for their birthday or Christmas.  It may make these conversations a little easier, perhaps be a timely help for school staff looking after Forces’ children, and a donation from the sale of every book goes to the Army Benevolent Fund.

Charlotte Moore-Bick

‘Soldier Oli’ is published by Kirsty Marvell, priced at £5.  Order online at www.soldieroli.com


A Desolation of Learning by Chris Woodhead
‘I do not think I am embittered, and I know I am not mad.  I know, too, that few issues in social policy are more important than education.  I did not plan to write this book, but, in the end, I had no option’.  Chris Woodhead’s introduction to his second book about education in Britain sets the tone for the following 208 pages.  It is a critique of all that is wrong in education today and the misplaced ideas which have caused many of the problems.  Woodhead firmly flies the flag for a return to traditional values.

But is he viewing the world through rose-tinted spectacles or does he have a point?  He starts with the crux of the problem, with a chapter ‘Dumbing Down: The Proof’ and proceeds to compare O level and GCSE examination papers from the 1960s and 70s with today’s offerings.  The contrasts are unsurprisingly stark.  ‘I could not dream up a more vacuous question if I tried’ retorts Woodhead after re-printing a question from a 2008 English Literature paper.  You cannot fail but to agree with him.

Woodhead does not pull any punches.  Written in a direct style, almost too direct, you can sometimes feel the exasperation he has for ‘the system’ and the people who have allowed it to get into such a mess.  It is definitely not sympathetic to any recent Secretary of State for Education: ‘Children are not equal.  Physically they come in all shapes and sizes.  Some can run fast; others can barely waddle.  Some are intelligent and some are not very intelligent.  Some have a capacity for academic education; many do not.  What is surprising is that Blunkett and so many others find these obvious truths impossible to accept.’

The system is at fault and Woodhead goes for the jugular right from the start: ‘An education system based on the belief that everyone can make progress and win some sort of prize is profoundly unmeritocratic...  The ministers and educationalists who object so strongly to the observation that an academic education is not for everyone know that if everyone is to have an opportunity to succeed something has to give, and that something was not going to be their commitment to equality of opportunity.’

With this in mind, the inexorable rise in examination results each August suddenly makes sense.  But is Woodhead right?  The book is common sense thinking which leaves the reader almost as frustrated as the author.  But you cannot help thinking that if it was just as simple as all this, why doesn’t Ed Balls read this book and implement the improvements necessary to make our schools better?

Matthew Smith

‘A Desolation of Learning’ is published by Pencil-Sharp, priced at £16.99.  Order online at www.politicos.co.uk

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