Books Monthly Volume 13 No. 12 | September 2011 | Welcome to booksmonthly.co.uk - I hope you enjoy your visit.

Carmen Reid's St Judes series

by Paul Norman

For those of you who thought the girls' boarding school story ended with Anne Digby, think again. Carmen Reid, possibly better known for her "chick-lit", revived the genre in 2008 with SECRETS OF ST JUDE's - NEW GIRL, and had Gina sent by her mother to St Jude's in Scotland, the school where she herself had boarded all those years ago. There are now six books in the St Jude's series, and they're brilliant! Carmen follows the time-honooured and very safe formula of new girl at boarding school, doesn't want to be there and can't see herself ever fitting in, finding it difficult to make friends, rebelling against authority, etc., etc. but tinged with Carmen's very own talent for observation of the modern female teenager and what makes her tick. And once Gina's finally settled in and made friends, the partying can begin!

Here's the link to Carmen's brilliant trailer for Party Girl on YouTube: http://youtu.be/ZDcTTRaU0fM then come back here and carry on reading about this fabulous series...

Someone had to drag the boarding-school story kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and who better than Carmen, with her first-hand experiences and her unique observations on modern life? Throughout the 20th century, the school story dominated children's literature, even through the later decades, when THE FOUR MARYs were the main attraction in BUINTY, and Anne Digby's Trebizon series kept the genre very much alive. When Harry Potter arrived on the scene a decade or so ago, everyone claimed that interest in boarding school capers was regenerated by the boy wizard, but for me the real guardian of the school story in the last decade has always been Carmen. SECRETS AT ST JUDE'S is every girl's dream series - it concerns fashion, accessories, shoes, boyfriends, coffee, breaking the rules, good- and bad-parenting, under-age drinking, and just about everything that gets teenaged girls going. And now there are six... Carmen's modern "four Marys" are Gina, Amy, Min and Niffy, great friends who share everything, go off on holiday together, get into scrapes together, hang out together, and simply bond. They're all people you and I know, family members, siblings, sisters, cousins, friends, Carmen has them off to a T, to perfection, their moods, their worries, their joys, their discoveries, their obsessions. It's brilliantly, wittily observed modern life, a microcosm of society in that it's set in a boarding school, but it could just as well be four teens going to secondary modern or meeting up at uni. For me, this series is keeping a much-loved genre very much alive. I can't wait for book seven... Now if only there was still a weekly girls' comic like Bunty or School Friend...

Ohmigod! Gina's mum has finally flipped and is sending her to Scotland to some crusty old boarding school called St Jude's - just because Gina spent all her money on clothes and got a few bad grades! It's so unfair! Now the Californian mall-rat has to swap her sophisticated life of pool parties and well-groomed boys for . . . hockey in the rain, school dinners and stuffy housemistresses. And what's with her three kooky dorm-buddies . . . could they ever be her friends? And just how does a St Jude's girl get out to meet the gorgeous guys invited to the school's summer ball? An addictive read. An hilarious read. A Carmen Reid.

I interviewed Carmen way back, when Secrets of St Jude's - New Girl, first came out, and I think it's time to revive that interview:

Hi Carmen: – thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions, here goes:

BM: What made you decide to write a school story? Was it a sudden decision or have you been planning it for a while but only just got round to it?

Carmen: The idea of writing for teenagers scared me! And re-visiting my boarding school years for material… even worse! But I was gently nagged by my publishers who suspected there might be a good source of stories there and I found once I started, that it was amazingly good fun and surprisingly therapeutic. In fact I love my gang of four heroines and enjoy every moment in their company.

BM: Were you aware of the enormous interest in school stories, particularly girls' school stories that survives from the golden age in the last century?

Carmen: You know, I can’t say that I was really. I suppose it’s obvious that books for children tend to be set in school though, because that is where we spend a great deal of our lives when we are young.

BM: Did you read any of those golden age school stories before starting ST JUDE'S, or were your own experiences at boarding school sufficient for you to get started?

Carmen: I re-read one of my old Chalet School books (I found six in my childhood bookcase!) and I bought a Blyton Malory Towers. But I have to be honest and confess that both of them left me sorely disappointed. They just seemed so old-fashioned, very thinly plotted and so pro-school, I’m not sure what a modern teen would make of them.

BM: How much like your own boarding school is St Jude's? And did you and your fellow boarders get up to much the same things? Jane Brockett's new book CHERRY CAKE AND GINGER BEER talks about midnight feasts, particularly in the Enid Blyton stories – are they for real?

Carmen: St Jude’s is set in an imaginary school which is like my old one: a snobby, Edinburgh girls’ school. None of the stories are real, but they’re based on our reality, if you see what I mean. I only remember one midnight feast, it involved plain crisps and tins of condensed milk. Totally disgusting! Our school food was actually really good and before bed, we were allowed into the kitchen for oranges and marmite toast, so there wasn’t much need for midnight feasting.

BM: Why choose an American girl for your main character? Did you have one at your boarding school while you were there, and was she the inspiration for Gina?

Carmen: I wanted to have a new girl arriving at the start of the book and trying to make sense of this stuffy old school and I thought a spoiled Californian teenager would be about as out of place as a bright green alien. So I think that works quite well. At my school, we were constantly having girls arrive for a term or a year from all over the world.

BM: When can we expect a second St Jude's story? (I hope you're working on one right now!)

Carmen: Yes, I’m hard at work on Jealous Girl, which I think is due out next summer.

BM: Which type of story gave you the most satisfaction to write? St Jude's or your – dare I say it without offending you – "chick-lit" stories?

Carmen: The St Jude’s stories are surprisingly enjoyable to write. But I do love my current ‘grown-up’ heroine, Annie Valentine. I’m working on a third book about her. So it’s a tie really.

BM: What are you working on now, or do you take a break after finishing a novel? Or two just finished and published, in your case?

Carmen: A break?!! I go on holiday for a couple of weeks in the summer, but otherwise I’m delighted to say I’m usually very busy writing.

BM: You describe yourself as having a lifelong phobia of books – surely not still? You must read an awful lot to keep up with what people are getting up to. What sort of literature do you read?

Carmen: I think you mean a lifelong phobia of cows*! Books definitely not. I’ve always been a big reader, particularly between the ages of 9-15 when I probably went through a book a week. I currently read lots of fiction old and new (I’ve just done Phillip Pullman, Douglas Copeland and Eleanor Lipman on my holidays and now I’m starting Dickens’ David Copperfield). I tend not to read books similar to the ones I write, because I quite like a change after a hard day at the cliff-face of creativity! *Ed: how could I have misread that! Sorry....

BM: Are there any books you loved as a child, and do you still have them, or copies of them?

Carmen: Lots of books were very important to me when I was younger and I have kept loads of my old books. I especially remember Watership Down by Richard Adams, The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, A Small Pinch of Weather by Joan Aitken and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I also remember loving The Famous Five and when I was a bit older, books by Agatha Christie and the vet, James Herriot.

BM: What do you do to relax when you're not working on one of your novels? Listen to music? Take Jimmy for long walks, talk to the goldfish? Or maybe read?

Carmen: Yes, walking Jimmy (the world’s smallest and cutest Jack Russell) is a big feature! I have two lovely, adorable children (age 10 and 6) so I hang out with them a lot. When we are not reading together, we like swimming, playing tennis and this summer we tried surfing for the first time, which was brilliant fun!

BM: Any favourite books you couldn't do without if you were cast away on a desert island?

Carmen: I’d like to take some of those really long, meaty books that I’ve never found the time to get through in ‘real’ life: Dickens’ Hard Times and Bleak House, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Volumes 2 and 3 of Proust (I have managed to read volume 1!) The book I do like to re-read now and then, especially in the winter, is Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News.

BM: You'll notice all my questions have been about St Jude's or general – I've read your latest LATE NIGHT SHOPPING, and I enjoyed it immensely, but my main interest is in your school story – after all, I'm not a "chick", but like Sir Tim Rice, Terence Stamp and Giles Brandreth, to name just three rather high-profile people, I find school stories particularly appealing. I'd love to be able to ask you questions about your other best-sellers, but in a selfish sort of way I hope ST JUDE'S does tremendously well and you're persuaded to write lots more in the series! Thanks for answering my questions!

Very best wishes

Paul

Well, looks like I got my wish, as there are now six fabulous St Jude's books, and I'd guess it's safe to say that we haven't seen the last of Gina and her friends! Just time to tell you that Carmen's latest non-St Jude's novel, THE JEWELS OF MANHATTAN, is published on 10th November - I have an advanced copy and I guess I'll be able to tell you about it next month - here's a sneak preview of the cover, which is freely available! Now, those of you who haven't read the St Judes series, write out a hundred times.... and see me later for your prep for tomorrow's history test...

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