Second in a series of reviews.
Previously: First Term At Malory Towers.
Next: Third Year At Malory Towers

Contains spoilers.

So, Second Form at Malory Towers. Satirising Enid Blyton through puerile innuendo (if you’ll pardon the pun) is sooo1982. But dammit, it’s just too difficult to resist. Yes, girls have a tendency to develop innocently platonic crushes on each other (just as boys have a tendency to hero worship), but Second Form’s rather dated language makes it pretty difficult for a filthy modern mind to read the bizarre love triangle between Gwendoline, Mary-Lou and new girl Daphne as anything other than the synopsis of a Sapphic Seventies romp.

Gwen, at least, can be forgiven for wanting some sugar – Daphne is the first girl at Malory Towers to extend the hand of friendship. It’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for her: no sooner has she made her first, largely unobjectionable appearance than the other girls are bitching merrily about her. And so it goes for the rest of the book. Other than sucking up to Daphne and a bit of naughtiness after lights-out (yes, yes, move along), it’s hard to see what her offence really is in this book, but she’s nonetheless the object of scorn. And she probably still has ink on her shoes.

Mary-Lou, however, has no excuse: having fought the good fight to win Darrell’s love in First Term, her head is turned almost the instant that Daphne’s blonde locks enter the door. (Evidently she’s progressed from butch to femme during the holidays). And she’s apparently learnt nothing from her previous experience, trailing around like a kicked puppy-dog despite Daphne’s exploitation and apparent indifference. One has to wonder what her home life is like, to make her so starved of affection: something like Dave Pelzer’s, presumably.

In fact, Mary-Lou’s infatuation has the same near-disastrous consequences as in First Term, as her hormones, er, that is, her good-hearted nature leads her to take a stupid and entirely unnecessary risk that endangers both herself and others, although this time she’s the rescued rather than the rescuer. Presumably she grows up to be some sort of extreme sportswoman, albeit probably a crap one. A base jumper, or something. But as a kid, she’s a prime case for electronic tagging. Or possibly just a ball and chain.

Nor are Mary-Lou’s torrid relationship issues the only shameless retread from the first book in the series. The other major plotline concerns Ellen, a gloomy newcomer to the school who’s convicted of serious offences by a kangaroo court on the basis of purely circumstantial evidence, even as a far more obvious suspect goes unchallenged and no-one bothers to involve the teachers. Once again, Darrell (another one who learns nothing from experience, apparently) takes it upon herself to mete out a savage beating, whereupon Ellen is confined to the sanatorium, although no-one thinks it necessary to tell her schoolmates where she’s gone.

Admittedly, this is a hybrid of both Gwendoline’s and Sally’s stories from First Term- a literary remix, no less! Blyton was ahead of her time - but they don’t gain much from being unceremoniusly munged together. You would think that Sally (who has evolved, rather disappointingly, from a sororocidal goth to the sensible head girl) would understand, but other than expressing a few wimpy reservations, she lets the lynch mob do its work. The only note of originality is that Ellen’s a scholarship student who’s cracked under the pressure of going to a dead posh school. That’s what happens when commoners get ideas above their station.

This repetition wouldn’t matter so much if it weren’t for the fact that there’s little new in the rest of the book. Most of the remaining space is filled out by get a couple of pranks so innocuous by today’s standards as to raise few eyebrows. The girls find a way to use “invisible chalk” on their teachers’ backs: do they write “SLAG”, or draw the ever-popular spitting willy? No, they do not: they write “OY!” I find it hard to believe this was ever considered to be behaviour so uproarious as to cause the girls to descend into the hysteria described here.

The denouement, when it arrives, is painfully slow to unfold. But then perhaps that’s because I’m thirty-four, not eight. And we do get to see the headmistress, Miss Grayling, unfold her leathery wings and descend upon the miscreants with her flaming sword of justice. Well, alright, she just stares at them a bit and persuades them to Do The Right Thing. But that’s quite exciting enough, I can tell you.