This book is surely the ultimate tragic comedy. At the same time as teetering on the brink of despair, I was laughing raucously out loud (which, as an indication of Bilgewater's sheer funniness, I never do, so beware of reading this book in public places!). Bilgewater's character is a work of genius: ungainly, bookish and forlorn; insightful, intelligent and original. My favourite, favourite part is the crazy vision of Bilge climbing out of the Roses' window. If you are looking for something a bit weird, offbeat, or, in fact, just a brilliant book, I would strongly recommend this one. :o)

Yes, this is one of the best & brainiest children's/young adult's books out there. The main characters are misfits stranded amongst "normality" in a boarding school... anyone who has been less than incredibly perfect and popular can relate to the heroine. Gardam has created very unusual, intelligent and deep characters... and she writes with compassion and skill. What begins as a story full of painful non-interaction and isolation moves toward riveting romance and self-discovery and bravery, unveiling the plot with an almost gothic mood. Complex, atmospheric, smart and strong; this is for mature young-readers and for adults who remember their own coming-of-age pangs. One of my most memorable surprise discoveries.

Has anyone else in the world read this book? I have read a lotof books, but this has to be one of my favourites. Poor Marigold (orBilge) is so ordinary it's painful. You can really relate to her. This book combines, ordinary (and somewhat monotonous) life, intrigue and romance (Terrapin & Jack- Lucky thing!) Love it! Read it NOW!

It's good to see this exceptional book back in print. I don't think Gardam's adult novels--fine as they are--have the dancing intensity of her early work for children. Jessica Vye is immediately engaging, and her growth takes her out into the world instead of into herself, and towards the amazed discovery that "good things take place" in spite of everything. I was a teenager way too long ago, am male, and never lived in the north of England; but this remains one of my favorite pieces of fiction. Read it, reread it, and go dig up a copy of "Bilgewater", too....

I first read this book at the age of ten. After I returned it to the library, I forgot the title and had to spend hours scouring the bookshelves to find it again. It was worth it. Even now, at eighteen, I love it more than ever. This book should be read by everyone, but especially by children. The basic story is; a young girl who dreams of being a writer goes to a stuffy English private school where the teachers take every action possible to crush her ambitions. However, she prevails with irrepressible wit and humor. If you're passionate about life, literature, or anything at all, READ THIS BOOK!

This is my favourite book of all time. I never get tired of reading it. It's about this thirteen year old girl in England during the second world war, and stuff that happens to her over a year or two. It's one of those books where the girl is narrating and perceiving one thing but you (with your superior wisdom and experience) can see more than she does. I think it's very real and subtle and a true statement of what it's like to be a teenage girl. This part is so true, that I feel like I'm really learning about how it must have been like during the war in England. So often I feel a disconnect when people write about this age group.

As always, Jane Gardam writes with an unbeatable combination of poetry, humanity and dazzling wit. Here her subject is not the agonized adolescence she has dealt with elsewhere, but rather the small events in a younger child's life. A rural setting brings opportunities for colloquial speech, much of it very funny indeed; but Gardam never condescends to her characters, young or old. The writer is wise enough, and skillful enough, not to let her grownup perspective come between her and a complete identification with her child protagonist. Don't look for grand passions or earth-shattering revelations. This is an intimate book that illuminates the everyday with warmth, charm and intelligence.

This is a superb read for a young fluent reader, wanting to be introduced to chapters. The structure is tight, with a pace that keeps the reader wanting to continue the read. The dialogue is non-stadard English and a joy! The descriptive passages are full of visual and sound imagery. This is a gem, and useful for any parent to share with a child, for an independent read, or in England to use in the Literacy Hour for Y3 pupils.

As I read this book I could not put it down; nothing made sense but it had the hypnotic quality of the best mysteries. I wanted to understand what was going on in this woman's head, as contradictions and fantasies swirled in her mind. It was fascinating in that it was a window into a mental breakdown, from a staid respectable housewife to an increasingly eccentric and almost surely bizarre woman. I finished it in record time, and have to admit it was quite interesting. However, several months later I do not find it to be terribly memorable, and I do not return to it mentally in order to think about some of its points, as I do for the best books. So read it, but don't bother saving it as you probably won't feel the urge to reread it later.

"Angela's Ashes" is alternately funny and sad, but Jane Gardam's book is three times as funny and three times as sad. A work of genius!I can't recall admiring a novel more.

This awesome book puts you in the mind of someone slowly sleeping into mental illness. Highly recommended!

The Kit is the story of a little girl living on a farm. Her family thinks she is a cry-baby. They call her "The Kit" (short for kitten) because she is not acting grown-up (like a cat).
She is scared of rats, beetles and things like standing in a cow-pat, but she is not scared of Geoffrey the Bull, who is her friend.

When the hay season is on, Kit has to stay home from school and help with the farm work. She has a younger sister called Lisa who can't do anything wrong.

She is very good at school and she can read well. Miss Bell is her teacher and she is very old because she used to teach the Kit's mother and father. Sometimes Miss Bell lets Kit sit at the back of the class and draw pictures and things, because she is so good at reading.

One day things go very wrong at home, and Miss Bell helps Kit to save the family. Kit thinks that her mum is brave and strong, but Miss Bell tells her that when Kit's mother was young, she was a big scaredy-cat herself, much worse than Kit.
Kit is worried she will never get off the farm and go to see London and Miss Bell agrees, because her family really can't do without her.

I really enjoyed this book, but it was a little bit sad.

Jane Gardam set out to write a very ambitious book about three girlfriends and their diverging lives in the summer between their last year of high school and their first year of college. The setting is England, post World War II and Gardam's characterization of post-war city life is interesting. Though the novel begins and ends with the three girls hanging out and contemplating their futures, in between they have very little contact with each other. This novel is really just three short stories about Hetty Fallowes, Una Vane and Liseolette Klein and their adventures during one fateful summer.

Which can be a fine premise for a book. It just did not seem to work here. I felt that the author really short changed the stories of Una and Liseolette. Una is the daughter of a doctor who committed suicide and a mother who now runds the local beauty parlor ("Vane Glory"). That summer, she becomes romantically involved with her socialist milk delivery boy during the course of their long bike rides together. Liseolette, a German citizen living with kindly Quakers, discovers that she has living relative, after previously not knowing whether all of her family perished in the concentration camps. Both of these stories are potentially very interesting, but Gardham does not devote enough time to either one. The characters seem flat and unemotional; their revelations seem contrived and premature.

It seems that Gardham's favorite character is Hetty, and as a result, mine was too. Hetty is the daughter of a disillusioned, emotionally dead veteran and an immature, thoughtless and hypocritical mother. Hetty's mother prides herself on her piety, yet is having a blatant affair with the vicar, whom she begs Hetty to confess her own sins to. Yet for all her faults, Hetty's mother loves her, and Hetty loves her mother. Desperate to escape her mother's oppresive concern, Hetty rents a room in the Lakes District under the premise of studying for her college courses. Distance gives Hetty the distance she needs to appreciate her parents for what they are and are not.

Though my parents are wonderful people, and my mother is nothing like Hetty's mother, I could appreciate being 17 and feeling extremely ambivalent about my parents. They could exasperate me and even embarass me, and five minutes later I would be reflecting on something about them that I loved. This horrible but exciting feeling of adolescence is beautifully depicted in Gardham's story of Hetty and her mother.

Overall, the story of Hetty somewhat redeems the rest of this "novel", which is full of superficial characterizations and excessive symbolism.

Jane Gardam's "The Flight of the maidens" takes us back to England, post WWII, in 1946.

It is summer, and we meet the three friends, Hetty Fallowes, Una Vane, and Lieselotte Klein. They are about to leave their safe homes in Yorkshire to enroll in Universities in London. We follow these 3 young ladies through summer, we see how they solve the different challenges they encounter, and how they prepare for college. Hetty leaves town, renting a room far out in no-where land to read the whole reading list before University starts up, Una gets romantically involved with Ray, and Lieselotte ends up in California, to stay with distant relatives.

This is, what I would call, a hopelessly romantic book, with no other purpose than to make you feel good..

"The Flight of the maidens" came highly recommended from a friend, and I really wanted to like this book. But honestly, it didn't take me long to realize that this was not my thing. Sorry Paul, no offence - this is not a bad story or awful writing.. this was simply not my cup of tea... (Although I have to admit that I liked Hetty...)

I was attracted to this book for two reasons: 1) it was set in England in 1946 (an interesting period), and 2) I read "Queen of the Tambourines"--also by Gardam--and quite enjoyed it. When I read a professional review of "The Flight of the Maidens," I had the impression that the novel was about three young women in post-WWII England who go off to university and what happens in their lives.

Actually, the book covers a very brief period of time, summer 1946 to be exact--from the end of the school year until just as the university academic year begins...Gardam really does a splendid job of recreating a period of change and reconstruction. Through her characters, she illustrates the crumbling of the upper classes and the rise of the working class. The three main characters are unique, but they are, nonetheless, products of the period, and their lives all bear scars of the war that they lived through. I look forward to reading Gardam again.