Plot recap: Charlotte is the young headmistress at Saint Elizabeth's School for girls, where she was once a pupil herself. It's a dream come true for her, career-wise -- but the responsibilities of leadership set her apart from her staff, and with few friends or relatives around to support her, it's a rather lonely life. She finds herself becoming involved in the life of a new student, Tessa MacRynne, and Tessa's friends, the Eastwood children. Then she receives an invitation to spend part of the summer holidays with Tessa and her family at their home on a remote island off the coast of Scotland.
As I said in my original review, I'm not sure this would count among my favourite DES novels -- but Charlotte is a very appealing heroine, a successful career woman in a time when that was not so common as it is today, and I think that, even today, some women will relate to her loneliness and longing for the happy family she never had (although -- mild spoiler alert! -- there is a happy ending!). I was also pleasantly surprised to find a few (mostly thoughtful) passages that speak to the childless experience.
I didn't mention this in my original review, but was also fun to get a glimpse of the hoopla around Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in June 1953, as we now approach her 70th (!) anniversary Platinum Jubilee.
My original rating of 4 stars on Goodreads still stands.
Coming up next: "The House of the Deer," a sequel of sorts to "Gerald and Elizabeth" (and featuring a few characters we've met in other previous Stevenson novels), which we read just before "Charlotte Fairlie" (reviewed here and here).
This was Book #16 read to date in 2022 (and Book #5 finished in March), bringing me to 36% of my 2022 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 6 books ahead of schedule. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2022 tagged as "2022 books."
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