Last Term At Malory Towers (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
I've spent the last few days rereading my copies of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series. Unfortunately I only have the third, fifth and sixth, but I am now determined to get my hands on the other three and read them obsessively. I love them for a few of reasons, which I shall enumerate here:1. They bring back so many memories, primarily of the days when I actually read the damn things (when I was about six to eight years old). At the time I was living in England, where people actually did say "you'd jolly well better not do that again!", where it seemed not only possible, but likely, that fairies lived down the bottom of the garden, where an adventure and a mystery was just waiting around every corner, and where life was so full of simple wonder.2. It's just so GOOD! Good as in everyone is good and kind and perfect, except for the people who aren't. It's totally black and white, and the baddies always either get their commeuppance or admit their faults and are reformed, the goodies are always recognised and loved, the ending is always happy and OH MY GOD I LOVE ENID BLYTON. Example:"Sometimes hard things are good for us,' said Miss Grayling, and Miss Peters nodded. After all, the girls didn't come to Malory Towers only to learn lessons in class - they came to learn other things too - to be just and fair, generous, brave, kind. Perhaps those things were even more important than the lessons!"3. The moment when Darrel steps out onto the stage to rapturous applause at the end of the pantomime which she wrote has remained in my subconscious for years as the ultimate image of success and happiness. I know that while Enid might have difficulty moving us to tears or making us ponder the deeper existentialist dilemmas, this is what she does brilliantly - portraying the glorious happiness that comes from the act of living life to the fullest.This is also pretty hilarious, it has to be said. I won't deny that this has something to do with my enjoyment.Kids these days don't read her, I've noticed. Perhaps even 'in my day' - gosh, that makes me sound old - they didn't. But I lived within miles of the house where darling Enid lived, and I was a sweet, innocent, happy child to whom the idea of gallivanting around in secret passages and tackling 'rogues' and playing lacrosse was ridiculously appealing, and for whatever reason I read and loved those books for so many years.Then, all of a sudden, I went off them. This was because it abruptly dawned on me that the prose is crazy. Commonly used words include: 'super' as in 'oh super! Lacrosse game tomorrow!', 'rotten' as in 'rotten breakfasts they have here!', 'wizard' as in 'that's a wizard drawing, Belinda!', and many other wonderful examples that I noticed at the time but have now slipped my mind. Not to mention the overabundance of explanation marks, as evidenced by my thoughtfully chosen examples.No matter. I am having a wonderful, nostalgic trip to the past and I am eternally grateful to Enid Blyton, because it was basically her (and Roald Dahl) who introduced me to reading, and it's really great. You should totally try it.
Tahun ini adalah tahun terakhir Darrel bersekolah di Malory Towers. Ia dan kawan-kawan kelas enam yang ada di Menara Utara berpisah kamar. Kini Darrel dan Sally menjadi teman sekamar karena mereka akan mempersiapkan diri untuk ujian masuk universitas. Selain mereka, Alicia, si anak jahil yang cerdas itu juga turut mempersiapkan diri untuk masuk kampus yang sama tahun depan.Lalu ada apa pada tahun terakhir Darrel ini? Banyak. Buku kali ini tidak lagi fokus kepada kegiatan Darrel dan kelas enam, namun juga pada kegiatan Felicity (adik Darrel) dan anak-anak kelas dua. Lagi-lagi kita para pembaca diingatkan bahwa Malory Towers bukanlah sekedar sekolah yang hanya menyampaikan pelajaran namun juga nilai-nilai kehidupan. Hampir semua siswi Malory Towers terbentuk dengan baik dan menjadi perempuan yang tidak hanya cerdas dalam pelajaran namun juga berkepribadian baik setelah ia lulus dari sekolah berasrama ini. Tetapi tidak semua siswi mudah dibentuk, ada beberapa yang sangat sulit untuk diubah sifat dan sikapnya seperti Gwen. Dan bagaimana kabarnya pada tahun terakhirnya ini? Apakah ia berhasil menjemput impiannya untuk memasuki sekolah bergengsi di Swiss? Ataukah ada hal lain yang menantinya? Yang jelas Buku terakhir ini merupakan penutup bagi kisah para siswi yang bersekolah di Malory Towers, khususnya Darrel. Saya pribadi terkesan (lagi!) oleh pengalaman Darrel dkk yang dapat kita baca dengan leluasa dalam serial ini. Terima kasih Blyton. Terima kasih Mbak Dewi atas pinjaman bukunya. :)
What do You think about Last Term At Malory Towers (2006)?
Note: This review covers all six Malory Towers books.I think many child readers who grew up in the UK 40 or 50 years ago had a yen to go to boarding school, based on the numerous series that were popular in the UK at that time. I happened to discover Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series, written between 1947 and 1951, when I was around 7 or 8, and I loved them from the beginning. Partly this was due to the setting - a castle-like building complex on a stormy coastal hilltop in Cornwall, the southernmost region of the British Isles, where I lived for a time and the Celtic land that has been my family's homeland for many centuries. Aside from my personal investment in the country in which it was set, the Towers themselves were terribly romantic looking, in that wind-swept, storm-off-the-shores kind of way! Part of my fondness for Blyton's series was simply the idea of boarding school as a place where young girls not only learned, but bonded and grew and developed a strong character, healthy body, creative mind and compassion for others - at least, that's how the stories in these books always seemed to turn out. As is standard with this genre, there is a core of recurrent characters - Darrell, our straightforward but somewhat tempestuous heroine, Sally her steady best friend, Alicia the smart but sometimes callous one, and so on. Each year brings a certain number of new characters into the school, some of whom stay on into the later books and some who do not. There's always at least one transgressor who Learns A Lesson, and there's always at least one moral drawn for all the girls from that experience. There's a certain amount of social consciousness in the sense that some girls at the school are poor, some are not, and that class difference is shown to be not a "real" difference at all (pretty heady stuff in late 1940s Britain's children's fiction!), but most of the dilemmas have to do with the sin of "disobeying the rules of the school," with dire consequences, although not too dire. It's all very innocent and the children are all quite "improved" by their stay (except for Gwendolyn, and even she is redeemed in the end!).Enid Blyton is known for several other series that she wrote, including other school series, but this is the one that reached my heart as a young child, and it's still the series that, at 48 years old and counting, I turn to whenever I have a cold and need something to cheer me up. I believe these books are all long out of print now, but if you enjoy boarding school fiction from a time before Harry Potter, this is worth a search in the more obscure realms of the Internet library!
—Alison C
Last term, and still the new girls arrive. And still they need to be cut down to size and made to fit in with the Malory Towers ethic. But who can complain, when it is all so thoroughly nice?I remember the first time I read this wondering how anyone could be so sad to leave a school, even though I didn't hate being at my own. I reckoned it had to do with actually living there, especially as MT sounded so pretty. Of course it wasn't, as I found out when I got to eighteen. In spite of being back 'home' I don't see that many of my school friends these days, even those who live nearby - life has moved us in so many different directions and I think that that realisation is part of the sadness of leaving school.Once again, thank you mfa for passing these books on. I hope future recipients enjoy their trips down memory lane as much as I have.
—Catherine
buku keenam, buku terakhir...slalu merasa pengennya ada selusin buku malory towers :pbuku ini menceritakan semester terakhir darrell dan teman2nya di kelas enam..disemester terakhir ini ternyata masih ada murid baru, amanda, dia tpaksa masuk MT krna sekolahnya, trenigan towers tbakar habis.. amanda atlet yg hebat, keras kepalanya jg hebat, apalagi pas bdebat ma moira n june, ga ada yg mo kalah :pada lagi suzanne, kponakan mam'zelle rougier dgn muka polos dan slalu bicara police? hihihih maksudnya mah please, cuma tau knapa dia ga bisa ngomongnya :poooh ada lagi hu larbi zaza hwahaha pokoknya seru liat si suzanne btengkar ma mam'zelle dupont gara2 kosakata si suzanne yg ajaib :Dmsh ada lelucon, tp bkn alicia yg lakuin, tp june, felicity n teman2nya yg bikin buat ngehibur anak2 klas 6..buku ini ditutup dgn cerita menyedihkan soal gwen.. sebuah kata terlambat yg menyebabkan penyesalan mendalam..terlambat..tlambat utk berbakti..tlambat mengungkapkan ksh sayang...terlambat...;(
—Speakercoret
