Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The first in a not-long-enough line of excellent books, 28 Aug 2001
By A Customer
Autumn Term was my first Marlow book - 25 years ago. Since then I've been able to collect and enjoy the rest of the series (save one) and congratulate Faber for introducing the Marlows and their friends to a new generation.The four school stories (Autumn Term, End of Term, The Cricket Term and The Attic Term) are interspersed with stories about the Marlows at home (The Marlows and the Traitor, Falconer's Lure, Peter's Room, The Ready-Made Family, The Thuggery Affair, and Run Away Home). I enjoy the school-set stories more because of the at-home stories. Forest's characters are believable, and nobody is whiter-than-white or blacker-than-black. Nor are people Reformed In A Term By This Great School :) - all faults exhibited in many other girls' school stories. If you haven't met Nick, Lawrie, their six siblings, and their friends Miranda, Tim, Esther, Janice, and Patrick - I urge you to do so!
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The first book in the best series, 27 Nov 2001
I have always enjoyed school stories, however formulaic many of them are (can you say "Malory Towers" and "St. Clare's"?) When I first bought this book on a vacation in England in the early 1980s I was expecting the same sort of thing. What I got was, instead, a superb, definitely not-written-to-a-formula book, with fascinating, complex characters and brilliant writing. The identical, but completely different, twins have such lofty plans for their first term at school; the ways in which the plans go awry and the unexpected way in which they excel make for plenty of things happening in the book, but I think it's for the characters that I like it so much. I was fortunate in my timing: END OF TERM, THE CRICKET TERM, PETER'S ROOM, THE READY-MADE FAMILY, THE THUGGERY AFFAIR, and RUN AWAY HOME were all in print that summer, though it took some hunting to find them. It was several years more before I got my acquisitive little hands on FALCONER'S LURE, THE MARLOWS AND THE TRAITOR, and THE ATTIC TERM. I am delighted that the first in the series has been reissued, and hope that Faber will continue with the rest of them. Only four of the Marlow books (the ones with "Term" as part of the title) are school stories, but all of them are excellent, as are the two that explore the adventures of one of the Marlows' ancestors, THE PLAYER'S BOY and THE PLAYERS AND THE REBELS...buy this one and beg Faber to reissue the others.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reprint her other books too!, 7 Feb 2001
By A Customer
I'm 28 now and still re-read Antonia Forest's school stories, especially at times of stress - forget the Little Book of Calm et al, these are much better. I did manage to read some of her other Marlow books years ago in our school library & can confirm they are excellent, and add my plea to the other reviews to reprint them all please! My favourite I think is Cricket Term. The only children's author (Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpe Saga the honourable exception) that never disappoints when you go back.
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