Jo of the Chalet School (by Elinor M Brent-Dyer)

I started my current full reread-through of Elinor M Brent-Dyer’s lengthy Chalet School series just over a month ago, with ’The School at the Chalet’. I’ve now finished the second in the series, ‘Jo of the Chalet School’, which follows on from it, covering the second and third terms of the newly formed school for girls in Austria. I last read this book in 2009, and had mostly forgotten it.

The first chapter is perhaps a tad dull; we meet twelve-year-old Jo, irritating her slightly older...