Snowfall (Point - Original Fiction) - Softcover

K.M. Peyton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0590133497 ISBN 13: 9780590133494

Publisher: Scholastic Books, 1996

Synopsis

A dependent girl without money or status has few options in Victorian England, and sixteen-year-old Charlotte Campion-who knows little about the world beyond her stultifying vicarage childhood-is no exception. But when her grandfather arranges to have her marry a man who repels her, Charlotte determines she must find not only excitement in her life, but freedom, too.

In an engaging novel of adventure and romance, K. M. Peyton presents a cast of fully-realized, finely-drawn characters who choose not to be bound by convention. As they hike in the Swiss Alps and restore an English country estate, they confront British class divisions, fall in and out of love, grow older, have a marvelous time, and become life-long friends. Readers will feel so welcomed into this family of characters and intrigued by their era that they will not want the story to end.

About this title

About the Author

Winner of the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award, K.M. Peyton is the author of many well-loved novels for young readers. Ms. Peyton lives in Essex, England.

From Publishers Weekly

According to the flap copy, Peyton, winner of the Carnegie Medal for her 1969 novel Flambards, spun this Victorian-era novel out of a true incident. It would be a mistake, however, to infer from this that the story is in any way realisticAor to assume that her award back then augurs good work here. The tale begins like a formula romance, the overblown prose appropriate enough to the desperation that Charlotte, 16, feels when her vicar grandfather tells her she's to marry his stuffy young curate. But the plotting quickly becomes preposterous. Before long, Charlotte is joining her older brother and his Oxford chums on a mountaineering trip in the Alps, where she initiates what might politely be called heavy petting with a Swiss guide and, as she says, finds herself "dining with a disguised murderer [and] nursing a fallen [i.e., pregnant] domestic." After that, she and her new friends all move to the crumbling home of dashing Milo, who orbits the racy crowd of the prince of Wales; the others pretend to be his servants and, as Milo conducts a sordid affair with the much older woman in the neighboring estate, everyone falls in and out of love with one another. This might seem harmless escapist fareAexcept for the characterizations. All are clich?d, but two are insidious: the maid's wanton ways are synonymous with her "low" birth; and the only Jew, repeatedly ridiculed, is ugly, dishonest and "lazy... she did not naturally work like the rest of them." If the publisher is gambling on the author's reputation, the wager here is lost. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic Books
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0590133497
• ISBN 13: 9780590133494
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128