The 1936 Club - It Pays to be Good. Noel Streatfeild

There is a dedication at the front of this book where Streatfeild explains that having a tendency to make everyone in her other books lovable, she had written this one 'for the good of my soul' with a character presented purely to 'dislike and entertain'.  

The character in question is Flossie Elk, the astonishingly beautiful baby daughter of a perfectly normal kindly grocer and a thoroughly washed-out hardworking mother. 

Her father's reaction to her beauty - although he loves and indulges his child - is that beauty is a snare and best ignored. Her mother's is that beauty is an advantage - Flossie's passport to a different sort of life to the one she's had. Not that she hasn't been happy (in fact the quiet happiness and genuine affection of Flossie's parents, even when they don't agree, is one of the most touching things in the book) but she feels Flossie is entitled, surely, to use those looks God has given her and find something better. 

In the hands of a clumsier author this indulgence would be the reason Flossie grows up to be thoroughly selfish, and her mother would be a figure of fun and censure, but Streatfeild is never dogmatic about whether Flossie has been spoilt by others or was simply born both innately beautiful and (in modern terms) narcissistic. Like her startling good looks, Flossie's selfishness and ability to get her way just is. 

And a thoroughly ungrateful, manipulative brat she is and remains. Her mother scrimps to get her dancing lessons, takes trams into the West End for Flossie's benefit even though they make her feel horribly dizzy (she's never been quite right since Flossie was born and has been told very strictly to have no more children) sews and cooks long past the age Flossie could help, while Flossie takes the charming view that people who want their children to help, shouldn't have a child like her. 

So - given our horrible heroine - what carries the book? 

A number of things actually. Firstly the people around her. Her parents with their modest ambitions and quiet success in 'making a go of it', dance teachers who never quite made it as dancers, associates in the theatrical world she moves into with their money worries, irregular but friendly relationships and sometimes blunt remarks (this would be a good book for anyone who thinks society was utterly rigid until the sixties in fact, although no doubt it was more rigid for the real life contemporaries of Flossie's parents than for the theatrical set and the aristocracy). 

Then there are the interesting potted histories that Streatfeild writes so well that they don't feel strained,  the details and descriptions of what theatre was like in the 30s and the different talents required - natural star or real ability to dance, genius or a trick for getting them through the door - that, again, are so relatable to now. 

Last but not least the writing is excellent. Streatfeild is wonderfully witty but still has sympathy for everyone (even Flossie) and I left the book wanting to know what happened next to several of these people (not Flossie though). 

Thanks as always to Simon and Karen for hosting the 1936 club. More book reviews from 1936 can be found here.