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The three Pullein-Thompson sisters wrote popular pony novels from the 1940s through the 1990s - about 200 of them total. They wrote separately, not collaboratively, and began when they were still teenagers. (Their mother also wrote pony books.) I've read and enjoyed some of their pony books, so I was excited to read their memoir. It's written in alternating sections by the three of them.
Normally I enjoy any memoir by anybody writing about specific details of life in any reasonably interesting time period and place. This book does have that, to some degree, and yet it largely fails to be interesting. Here is a sample from page 2:
James passed the Preliminary Cambridge University Theological Examination, probably as an external student, and in 1876 he married Emily Darbyshire and was appointed a literate deacon at Salford, Manchester. Four years later, after ordination, he became curate at St. Mary's, Manningham, Bradford. In 1883 he moved to London to become Associate Secretary of the Colonoal and Continental Church Society, and in 1886 he was appointed vicar of St. Stephen's, Bow.
It does get more interesting than that, but only intermittently. They went to boarding school with Joan Aiken, along with some other people who clearly were famous but whose names I did not recognize, but she only appears in a few paragraphs. Christine and Diana were twins, which is something I did not know, and Christine particularly felt that being a twin was very difficult and that she never really got a chance to develop her individuality. In the afterword she says that she continues to feel that way and at that point she must have been about eighty.
But you know what's missing? HORSES! That is, they do have horses, and horsey stuff is discussed, but not in the vivid, detailed, appealing manner of their fictional pony books.
I plowed through, though with some skimming, because I was curious about how they got to be professional writers as 18-year-olds right after World War II. Inexplicably, the book ends just as one of them is beginning to write her first book. Very frustrating.
Normally I enjoy any memoir by anybody writing about specific details of life in any reasonably interesting time period and place. This book does have that, to some degree, and yet it largely fails to be interesting. Here is a sample from page 2:
James passed the Preliminary Cambridge University Theological Examination, probably as an external student, and in 1876 he married Emily Darbyshire and was appointed a literate deacon at Salford, Manchester. Four years later, after ordination, he became curate at St. Mary's, Manningham, Bradford. In 1883 he moved to London to become Associate Secretary of the Colonoal and Continental Church Society, and in 1886 he was appointed vicar of St. Stephen's, Bow.
It does get more interesting than that, but only intermittently. They went to boarding school with Joan Aiken, along with some other people who clearly were famous but whose names I did not recognize, but she only appears in a few paragraphs. Christine and Diana were twins, which is something I did not know, and Christine particularly felt that being a twin was very difficult and that she never really got a chance to develop her individuality. In the afterword she says that she continues to feel that way and at that point she must have been about eighty.
But you know what's missing? HORSES! That is, they do have horses, and horsey stuff is discussed, but not in the vivid, detailed, appealing manner of their fictional pony books.
I plowed through, though with some skimming, because I was curious about how they got to be professional writers as 18-year-olds right after World War II. Inexplicably, the book ends just as one of them is beginning to write her first book. Very frustrating.
