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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.
, by Brendan Halpin. After her mothers are killed in an accident, a teenage girl ends up with the biological father she never knew. A YA novel told entirely in emails, journal entries, recorded conversations, etc, it’s clever and funny but the form eventually becomes wearisome.
, by Alison Uttley. A childhood memoir barely veiled in fiction by the author of many mostly-forgotten but quite good British children’s books. If you like vivid descriptions of old-timey life in rural England, and I know I do, this book is for you. There’s no plot, but who cares? 
, by Diana Pavlac Glyer. An excellent analysis of the Inklings as a writing group. Recommended to anyone with any interest in the Inklings, or who has basic knowledge of them and is interested in how writing groups function.
, by Andre Norton. This bizarre fantasy put the Bermuda Triangle, elves, aliens, time travel, and Avalon in a blender, then forgot to actually blend. People from our world blunder into another weird world where they meet others from all periods of history, and learn that elves in flying saucers are kidnapping people and making them go cold and glowy, or maybe the flyer saucer people were aliens and the elves were someone else, it was hard to tell. Roman soldiers march, nixies attack, and there might be unicorns, I forget. Disjointed and strange, and I have no idea what was going on during the climax—and by “no idea,” I mean that, for instance, I could not tell whether or not several characters died. A mildly entertaining farrago of randomness.
