Drina Dances in Switzerland

Drina at a Swiss boarding school! Away from the Dominick for a year, and this time not just in "exile" at Chalk Green! However will she bear it??

Juicy so far...

The series is really fantastic.

Read this series in JR High and simply LOVED them! I need to track these down.....

This was an interesting Drina. We got to see facets of her personality which weren't so positive, that actually got me quite annoyed at her, but as a result made her much more human. Also, my inner younger me was soo jealous of all the amazing ballet things she got to do - as usual!

This was quite different from most of the books in the series as Drina is sent to a finishing school in Switzerland where she becomes very unhappy. It was quite refreshing to see her struggle to mix with girls her age who only want to get married. As a result she saw another side to life and thanks to the resourcefulness of the ballet teacher she created a ballet which the school performed and inspired the girls to work harder at their dancing.

It was interesting to see Drina dealing with a very strict headteacher which sometimes created comical moments. Her grandmother also mellowed as she realised the school was too overbearing and that she had done the wrong thing to bring Drina here.


A brilliant book which makes Drina mature much faster.

see review of book #1

I will preface this with the caveat that I do not feel qualified to fairly review a book on ballet and ballet school. I have never done a moment's ballet, nor have I even stepped a foot inside a dance studio. But Goodreads asked for a rating and my thoughts, so here we go.

This is my first Drina book. If you've read any of my other reviews, or have (wisely!) joined the Mabel Esther Allan Goodreads group (Drina author Jean Estoril is a pseudonym of hers), you would know that I preferentially read her Switzerland stories. And since I have made it a goal to read all of her Swiss stories, if possible, I reluctantly picked up a cheerfully cheap secondhand paperback copy of this book, if only for the sake of completion.

It was a bit of a slog, admittedly, in the beginning. I join the series with only two books remaining, and so there's quite a lot of housekeeping and gossip about former characters. So I have to withhold judgment, being unqualified to comment on the appropriateness or relative interest of these little updates (I gather Queenie and Sylvia were the preceding stories' villains, for example, but I never met them).

I was also rather amused to see that Drina, despite being petite and appearing young even for her scant fifteen years, is rather an edgy little firecracker of a character. There is an example late in the book where she learns a valuable life lesson (don't let anyone override your common sense, and perhaps secondarily, I hope, 'don't let men take the lead because they think they have some sort of innate right to do so!'). Early on, on page 72, lamenting the oppressive and old-fashioned teachers at the finishing school in Lugano that she is sent to (entirely inappropriately), she says to her cousin Antonia,

"I hate Madame! I could - I could kick her teeth in."

Another example follows.

Fury overrode all discretion. She said:
"Madame, someone has opened my private letter!"
Madame Marechal glanced from her angry face to the letter that was suddenly thrust out. She had long sight and no need of glasses.
"Miss Selby looks at all the letters. Occasionally she opens one. That, I see, is from a man."
"But - but it's outrageous! In my whole life-"
Madame promptly marched her to Miss Selby, and by the time they arrived in the study, Drina was calmer; common sense had intervened."

I would have done something much more drastic and unapologetic in the same circumstances, but again - not a ballet or finishing school type. But I found it mildly reassuring that Drina had at least the self-confidence to stand up to tyrrany, and to learn to do so in the future when she allowed herself to be cowed. So many of these 'school' books feature teachers and systems which would seem to breed serious self-doubt and probably also real personal insecurities and neuroses in the girls in general, and also specifically when it comes to dealing with the opposite gender. One begins to have much sympathy for older generations - how dehumanizing some of these norms were! Very interesting to read in 2021!

Apart from a lot of talk about not fraternizing with the enemy the opposite sex (insert eye-roll here, as no doubt even Jean Estoril (Mabel Esther Allan) was doing when she wrote this in 1964!), and much discussion of ballet and ballet school friends and ballet companies, etc., we have a few aspects that are of interest to myself: recurrent characters Tamina Rionante and Miss (Celia) Selby, both of which featured Swiss School by Mabel Esther Allan (NOT Jean Estoril). I was surprised to see that MEA was not opposed to having crossover between series as well as across a pseudonym!

And now we get to the bit that most excites me: Swiss locations! I must say that the latter half of this book was a delight to me, because she finally gets around to visiting Luzern (Lucerne) and Bern (Berne) and even spends a little more time in Lugano than she has previously, this time describing the funicular ride up from Paradiso (where the Selby Finishing School is supposed to be located) to San Salvatore and the glorious view from there (if you go, you must go into the little chapel and find the stairs to the roof. If you have a head for heights, as the view from there is quite vertiginous on one side in particular, this is quite the vista! Do be wary of the weather, as a lightning strike would spell certain disaster). In Ticino they also visit Gandria (adorable), Morcote (overrun with tourists!), and Locarno (caution: the Piazza Grande has ankle-turning cobbles!).

Luzern doesn't get much of a description, despite being quite a lovely city (I think when she visited, MEA rushed right through it to get to places like Thun, which is also mentioned in this story). And Bern fares only slightly better (better described than Lugano in this case), but Bern is a truly gorgeous city, and one I would insist you tour if ever you come to Switzerland (certainly over Luzern or Zuerich or even Geneva). It's also very conveniently located for all trips into the mountains, though the only major commercial airports are in Basel, Zuerich and Geneva.

From Bern, one can easily travel by train to Kandersteg, where Drina finds herself at Christmastime. And I was simply enchanted that there is an excursion into the foreboding and entirely remote Gasterntal. I will not elaborate so as to avoid spoilers. But it seems almost a rule that any MEA book on Switzerland eventually finds its way back to beautiful Kandersteg, which obviously (and deservedly) stole the author's heart.

Back to the story - I liked certain aspects of it, and chief among them were the letters sent to and from Drina. This device gives so much more scope for the exposure of the personalities of the characters in a short time, and I appreciated this.

The view from my window is disgusting: beastly little gardens and wet grey roofs. I hate London. Part of a letter from Rose in Earl's Court to Drina in Lugano

There is also this lovely contrast between characters hating where they are because they wish to be elsewhere and in the company of others. Drina misses wet, grey, dismal London and would give up sunny Ticino in a heartbeat to be home, while Rose and her friends back at the Dominick School in London envy her southern climes. Drina also thinks longingly of New York (and Grant Rossiter), and I found this constant longing and inability to be present in her immediate surroundings psychologically interesting.

As I feel unqualified to say much more about this book (I don't do ballet, though I'll happily watch it; I don't willingly read girl's series formulated around feminine pursuits such as ballet; and I jumped into this series 3/4 of the way through), I will perhaps summarize in this way: it was not as dull as I expected, Drina had more drive and character than I had expected, and I was pleased that MEA finally got around to describing Bern and Lugano in a little more detail, though did neither of them full justice.