lauren's never-ending search for words to describe the vibes of specific books

[lirazel]

troisoiseaux just reread A Brief History of Montmaray, reminding me of the existence of this series, which got my mind to churning.

There's a very specific sub-genre of books written for bookish teenage girls that I need a name for. They're either set in or written in a previous era (usually late Victorian to WWII), usually in the UK though occasionally in the US (though some have scenes set elsewhere, especially in Ibbotson). They're self-indulgent but well-written, focus on the inner lives of their heroines, are chock-full of lovely period details, and have a sense of whimsy without going too far into the precious or twee. They're often more episodic than plot-driven. The characters are always well-drawn, eccentric, and wide-ranging in age and sometimes class, though not (sadly) in race. Honestly, the books are...very white. They are not cozy in the sense that word gets thrown around today--there's always loss or death--but they feel cozy aesthetically despite this.

Here are the examples I've come up with:

Eva Ibbotson's young adult novels (A Countess Below Stairs, A Company of Swans, The Morning Gift, A Song for Summer, Magic Flutes)
I Capture the Castle
The Montmaray Journals
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion
the Gone-Away Lake books (this duology is an outlier in that it's MG and has a male co-protagonist, but they feel this way in my memory, though admittedly I haven't reread them in 20 years)
Daddy Long-legs

Strangely, I would not include L.M. Montgomery's books in these categories, except, maybe, The Blue Castle? I don't know why, but the vibe is different enough to me that they don't belong in this category.

O Caldeonia is this genre taken and turned sharper and crueler. It's this genre with an edge.

[eta] This is a sub-set of the Special Girl genre articulated by qian below. To me, Ibbotson is the epitome of this genre. It's got a glittering-ness to it that sets it apart from things like Little Women and Montgomery (The Blue Castle aside. Maybe it feels almost fairytale-adjacent? Like, the world they're operating in has things like crumbling castles, dukes (though they may be driving taxis now, as in Ibbotson), a kind of air of not-realism to the world they're operating in even if the emotions of our main character are realistic. Like I have to accept that I'm in a different world with different laws for how things work and to complain about the way things work would be as silly as complaining about how things work in a fantasy novel. They are the spiritual children of Frances Hodgson Burnett.



So my questions are:

a) what should we call this genre?

and

b) does anyone have any other titles they think belong in it? I'd like to compose a list and also I would like to read those books because this genre exists for me specifically and I eat it up with a spoon.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

This doesn't quite answer your question, except maybe question b, but: I wonder to what extent these are all Little Women descendants?

I think the Betsy-Tacy books overlap with another subgenre - "early- to mid-20th century children's lit based off the author's childhood in the late 19th or early 20th centuries" - see also, e.g., Laura Ingalls Wilder, All-of-a-Kind Family, Eleanor Estes' The Moffats? The target age is a little younger but overall it's the same sort of book.

[lirazel]

I wonder to what extent these are all Little Women descendants?

Oh interesting! Little Women doesn't have quite the same feel to me, but on paper it definitely makes sense as an ancestor!

I think the Betsy-Tacy books overlap with another subgenre - "early- to mid-20th century children's lit based off the author's childhood in the late 19th or early 20th centuries"

YES! This subgenre was very important to me as a kid!

[ambyr]

Linnets and Valerians belongs somewhere around there, I feel.

[lirazel]

I have never read that one but now I'm going to! <3

[ambyr]

Apparently I should have kept my copy for passing on instead of dropping it in a Little Free Library--I hadn't realized how out of print and pricy the book had gotten! But the Kindle edition is cheap.

[lirazel]

I can always order it through ILL if need be!

[hippogriff13]

Anything by Elizabeth Goudge (who also wrote "The Little White Horse," in which the titular horse is actually a unicorn that the child protagonists vaguely glimpse at one point--they think) definitely falls into the special/fantasy-adjacent category for me.

[qian]

I think of these as Special Girl books! Because the main character is almost always a Special Girl. She may not look special to you (generally she is not conventionally attractive, but has a special beauty that is BETTER than conventional attractiveness), but actually she is profoundly special, and all the other characters recognise this in their own way.

That said, though, I'd have automatically classed Anne of Green Gables as an exemplar of the Special Girl genre, so I'm interested that you wouldn't include most of LMM's books in the genre. Can you articulate why? I feel like they pretty much all fit your description of the subgenre, except for being set in Canada of course.

Other Special Girl books I can think of are Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, the Pollyanna books, and Gene Stratton-Potter's A Girl of the Limberlost.

[lirazel]

Special Girl is 100000000% a thing, most of these books belong to it, and I love that genre. Frances Hodgson Burnett is the forerunner of these as much as Alcott!

What I'm talking about is more like a subset of Special Girl. I cannot articulate what makes it scratch the particular itch I'm talking about! To me, Ibbotson is the epitome of this genre. It's got a glittering-ness to it that sets it apart from things like Little Women and Montgomery. Maybe it feels almost fairytale-adjacent? Like, the world they're operating in has things like crumbling castles, dukes (though they may be driving taxis now, as in Ibbotson), a kind of air of not-realism to them. Like I have to accept that I'm in a different world with different laws for how things work. Does this make sense at all?

Alcott, Montgomery, etc. feel much more grounded and realistic to me (The Blue Castle aside). Honestly, now that I think about it, I might remove Betsy-Tacy from this list--I think it belongs here more tonally than anything.

[qian]

Ah, I see what you mean -- I didn't pick up on the glamour/glitteringness of the subgenre you were trying to describe. I can see that the sort of rooted mundanity of AOGG and Little Women mean they don't belong ... perhaps if Little Women was primarily from Amy's POV! I think even the emotions are not really realistic in Eva Ibbotson's romances: they're pumped up and fresher, more innocent, as in some kdramas.

The Cazalet Chronicles don't fit as they're too full of depressing sexual abuse/sad relationships with terrible men (and some terrible women, but the men are SO terrible), but they do have some of the same props: rich white people, the search for romantic love as a dominant theme, crumbling ancestral homes etc.

[lirazel]

I didn't pick up on the glamour/glitteringness of the subgenre you were trying to describe.

Because I didn't articulate it well!

perhaps if Little Women was primarily from Amy's POV!

Haha, yes!

I think even the emotions are not really realistic in Eva Ibbotson's romances: they're pumped up and fresher, more innocent, as in some kdramas.

I think you're correct about this.

I haven't ever read the Cazalet books, but I probably should, because even though they're not exactly this genre, they do sound like something I'd find very interesting.

[qian]

I'd def recommend the Cazalet books! There is a lot of weirdness about gender and sex, including at least two sexual assault subplots which are framed in a way that, uh, one would not frame them now. But despite all of that they're weirdly cosy reads.

[lirazel]

I am glad to have warnings about the gender/sex stuff--I can endure a lot if I know it's coming, and these otherwise sound super interesting. Thanks!

[dollsome]

I’m still pretty early into it (the perils of always reading like seven books at once!), but The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight by Elizabeth von Arnim has been giving me suuuuch Ibbotson romance vibes! I just grabbed it randomly off Project Gutenberg and am very amused by the vaguely Roman Holiday-esque premise so far.

The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz also really fits in this category to me!

I’ll keep pondering if I can remember any others …

[lirazel]

I must read more von Arnim!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you for the reminder!

[dolorosa_12]

As you might expect, this type of book was very much My Thing™ when I was growing up. Like you I find it hard to describe — it's an 'I know it when I see it' sort of thing.

In addition to those you've already listed, I would include the books of Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Adele Geras (particularly her Egerton Hall trilogy, and the standalone novel The Girls in the Velvet Frame, even though they're slightly out of scope — the former are set in the 1950s, and the latter in 1910s Jerusalem). Australian author Robin Klein's Melling Sisters trilogy (set in late 1940s Australia) also fits the bill. To my mind, as well as the elements you've already described, this type of book needs to have a sense of either fading grandeur or genteel poverty — they're about people struggling to live within their means, in a world where they don't quite fit in for whatever reason.

I can't think of a pithy name for this subgenre, but (tongue in cheek) I would call it 'Books for Shy, Bookish Girls That Reinforce Their Sense of Shyness, Bookishness, and Romanticism'. (I don't mean Romanticism in the sense of the artistic movement nor in the sense of romantic love, but more a kind of poetic and fairytale sensibility.)

[lirazel]

Yup, Burnett is definitely their grandmothers! The others are things I haven't read but definitely want to now!

this type of book needs to have a sense of either fading grandeur or genteel poverty — they're about people struggling to live within their means, in a world where they don't quite fit in for whatever reason.

Yes! I didn't think about this! But the kind of disjointment of social class and actual economic status is definitely present in most if not all of these!

'Books for Shy, Bookish Girls That Reinforce Their Sense of Shyness, Bookishness, and Romanticism'.

Haha! I relate to this!

[troisoiseaux]

Books for Shy, Bookish Girls That Reinforce Their Sense of Shyness, Bookishness, and Romanticism

Yeah, that covers it!

[theseatheseatheopensea]

Would Roller Skates count?

[lirazel]

I'm not familiar with this one, but it might very well! Great name for a children's book!

[landofnowhere]

How does Ballet Shoes fit in with this genre? It's not focused on the singular protagonist in the same way, but it does have the period details and glamour of the stage.

Also some of Madeleine L'Engle's early non-genre fic, e.g. The Small Rain, though I don't remember exactly how period it is.

I also think it's interesting how there seems to be a cultural consensus that "period" stopped around WWII (and has stuck there for a while). Some of these books were contemporary fiction when they were written!

[lirazel]

I actually never read the Ballet Shoes books, so I could not tell you!

Also some of Madeleine L'Engle's early non-genre fic, e.g. The Small Rain, though I don't remember exactly how period it is.

I would set her outside this genre--there are many similarities, but her books lack the kind of glittering quality of the specific dynamic I'm trying to nail down.

I also think it's interesting how there seems to be a cultural consensus that "period" stopped around WWII (and has stuck there for a while).

Well, I have been seeing things from the '90s described as "vintage" lately, so maybe that's changing!

[thevagabondexpress]

taking note of these as recommendations to a friend i know loves these kinds of books

[lirazel]

Oh good! I hope they enjoy them!

[cleodoxa]

A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam is a book about a 14 year old girl in WWII who wants to be a writer and when I later read O Caledonia it read to me a lot like a meaner, more grotesque version, though A Long Way from Verona in itself definitely doesn't feel fairytale-adjacent.

[lirazel]

That sounds like something I would enjoy, either way!

[skygiants]

I think of this genre as almost a twist on the gothic -- there's a big crumbling house, but instead of Arriving at the House and disturbing/being disturbed by it, the girl in question Belongs to the house and her strangeness/specialness is part and parcel of the Romantically eccentric environs around her. Joan Aiken hits this mode sometimes but she's always a bit too weird for that crucial slice-of-life aspect that lets the Romantic House feel cozy & homelike to the people who live there.

[lirazel]

Ooooh! Yes! I like the idea of this as a twist on the gothic!

but instead of Arriving at the House and disturbing/being disturbed by it, the girl in question Belongs to the house and her strangeness/specialness is part and parcel of the Romantically eccentric environs around her.

So well said!!!!

[hippogriff13]

"The Richleighs of Tantamount" definitely fits this subset of the genre. Although it's a group of four siblings, two boys and two girls, who arrive there, not a single Special Girl.

[hippogriff13]

This made me think of B. (Barbara?) Willard's "The Richleighs of Tantamount." Although except for being set in a previous era, the not-so-subliminal specialness of the protagonists and their situation, and the vague glitteringness of the book as a whole, that novel doesn't have that much in common with a number of the books from your original list. I don't think you could really classify it as a Special Girl book, either, since two of the four siblings involved are boys. Maybe (Sort of) Special Siblings/Child Cohort in Fantasy-Adjacent Circumstances would be more accurate. The pack of children in "The Richleighs of Tantamount" strikes me as distinctly reminiscent of the Pevensies in the Narnia books, the kids in E. Nesbit books like "Five Children and It," and the brother and sisters in Debi Gliori's "Pure Dead Magic" and sequels. Except that those kids do wind up encountering unambiguously magical creatures and situations, while the Richleighs' experiences are extremely unusual to the point of being downright odd, but still technically within the established laws of non-magical reality.