Maria Escapes - Hardcover

From a fine British author, little known in the US (The Elephant War, 1971, available in paper, is a sequel to Maria Escapes): an entertainingly old-fashioned novel about Victorian Oxford, published in Britain in 1957 as The Warden's Niece. Resourcefully fleeing her dreary boarding school, orphaned Maria, 11, catches a train to amiable but abstracted Uncle Hadden, an Oxford college warden. Though she's met him just once, he's her new guardian; he decides that she'll study with his neighbors' three sons, who have an amusingly idiosyncratic tutor. Maria, who hopes to be a classics professor, is well suited by this and soon engaged in the boys' pranks and pursuits and in endeavoring to prove herself by researching an unidentified boy in a 17th-century drawing. Painfully shy but intrepid, she talks her way into the Bodleian, sidesteps fierce housekeepers, and pieces together a history that finally engages her increasingly affectionate uncle's full attention. The lively dialogue and pungent descriptions here recall Trollope's satirical but kindly perceptions. Avery reanimates a period when education for girls was controversial and a child could be enthusiastic about exploring epitaphs in a country church; creates spirited characters whose unfailing courtesy in no way inhibits their mischief; and provides suspenseful escapades as well as a satisfying historical mystery. It's to be hoped that the sequels will follow Maria to the US. (Fiction. 10- 13) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Grade 5-7-- In this novel set in Victorian England, Maria escapes from a dreadful boarding school to the custody of her uncle, a warden of an Oxford college. After she declares her interest in learning Latin and Greek, she is sent to share an eccentric tutor with the three boys who live next door. This combination leads to adventures on the river and various escapades in and out of doors. For Maria, a visit to a historic mansion triggers a series of unexpected excursions including one to the male bastion of the Bodleian Library to research the fate of a boy her age who lived in Cromwell's time. Maria, the boys, and the tutor are well drawn, but the relationship between them is never developed satisfactorily. The plot elements are individually amusing, tense, or touching, but, unfortunately, the slack between them is too great to hold most readers. Avery does capture the period and the setting, which may be enough for historical fiction buffs. First published in England in 1957 as The Warden's Niece.
-Amy Kellman, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.