Susan Rushes In

At the very beginning of the blog I posted a scan of my edition of Susan Rushes In. Here's an earlier cover, showing Susan and Midge's first encounter with Gabrielle Gascoigne. One of the complaints about Gabrielle was her hair. In the mid sixties the Carmichaels and Susan disliked the ghastly girl's closely cropped hairstyle. In the fifties they disliked her ponytail. However, Jane Shaw did move with the times a little. In Crooks Tour (1962), her heroine Ricky wore her hair in a ponytail. But the author found it hard to make other changes. Her heroines for the most part continued to live in their middle-class cocoons and act young for their age. Only Dizzy and Alison have any romance in their lives. Charlotte, despite being described throughout the Susan series as a great beauty, never has a boyfriend and her romance is limited to going to the cinema with Adrian Gascoigne and a couple of other young men.