Recent Purchases

My copy of SKH was the paperback published by Bettany Press in 2006. It is a good clean edition with illustrations, but it's not the same experience as reading one of the original hardbacks. So, when I came across a mint condition original at a reasonable price, I snapped it up, along with a first edition of Where is Susan? with DJ.

Quote of the Day

"Oh, we never burn," said Charlotte cheerfully; but after a little Midge got up and put on the rather smart little towelling jacket that Aunt Lucy had made for her.

"I think I'll go for a little walk," she murmured.

Charlotte opened her eyes and gazed at her in surprise. Midge was one of the laziest creatures imaginable and could lie about doing nothing almost indefinitely. As for walking, she had never, as far as Charlotte knew, voluntarily taken a walk in her life.

From SUSAN'S KIND HEART, Chapter 3, Galloping Hooves.

Calvaries of Brittany

As they drive around Brittany, Susan and the Carmichaels often see Calvaries. These statues are dotted all over the region. Although they can be found in many parts of Europe, they are particularly popular in Brittany and Belgium. This one is in Finistère, the French equivalent of Land's End. In Susan's Kind Heart, when Jean-Louis tells the children about Mont St. Michel, he compares it with St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall. Several comparisons are drawn between Brittany and Cornwall. The children observe that "like Cornwall, the inland scenery of Brittany was less interesting than the coast". When they arrive at Dinan ("not to be confused with Dinard") and Jean-Louis speaks his piece about Napoleon the Third and the confusion over a new spire for St. Malo's Church in Dinan that actually ended up being built in the town of St. Malo, he and Susan draw comparisons between the strange names of Cornish and Breton saints. Brittany has saints with names like St. Clos, St. Budoc and St. Cast, while Cornwall has St. Kew, St. Tudy and St. Mawes. Jean-Louis then provides further confusing information that the names of St. Brieuc and St. Brioc are interchangeable, but that the saint was actually Welsh. It's unusual that of all the young people on the journey, the author chose Susan to rattle off all this information about the saints of Cornwall and Brittany. It's not like her to have this sort of stuff on fast recall, although earlier in the story, when she surprises Charlotte and Midge by telling them the French word for boiled egg, she claims that there are a whole lot of things that she knows that she doesn't get credit for.

Île de Bréhat

An aerial view of the Île de Bréhat. This island is the scene of almost a whole chapter in Twopence Coloured. But in Susan's Kind Heart the visit the young people make to the island is only briefly described, and apart from their picnic and very quick shopping for souvenirs and gifts and dinner, the whole visit is over in less than two pages. The Île de Bréhat is famous for its pink granite rocks. 

Quote of the Day

Gaston put in at Portrieux, which was the harbour for St. Quay, and very kindly sent René to buy cakes in the famous pâtisserie. He himself had a call to make, but the young people enjoyed the harbour and watched the hard-bitten old salts lounging about and the vociferous holidaymakers embarking on motor-boats for the Île de Bréhat and felt very nicely superior because they had their own boat.

From SUSAN'S KIND HEART, Chapter 7, A Day to Remember.

Quote of the Day

The school reports really started it all: Susan's and Midge's were uniformly poor, but in French they both reached new depths. Aunt Lucy read them with gloom. "'Midge is lazy and inattentive...' really, Midge!"

"Susan's is worse." Midge produced the diversion hopefully.

"It worked. Aunt Lucy turned to Susan's report.

"'Susan is apparently too occupied with other things to bother about French. A very bad term's work,'" Aunt Lucy read out.

"Sarcastic old pig," said Susan. "Just because I had to do my maths prep during French once or twice-"

From SUSAN'S KIND HEART, Chapter 1, Haunted Château. I often wonder why Susan and Midge's parents spent so much money on private school fees for them, when they obviously learn next to nothing, and then "punish" them by sending them to France for the summer!

SKH on Goodreads

This week is carnival week in Brazil and we had a big holiday. I used some of my time to apply for librarian status on Goodreads and it was granted. There wasn't all that much about Jane Shaw on the site beyond the Susan books and one or two other titles, so I set to and added all the Penny books, Venture to South Africa, the Dizzy and Alison stories and a lot of reviews and comments. The works. So now Jane Shaw's page on Goodreads has been beefed up. I wrote a new review for Susan's Kind Heart as well:

When Aunt Lucy receives Susan and Midge's dreadful report cards and sees that their French marks have dropped to an all-time low, she decides to "punish" them by sending them off to Brittany for the summer. The traditional Jane Shaw mixt of adventure, hearty meals, smuggling, ghosts and treasure keep the girls busy throughout their time in St. Close on the coast of Brittany. And of course, they don't learn much French. St. Clos is a thinly disguised Binic, Jane Shaw's beloved haven in Brittany, which had already been the setting for Breton Adventure (1939), The Moochers Abroad (1951) and Twopence Coloured (1954). As all the author's other heroines had visited Binic, in 1965 it was time for Susan to venture to the sands across the sea. Like all of Jane Shaw's books, this one is tightly plotted and entertaining. Susan's Kind Heart is the 9th book in a series of eleven, all of which were of very high quality. This book is a must for all Jane Shaw enthusiasts.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/534885599

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/305257.Jane_Shaw

Susan's Kind Heart

A "cleaned up" copy of the cover of SKH. This is an unusual cover because it was the only time that a Jane Shaw book had advertising slogans on the cover and also the only time that the cover did not depict a scene from the story.

The book is also one of the hardest to find in its original cover. It can be purchased quite cheaply on Kindle or in the Bettany Press edition. But if you want the original first edition, you have to be prepared to pay well over one hundred pounds for it. SKH, A Job for Susan and Northmead Nuisance are among the rarest and most expensive of Jane Shaw's books. The rarest, and the only one that I haven't been able to track down at all, is The House of the Glimmering Light. Published in 1943 and never reissued after the War, very few copies will be available today. All I have managed to learn about it is that it is a war story set in Oban and the two main characters are called Noël and Angela.

Susan's Kind Heart cover

Sara and Caroline visited Brittany in 1939 in Breton Adventure. The Moochers sailed over to Binic in 1951, and Penny paid a visit in 1954. In 1965, Jane Shaw decided that it was time for her most popular character Susan to visit the north of France. The result was Susan's Kind Heart. In this book, the name of Binic is changed to St. Clos. The cover is unique in that it does not depict a scene from the story and has an enticer that makes use of alliteration. The dark-haired girl is Damienne, whom Susan and Midge befriend at the villa. Like its predecessors, Susan's Kind Heart has painstaking descriptions of the region. There are some signs of modernization such as faster cars, more electricity and improved indoor plumbing. But the activities that the previous characters enjoyed like swimming in the grève, long walks round the shops and feasting at the pâtisserie are all part of Susan's holiday too. And, like Caroline and Sara, the original purpose of Susan and Midge's trip to France is to improve their French. The story begins with Aunt Lucy "shuddering" at the girls' report cards from St. Ronan's. She follows Charlotte's suggestion that Susan and Midge should accompany her to Brittany, where she is going to stay with a French family. Predictably, like Caroline and Sara, the girls make very little (if any) improvement to their French. When they arrive in Brittany, they find that the other people they encounter are either English themselves or are foreigners eager to improve their own mastery of our native tongue. As a result, the girls have very little need to actually speak French. It is hard to understand how the families of Jane Shaw's characters are willing to spend so much on their education when virtually no progress is made in any subject.

Quote of the Day

Susan said afterwards that she nearly died. An invisible ghost, with only the sound of hooves to betray his presence, was bad; a real live - well, dead - ghost galloping past them was a thousand, thousand times worse. The girls crouched in the ditch and shivered with terror.

From SUSAN'S KIND HEART, Chapter 8, Mysterious Piece of Silver.

Susan's Kind Heart illustration

Oliver sings and plays guitar at Monsieur Deltour's Café Hortensia, attracting some much needed customers for the propriertor. From Chapter 7, A Day to Remember. Susan's Kind Heart was the last story that Jane Shaw wrote about Binic.

Quote of the Day

Midge said afterwards that that was one of the worst moments in her life. What with the ghost in the garden and Susan hanging on to her so that she was nearly strangled and Charlotte leaning on her from behind and breathing down her neck, she nearly collapsed. But Charlotte was really peering out at the garden, watching the figure dart from bush to bush, now in deepest shadow, now clearly to be seen in the light of the moon: and suddenly she exclaimed, "It's Willy!"

"Well, thank heaven!" said Midge, giggling a little hysterically. "At least Willy isn't a ghost!"

From SUSAN'S KIND HEART, Chapter 4, Enter First Suspect.

Susan's Kind Heart illustration

From Chapter 14, All that Trouble for Nothing. "With a last heave and push with her toes, Susan's legs disappeared from the cave."

SKH (Bettany Press 2)

Now the front cover of the Bettany Press edition of Susan's Kind Heart. Sadly, they did not use the original cover as they did with the other two books they published, but instead opted for one of the internal illustrations. The 3 books published by Bettany are now available for the Amazon Kindle, carrying Jane Shaw into the 2010s, just short of her 101st birthday!