★★★★✰ 4 stars

“Do you know that no character is any good in this world unless that will has been broken completely? Broken and re-set in God’s own way. I don’t think your will has been quite broken, my dear child, do you?”

After converting to Catholicism, nine year old Nanda Gray is sent by her fath

"And do you know that no character is any good in this world unless that will has been broken completely? Broken and re-set in God's own way. I don't think your will has quite been broken, my dear child, do you?"

At first it seems that this is a book about Catholicism but really I think it's abou

I first read this book many years ago and it was interesting to re-read it. This is based on Antonia White's own experiences of life in a convent school. When we first meet Nanda (Fernanda)Grey, she is nine years old and on her way to the Convent of the Five Wounds at Lippington. Her beloved father

4.5 stars
This is an autobiographical novel about life in a Catholic Girls school, quite closely based on White’s own life. Like the protagonist of the novel, Nanda, White was a Catholic convert at the age of nine and was sent to a school very like the one in the book. Nanda wants to be a good Cathol

In her introduction to this novel, author Elizabeth Bowen claims (asserts?) that this is the only girls' school story which can be thought of as, not only a classic, but also a work of art. It's a book which has been long known to me mostly because of Virago founder Carmen Callil's championship of i

Unforgettable story. I finished this 3 weeks ago and still don’t know quite how to review it. Almost anything I say about it will give the story’s ending away. It was somewhat spoiled for me in reading the blurb on the back cover (which I wish I hadn’t). So I’ll leave it at a story which felt like r

This book brought back many memories for me of my education at a Catholic convent school. Nanda's father is a convert to Catholicism. Her father decides to send Nanda to the convent school of The Five Wounds where she can be educated as a Christian and also learn much more about her newly adopted fa

On the surface, this is a classic girls' school story, largely autobiographical, told with a simplicity that belies the book's underlying complexity. For it's a Catholic convent school, and recently converted Nanda has somewhat more to face there than the usual run of classes and tests, sports, and

I first read Frost in May when Virago first reissued it back in the 1970s. I can still remember sitting up in bed at 3 o'clock in the morning to finish the book with tears pouring down my face and choking with sobs. I went to a convent school in Australia of the same order of nuns as the ones who ha