Julienne, a former architecture student is setting out on the path to becoming a nun – and it is especially from this suffocation (as she see it) that Sylvie wants to save her. Three months before her crucial exams she is expelled from the school, for Sylvie has fallen passionately in love with her teacher, Julienne. She is an impetuous, rebellious young woman, an unbeliever who sees God as her rival. Sylvie is a seventeen year old schoolgirl due to take her Baccalaureate at the convent school of Sainte-Thérèse. I Will not Serve – Eveline Mahyère translated by Antonia White Two fairly different novels, yet both fitted the theme perfectly, and both coincidentally first published the same year. The first is a novel about the relationship between a pupil and a teacher (and soon to become nun) and the second is about a teacher of mainly Māori children in a small New Zealand town. The books I chose were I Will not Serve by Eveline Mahyère translated from the French by Antonia White (a wonderful vmc novelist herself) and Spinster by New Zealand author Sylvia Ashton-Warner (not to be confused with Sylvia Townsend Warner). So I am glad I am managing to squeeze in a double review post to the end of the month.

I have managed to read two books for this month’s theme – and I had intended to review them before now, but that hasn’t happened. This month the theme has been nuns, teachers and governesses – and there are plenty of those in the literature beloved of VMC readers. This year the Librarything Virago readers group, which I have mentioned from time to time in the past, are hosting a series of monthly themed reads.

Teacher by Sylvia Ashton-Warner