doyle

One of my book groups is reading The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss this month, which would seem like a cool real life/fandom convergence if I could make myself read anything other than Holmes pastiches and Enid Blyton's boarding school stories - the latter of which I picked up assuming I'd be far too grown-up for them now and, oh dear, I'm really not. I can't believe that the O'Sullivan twins books skip the third form! I didn't notice that as a kid, or I'd forgotten it, and it seems so unforgivable; the whole point of school series is that you get a book per school year (on the other hand, missing third and sixth form means there are three first-form books, but but I like the older forms! There's more potential for femslash!) I know there are fill-ins written by someone else but the reviews are pretty terrible, and I don't think I could read them for jealousy that someone who isn't me is getting paid to write Enid Blyton fanfic.

I didn't notice as a kid either that the O'Sullivan twins are meant to be Irish. Their Irish accents are mentioned on page one of the first book and it's never brought up again. They certainly don't have Irish speech patterns, and they live somewhere that it's possible to drive to London. Still, I suppose it's better than that Angela Brazil book with the Irish schoolgirl at an English school who insists on dying her hat green and decorating her uniform with shamrocks.