Books like The Cricket Term

Antonia Forest's masterpiece. Every Marlowe novel she'd written until this is good, almost timeless--but "The Cricket Term" is truly above & beyond. Nothing she wrote afterwards was nearly as good as it or even the earlier books.It's slightly stunning that a novel about schoolgirls in an English boarding-school could be considered a great work of style and expression, and with a subtlety regarding emotions and mixed motives. Yet this novel is definitely IT. Filled with literary allusions that the author doesn't bother to explain because she presumes that her audience (of adolescent readers!) will either pick up on the references, or be able to "run & find out" (as Miss Cromwell would say), it deals with what could be called "teenage" "issues" in a calm, measured, slightly sardonic way.Should never be allowed to go out of print.