Review: "Finding Our Way Home" edited by Nikki Simpson

Finding Our Way Home, edited by Nikki Simpson
Published 2018 via Routledge
★★★

Finding Our Way Home takes a look at women's experiences in boarding schools. I picked this up because I had a rather unusual experience of boarding school (long story) and am always looking for that elusive boarding school story that matches, or even has anything to do with, my own experience.

This is not that book. And that's fine, but it's a really specific book in and of itself: it's by women who had bad to horrible experiences in British boarding schools. The author writes in the introduction that This is not to make claim that all girls who boarded were unhappy at school – although I would suggest that any primary aged child would likely be adversely affected – and some girls have in fact been very fulfilled. But the women who contacted me to share their stories were very clearly not (xvii).

Many of the stories are interesting, and many of the stories are sad. But on the whole, the book feels like something of an advertisement for the Boarding School Survivors organization—through which Simpson found many of the contributors to the book (...others pledge that they're going to go to the BSS workshop soon). It's not a balanced book, and while obviously that's fine, by the middle of the book I was wondering whether the reason that the only women who contacted Simpson were ones who had been unhappy at school was simply because the only women she asked were ones who had been unhappy at school.

In any case, probably a better fit for someone who went to a British girls' school (1), most likely in the 60s or 70s rather than in the present day (2), had a dreadful time of it (3), and possibly thinks the Boarding School Survivors organization would also be a good fit (4). If any three of these apply, the book will likely feel more on point to you than it did to me.