I CONQUER BRITAIN
Dyan Sheldon
Candlewick Press
Fiction
ISBN-10: 0763633003
ISBN-13: 9780763633004
208 pages

Years ago Caroline and Jacqueline attended art school together in London. Now both women have teenage daughters. Sophie-Pitt Turnbull is a very proper British teen who convinces her parents to send her to America for a change of scenery. And Cherokee Salamanca is more than ready to get out of Brooklyn for a bit. So the families swap daughters for six weeks during the summer.

When Sophie’s parents meet Cherokee at Heathrow Airport, they are quite startled by her appearance. Cherokee is garbed all in black, and her look is quite Goth. Her makeup is rather extreme, and she carries a huge black duffel painted with silver stars and bats.

Upon arrival at the Pitt-Turnbull home in Putney, Cherokee is aghast when she sees that she’ll be ensconsed in Sophie’s room. Everything, including the furniture, is the color of Pepto-Bismol, and there are too many stuffed animals to count. Caroline is very conservative, proper and continually apologizes as if the weather and everything else is entirely her fault. Sophie’s father Robert, who writes mystery novels, is clueless about what’s happening at home. He does, however, make regular appearances at mealtime. Their son Alexander, known as Xar, comes and goes mysteriously at odd hours, thus avoiding interaction with his parents.

Cherokee, called “Cherry” by her host family, experiences culture shock immediately. Though everyone speaks the same language, her American-English is quite different from the British-English. An elevator is a lift. A lie-down is a rest. The Americans have Murphy’s Law, the Brits have Sod’s Law. Cherokee’s hair dryer won’t work because the current is different. Toast is served on a toast holder. Tea doesn’t come in bags, and Cherokee’s first experience with a nice cup of tea isn’t that nice at all; she thinks it tastes gruesome. Her hosts eat pizza with a knife and fork. And, strangest of all, the Brits drive on the wrong side of the road.

Cherokee settles in for what she fears will be a rather quiet and boring six weeks. Xar, who she’d like to hang out with because she imagines he leads an interesting life, can’t be bothered with the visitor. Caroline is busy with the continual demands of her overbearing mother, and Robert is cloistered in his office writing. Caroline and Robert do take Cherokee on a tour of London, but she isn’t much impressed with the Tower of London and the many ancient buildings that Robert is pointing out. When she crosses the street to get a good picture of Big Ben, she is swept along in a crowd of protesters and nearly gets arrested.

On several occasions she decides to follow the elusive Xar --- unbeknownst to him --- to find out where the action is, and she gets lost. She wins over Bea, Caroline’s outspoken mother, and the bohemian teenager and Bea form an odd alliance. While walking Bea’s dogs in a rainstorm, she again gets lost and is rescued and befriended by a young Indian woman named Tiki. Cherokee begins hanging out with Tiki, who takes her to several cool places that Robert has never even heard of, including all the Goth shops in Camden. While Cherokee is experiencing the natural ups and downs of living in an unfamiliar culture, she wonders just how Sophie is doing back in Brooklyn with the very unconventional Salamanca family.

I CONQUER BRITAIN, the companion book to Dyan Sheldon’s SOPHIE PITT-TURNBULL DISCOVERS AMERICA, moves along smoothly. Her writing style is breezy, the book is interesting and the plot is plausible.

    --- Reviewed by Carole Turner

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