#it might have been interesting to examine how WWI has interrupted his educational pursuits

[isfjmel-phleg]

I dislike the love triangle in this book for a variety of reasons (why does there have to be one at all, simply because our heroine happens to be close to two boys? what purpose does it serve besides contriving Love Drama? it's not even like she must choose the one who best embodies who she must become or anything that serves a thematic purpose--she knows from the start which one she loves, and the other one is just an annoying obstacle to the endgame romance), one of which is that it completely destroys the boys' friendship with each other. Here, they're romantic rivals and openly, childishly hostile to each other, with little indication that they were ever really friends even in childhood. The friendship that exists among all three children in the original book--it's never just "Mary and these two mismatched boys who are tolerating each other because of their separate friendships with her," but the boys are friends with each other too--is one of its most delightful aspects, and to lose that alters the characters themselves. I'm not saying that there isn't room for difficulties in the friendship as they all enter adulthood. But replacing a dynamic of mutually caring bonds among relative equals with two guys who dislike each other competing for the prize of the heroine does not effectively serve Burnett's themes even in the context of adult versions of these characters.