The Greengage Summer

Description

The Greengage Summer is Rumer Godden's tense, evocative portrait of love and deceit in the Champagne region of provincial France, which became a memorable film starring Kenneth More and Susannah York. The faded elegance of Hotel Les Oeillets, with its bullet-scarred staircase and serene garden bounded by high walls; Eliot, the charming Englishman who became the children's guardian while their mother lay ill in hospital; sophisticated Mademoiselle Zizi, hotel patronne, and Eliot's devoted lover; sixteen-year-old Joss, suddenly, achingly beautiful. And the Marne river flowing silent and slow beyond them all . . . They would merge together in a gold-green summer of discovery, until the fruit rotted on the trees and cold seeped into their bones . . .

Rumer Godden was one of Britain's most distinguished authors, with many justly famous and much-loved books for both adults and children to her credit, including The River, Black Narcissus, The Greengage Summer and The Peacock Spring. She was awarded the OBE in 1993 and died in 1998, aged ninety.

An exciting tale, this novel has both charm and atmosphere, and Miss Godden recaptures with an easy unsentimental naturalness the unfocused vision of adolescence * Evening Standard *