Rumer is one of my favorite authors and this is one of the best books I've ready by her. Set in France in the 50's, it's a coming of age novel about a 13 year old Egnlish girl and her older sister who suddenly blossoms into a beauty and learns how looks change the way the world treats you. Stunningly good writing!

I am really enjoying Godden's books right now. I love how everything fell into place towards the end- I couldn't read fast enough to see how it ended. Anyway, it was a good read. planning on looking for more of her books
At the library.

This wasn't at all what I expected but in a good way. It's not my usual type of book so I was a little surprised that I liked it so much I read it in one sitting only putting it down for absolute necessities.

Ostensibly a coming of age story about the awakening of sexuality, it deals with ordinary people put in an extraordinary situation where unworldly children (ranging in ages from sixteen to four years old are suddenly thrust into a very worldly adult environment without proper supervision. How the various characters deal with the situation and each other is very human and natural--warts and all. The story is told through the innocent eyes of a thirteen year old girl and raises questions about perceptions, appearances, love, loyalty, deceit and the consequences of ones actions.

Apparently, this is based on a real story experienced by the author when she was abroad with her mother and siblings when she was 15 and her older sister was 18. Sometimes reality really is stranger than fiction.

'On and off , all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the Greengages.....

A wonderful coming of age novel .
Love and deceit in the Champagne country of the Marne.
I found this charming with atmosphere of a hot summer where the Grey children stay in Les Oeillets while their mother recovers in hospital.
No one is quite what they seem and what happens in this tale of young innocence?
Beautifully written.

Based on nothing more than a skim of the description, I thought this book would be a lighthearted, low-stakes "coming of age" novel that would be a tame introduction to Godden's writing (I knew nothing of the plot or the movie version).

Wow - I couldn't have been more wrong! This is a dark and mature work, despite being realistically written from the point of view of a 13 year old. I was hooked from the brilliant opening paragraph and ended up reading the whole thing today.

Godden's writing is very lean and efficient but with enough authentic detail to really situate the reader fully in her setting and her story. Loved it.

What happens when your mother takes you [the narrator] and your four siblings to France to learn humility by touring battlefields – but then is hospitalized leaving you and your siblings on your own in a French hotel? The short answer is many things – such as men (including the love object of the female owner of the hotel) starting to look at your beautiful older sister; your younger brother discovering some mysterious happenings; strange behavior on the part of the Englishman who has been “assigned” to take care of you; constant dissatisfaction with you and your siblings from the hotel management; and not understanding a great deal of what is being said because you are very English and your French is not fluent. Rummer Godden’s writing is lovely, and the story is very well told. I loved the “one place” setting in the French hotel. But what I enjoyed most was the extremely skillful way in which the author created the character of each of the children. The reader sees each child with his or her own, full personality and behavior that is extremely accurate for their age. The oldest girl, at 16, deals with becoming a woman and the attention of men. The narrator, at 13, observes everything and feels the weight of all the events on her shoulders. The next youngest daughter becomes a conspirator with the narrator, while the youngest daughter spends a lot of time in the hotel kitchen sampling treats. The boy (8) was one of the best drawn characters – he beats to his own drum and misses nothing. This novel was a short, beautiful view of siblings in a challenging situation.

A lyrical, atmospheric family story, with a surprising amount of suspense and some great plot twists at the end. I wonder if Rumer Godden wrote for the stage; The Greengage Summer is perfectly structured in three acts with all the plot points in just the right places. I would love to see this in the hands of a modern director with a really good ensemble cast and a fine cinematographer. Meanwhile, the book is absolutely wonderful. I’ll tell you about Act 1, but leave you properly in suspense about Acts 2 and 3.

In the first pages, Joss, the oldest girl, and her sister Cecil, the book’s narrator, are reminiscing with their Uncle William about that fateful summer. Cecil recalls the green-gold days at the inn on the Marne, and the orchard ripe with fruit. “On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages.”




“Will—though he was called Willmouse then—Willmouse and Vicky were too small to reach any but the lowest branches, but they found fruit fallen in the grass….”



The story opens with the five children stranded in France with their mother, who has been taken severely ill with septicemia. They manage, quite heroically, to get themselves and their mother to the inn where they have reservations. It is very late at night and they are very much the worse for their journey—grubby, wearing school uniforms that make them look like orphans, terribly hungry and desperate. A chaotic scene ensues as the hotel’s proprietors at first refuse to let the family stay. Part of the conversation is in French, only partially translated, and that adds to the extraordinarily vivid sense of panicked dislocation as the children try to remember their school lessons and argue their case in broken but indignant sentences.

They are rescued by an enigmatic Englishman, apparently another guest at the Inn, but one who seems on extraordinarily intimate terms with the proprietors. Who is this Englishman? We get a hint that all is not quite on the level when Eliot says the children will "give him a reason for being there." The children are "camouflage" for the mysterious but attractive Mr. Eliot—but why?

The children’s mother is packed off to a hospital, which must be good since it serves wine with luncheon, and the children are on their own, running free in the town by the river and in the splendid orchards.



They also amuse themselves by watching, with quick, observant eyes, the adult dramas unfolding around them. “If Mademoiselle Zizi had known that gallery of hard young eyes was watching her I wonder if she would have been different. From morning to night at Les Oeillets we sat in judgment on her, and the judgments were severe. ‘Well, none of it is true,’ said Hester.”

The time is the 1920s, some years after the end of World War I. Who did what in the war, who collaborated, or hid secrets, or profited from others’ misery are still topics of gossip and shame. There are too many women alone and there is too little money—but on the Marne there are also visitors, pilgrims really, who come from all over the world to see the battlefields and find graves of lost ones. Les Oeillets caters to these battlefield visitors and the owner, Mademoiselle Zizi, and the manager, Madame Corbet, make the most of the gruesome relics—the bullet holes on the staircase and a bloodstain in one of the guest rooms, carefully renewed with pan drippings at regular intervals.

I thought that no one could do children better than Elizabeth Goudge, but now I’ll have to add Rumer Godden as another author who can create sympathetic and utterly believable children and young people; each of the five English children has a distinctive voice and personality and we see the world and its ‘grown-up’ inhabitants through their perceptive eyes and quick ears.

Joss Grey is 16 and sidelined for most of Act 1 with severe headaches and nausea. Cecil, at 13, has always been a bit jealous of her beautiful sister but she has her own special gifts and takes charge with a good deal of courage and competence. Hester, 10 years old, accompanies Cecil on many of their great adventures, while Willmouse, age 7 designs dresses for his dolls and Vicky, age 4, follows the head chef everywhere and charms him so thoroughly that she grows quite fat from all the tidbits.

Paul, the scruffy kitchen boy, befriends the children and slips them fresh rolls for their picnic lunch instead of the stale ones ordered by Madame. Madame, it seems, hates the children. Not even Vicky escapes her dislike. Paul sorts it out for them in chapter 6: Madame hates them because Eliot has arranged for them to stay. Mademoiselle Zizi is in love with Eliot and Madame Corbet is jealous. “It was sinister, but exciting.”

Eliot can be charming, taking them to visit their mother at the hospital, treating them to lunch in the village, but then turning cold and distant—or disappearing to Paris for long stretches of time. “Eliot est un vrai mystère,” says Paul, and the children can only agree. With agreeable mysteries, the pleasure of the French table and adventures in an ancient town in the Champagne region—all described in loving detail—life is a complete delight and it seems that time itself is suspended.



Then, some nine days after their arrival, Joss recovers and it was “as if those days of sickness and shock had made her clean and delicate, she looked pale and…pure, I thought, as a snowflake or a white blossom…” I’ll say no more, except to add that Joss is the catalyst for the events of Act 2, and that all of the children become key movers of events in the climactic Third Act.

Four and a half stars, with a half star off for all the French--I quite enjoyed it and I think even those who don't speak any French would be able to follow the plot, but it might be off-putting for some.

Content: PG warning for sexual situations (all discussed only in veiled terms and everything is behind closed doors) and some coarse language (but in French and not translated.)

Oh, how I enjoyed this book! There is a kind of code to Rumer Godden's writing. . .a kind of side-eye delicious narrative that hides a story-within-a-story, if you are willing to ferret it out. . .her description. . .words on page as brushstrokes on canvas. . .

A greengage is a kind of green plum. My suburban mother was partial to them, and had oodles of country relatives who had trees we could pluck. In our part of the world we rarely saw these in a store (this from the start of Rumer Godden's book):

"The orchard seemed to us immense, and perhaps it was, for there were seven alleys of greengage trees alone; between them, even in that blazing summer, dew lay all day in the long grass. The trees were old, twisted, covered in lichen and moss, but I shall never forget the fruit. In the hotel dining room Mauricette built it into marvellous pyramids on dessert plates laid with vine leaves. “reines-claudes,” she would say to teach us its name as she put our particular plate down, but we were too full to eat. In the orchard we had not even to pick fruit – it fell off the trees into our hands.
The greengages had a pale-blue bloom, especially in the shade, but in the sun the flesh showed amber through the clear-green skin; if it were cracked the juice was doubly warm and sweet. Coming from the streets and small front gardens of Southstone, we had not been let loose in an orchard before; it was no wonder we ate too much.”

The story itself is about an English mother who has had it up to *here* with her kids – post WWI, barely pre WWII – and wants to show her children something completely different about the world. She packs them up, heads east, and almost gets there. . .but on the trip falls dreadfully ill, handing the five children from age 16 to 5ish off to a relative to manage. Uncle William is a busy man (of course) and parks them at a hotel/resort, Les Oeillets (The Carnations), a place unknown to the children, where they have an adventure best described here, which along with fear, uncertainty and wariness, includes love, unfettered freedom, unexpected death, and affirmation (more from the book):

“ ‘You are the one who should write this, I told Joss. ‘It happened chiefly to you.’ But Joss shut that out, as she always shuts out things, or shuts them in so that no one can guess.

‘You are the one who likes words,’ said Joss. ‘Besides. . . and she paused, ‘it happened as much to you.’

I did not answer that. I am grown up now – or almost grown up – ‘and we still can’t get over it!’ said Joss.

‘Most people don’t have. . . that. . . in thirty or forty years,’ I said in defence.
‘Most people don’t have it at all,’ said Joss.

If I stop what I am doing for a moment, or in any time when I am quiet, in those cracks in the night that have been with me ever since when I cannot sleep and thoughts seep in, I am back; I can smell the Les Oeillets smells of hot dust and cool plaster walls, of jessamine and box leaves in the sun, of dew in the long grass; the smell that filled house and garden of Monsieur Armand’s cooking and the house’s own smell of damp linen, or furniture polish, and always, a little, of drains. I can hear the sounds that seem to belong only to Les Oeillets: the patter of the poplar trees along the courtyard wall, of a tap running in the kitchen mixed with the sound of high French voices, of the thump of Rex’s tail and another thump of someone washing clothes on the river bank; of barges puffing upstream and Mauricette’s toneless singing – she always sang through her nose; of Toinette and Nicole’s quick loud French as they talked to one another out of the upstairs windows; of the faint noise of the town and, near, the plop of a fish or of a greengage falling.

‘But you were glad enough to come back,’ said Uncle William.

‘We never came back,’ said Joss. ”

That’s all you get. A perfect summer read, will whisk you off to France, will charm you, will alarm you – a little – maybe more, and will remind you of that first flash of love’s flag in your heart and mind – of its power and pull and sweetness on others, and what’s ahead for you in this intoxicating life. . .

5 stars, rounded up, said she, her tongue swiping wide to catch the last bit of greengage juice racing down her chin. . .

The Greengage Summer was written in 1958.

My 2013 Pan Macmillan edition has a preface from Godden herself explaining that this story is 'partly true'.

When she was 15 (in 1922), her mother, in a fit of despair declared 'we are going to the Battlefields of France.'

What followed was an exquisite coming of age tale about discovery, deceit and international thieves! Godden evoked the long, hot, lazy summer of rural France to perfection. All those awkward young adult urges and desires are remembered in painful detail. She also used foreshadowing and hindsight to great effect via her narrator, Cecil.

I enjoyed reading the story not knowing which bits were real and which bits were made up. The story was deliciously melodramatic at times and I would think, 'that can't possibly be true.' Reading the preface at the end was a wonderful realisation that sometimes life is indeed stranger than fiction.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com.au/20...

Beautifully evocative of this French hotel and countryside along the river Marne, where the five Grey children are left when their mother is taken ill and lies in a nearby hospital. I was expecting a sweet innocent coming of age story but this was not totally the case. Very different, very unique.

A bunch of children are taken to France by their very odd mother to teach them a lesson for their selfishness. This is a very strange premise; I would NOT consider a trip to France a punishment, and frankly, neither did the Grey children. But it's one that worked very well because this trip takes place sometime right after WWI and the destination is supposed to be the battlefields of Château-Thierry in Northeastern France.

The mother is bitten by a horsefly (weird!) and is hospitalised for days, and the children are left to fend for themselves at Hotel des Oeillets. The narrative is seen through the eyes of Cecil (a girl), and the other kids include her elder sister, Joss, almost adult and a budding beauty; Wilmouse, the only boy of the bunch, a budding artist; Hester, a perspicacious kid; and Vicky, the youngest. The hotel is run by a Mademoiselle Zizi, but the real mystery character is a certain Englishman called Eliot who assumes the role of guardian for the kids.

The children pass the days in complete idyll enjoying themselves and experiencing what they believe is the French way of life. But there are deep undercurrents that would soon culminate in a tragedy. I found myself getting a little impatient, but halfway through the book the pace just changed and I couldn't put it down any longer. This was very deliberately and masterfully done and you feel the pulse of the story changing from days of idyll to the thrill of the chase!

I spent a long time wondering why this book rates so high considering that the sixteen year old Joss is often objectified by the narrator and drooled over by certain adult men, not to mention the object of an adult woman's jealousy. But it all slowly comes together making sense of the yuck factor. At the end, I was completely convinced that yes, this was important for the character development (or deterioration) of the villain.

Thoroughly enjoyable and gives a strong feel of n  The Durrellsn or the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton, where kids are left on their own to deal with stuff. But Godden is her own author and delivers a wholly original plot.

This is a story that works on so many levels: a true coming-of-age story, a mystery, a languid sojourn into summer, an enchanting view of the French countryside. And an extended metaphor of ripening, all the while hinting at the decay that so often follows ripening: the knowledge that gaining adulthood entails the loss of innocence.
”Children are everywhere, like insects. They can know anything.”
But how will that knowledge affect them? How will it change their lives? One thing is certain: they can never go back to being as they were. All of which renders telling the story from the point of view of thirteen-year-old Cecil especially effective. She finds herself growing up very quickly indeed. Therein lies the true drama of the story, making what might otherwise have been an at-arms-length couple of criminal events seem suddenly very personal, immediate and compelling.
I chose this seemingly innocuous little novel based on my familiarity with Rumer Godden’s works; I sought a relatively light, lyrical entertainment, filled with social insight and personal charm; with the narrator being almost a child, I felt safe going in. Nothing very disturbing will happen here. But with Godden, there’s always something more going on below the surface, some elemental truth to be explored.
One might quibble that the entire set-up is contrived: the unlikelihood of such a man as Eliot behaving as he does; the stranding of five children abroad while their mother is conveniently kept out of the way — but never mind; some suspension of disbelief is always necessary for such a story to work, and in this case, it’s well worth the investment.
Rumer Godden is one of the few writers I know who seem able to penetrate the minds of children. Her books have become difficult to find nowadays, they seem to have gone out of style. My copy, obtained after a search of numerous used book sellers, has obviously passed through many hands and is, sadly, falling apart; so I will not be able to pass it on to another reader.
Too bad. It’s very good stuff.