So beautifully written... a classic that I was unaware of until I read a recent review. A book of true escapism and a little adventure in the most beautiful setting of France.

3.5

This was ok, but rather weird. There's a whole storyline about men being obsessed with a 14 year old girl and then there's kind of random criminal activity amid the coming-of-age story. I've read several things by Rumer Godden now, and somehow it always turns out to be both stranger and more boring than I expected.

4 ⭐️

Retro Reads group read Jan. 2019
This was my first book by Rumer Godden and quite a surprise. I had never even heard of her though I recognize the titles of a few. I found this rather slow at first, but it certainly picked up speed as it went along. I loved the narrator's intelligence and insight into the many characters and events which evolved rather slowly. The sentences in French were rather annoying but some of it was explained so not too bad. I was appalled at the neglect of these children left almost on their own by most of the adults, but it was a different time and a different country, but still! I also was rather surprised by their reactions to the final events, but after all they were children. But, I did expect more from the older two, age 13 and 16. All in all, I rounded up from 3 1/2 stars but very intriguing. I believe I will want to read more by this author.

This is a story of a family of extremely bright, precocious children caught between childhood and adulthood. It is fictionalised autobiography. It is about 1923. An English mother decides to take her bratty lot to France to show them the sacrifices made for them in The Great War. She is bitten by a fly and becomes extremely ill on he way to the Marne, is hospitalised and the children are alone at the hotel of mother's choice but without mother. However, they are not alone as the mother's role is taken over by others at the hotel, some friendly, others not so much. It is a coming of age novel. It is a novel in which children are forced to make adult-like decisions as they are confronted by adult level questions. At the beginning it seems to be a nice adult novel about children and their stay in France between wars. As the book progresses with charming descriptions of France, it takes on a more serious tone. Can't say more or spoil this carefully crafted story. A spoiler alert - if there are forewords or introductions do NOT read them first. But DO read them last as they enrich the story immensely. Seriously recommended!

The Inspector wondered why do these children think of Eliot (the jewel thief) as 'God'.

He should have asked children, what was there to wonder about?

Eliot was the only one who had given them 'respect', something they had never had before. Something so intangible yet so very important for every person.
They had always lived as the poor relatives of Uncle William Bullock, to be tolerated because they were there, cannot be discarded can they?

Eliot treated Joss as the beautiful girl, he taught Cecil that every individual is beautiful, he never laughed at Willmouse and the 'littles' got all the love and affection from him.

The cold hearted Eliot, 'when on job' has no time for anyone, uses and discards women, Zizi is his cover on this job, much like the criminal Wolf from the 'Eye of the Needle'.
Do not be under any misapprehension, the children are a part of the cover too, but he loves them, give them a great deal more, for they are never the same after their holiday in France.

The only real victim is Paul, who realises that in comparison to the children, he is unclean, just a poor discarded orphan with nowhere to go and with a lot of broken dreams.

This is a wonderful little classic, and the only Rumer Godden book I've read. I connected with the mother in the story who has five children as I also have five (grown) children. In addition, one of her children is Vicky (as am I a Vicki...no y). When they go to Europe to see some historical sights and hopefully have a sense of appreciation instilled in the children, Mother lands in the hospital, thus leaving the children to tend for themselves under the watchful eye of the hotel.

The story is told by 13 year old Cecil which is refreshing in this coming of age novel. A man named Elliot comes to visit his mistress at the inn and ends up falling for Joss, the 16 year 0ld child. Needless to say this is a life-changing relationship. I don't want to give more spoilers, but I was pleasantly surprised at how good this classic is.

Greengages, or reines-claudes.

This must have been lurking on the back shelf in the spare bedroom for years, ever since I bought it on a bookseller's recommendation as a way of weaning a teen off Jacqueline Wilson and onto something slightly more grown-up. As one of those serendipitous side-effects of a bit of general tidying (tidying bookshelves, yay!), it came with me for my morning coffee and I just read it straight through in one sitting. A bittersweet evocation of August days in the Champagne district, it is set just after WW1, when the narrator was thirteen. She and her three sisters and a brother are taken abroad for the first time in their lives, mother disappears into the local hospital with septicaemia following a horsefly bite, older sis laid low by The Curse, and the four other children are vaguely 'looked after' by various members of staff or guests of the hotel on the banks of the Marne. A real mystery knits itself up, with more than one type of border crossed, innocence lost, and the swither between child and adult that is thirteen.

With penicillin and paracetamol, nowadays there would have to be some other way of removing the responsible adults. But remove them one must.

This is a stunning novel, the story of a family of five siblings in the 1920s. The mother, Mrs Grey, decides to take her selfish offspring to see the battlefields of France, and the place where Joan of Arc was martyred, but falls seriously ill with septicaemia after a horse-fly bite. The children, 4 girls and boy, whose ages range from 4 to 16, are left to their own devices in the Hotel des Oeillets, in the Marne countryside, under the dubious care of two French ladies who run the hotel, and the enigmatic but charming English lover of one of these, Eliot.

The story has some similarities to me with 'The Go-Between': the loss of innocence against the sultry heat of summer, and adolescents tangled up in an adult world where the rules are different. It also has that bitter-sweet nostalgia, the knowledge that after this, nothing will be the same again.

The writing is lyrical and beautifully evocative of the sights and smells of the hotel and the surrounding Marne countryside, the river and forests, the taste of French food, wine and cigarettes, and of course, those greengages. This all presented in contrast to the slightly stuffy British seaside town which is the children's home.

Although the novel takes a dark turn, as all is not quite as it seems, it has a light touch throughout and many amusing passages. I was particularly tickled by the character of young Willmouse, an eccentric little boy destined to be a fashion designer.

I was aware of this novel when I was younger and really wish I'd read it my teens, but better late than never.

I love Rumer Godden's writing, and I would have given this one 5 stars except that the Preface in this edition should have been an afterword, as it gave away too much of the story... And the ending of the book was so abrupt. But overall a lot of gorgeous writing.

Beautifully told story of an English girl's coming of age in a French village in the 1950s. The sumptuous descriptions of summer in the idyllic French countryside are counterpoint to a potent account of the less-than-idyllic behavior of a group of adults at a small hotel and their influence on the five children entrusted to their care.

Godden's split point of view adds dimension and depth to the story, lifting it beyond young adult novel territory. Most of the time, she is 13-year-old Cecil (short for Cecilia, I think, though Godden never says) Grey telling what happened to her brother, her sisters and herself that summer while their mother was in hospital. Occasionally, she steps back as the adult Cecil to comment on the action.

There is no Atticus Finch here. No guide for young Cecil in the midst of the maelstrom, much of it of a sexual nature that threatens to involve her 16-year-old sister Joss; she is her own moral compass, and her observations are admirably sharp and level-headed throughout the story. "I did not want to see all these things in Paul but since coming to Les Oeillets I seemed to see a long way into people, even when I did not wish it," she writes.

Fortunately, an English uncle steps in at the nick of time to save the day, but not before Cecil is given plenty of material to write about, including the dark actions of the one adult they thought they could trust at Les Oeillets.

Through the lens of 2013, it's clear the story wouldn't happen the same way today--surely the French equivalent of DFCS would have been called in as soon as mother Grey was taken ill--but what we have in Godden's novel from a far different time is a remarkable account of spirited and close-knit children hanging together to save their troubled family.

"Most grown people are like icebergs, three-tenths showing, seven-tenths submerged--that is why a collision with one of them is unexpectedly hurtful," writes Cecil. Thanks to Godden's bifocal storytelling, we know that Cecil lives, unscathed, for the most part, to tell the story vividly in this unforgettable book.