Painful to read

This book is such a mishmash that I don't know where to start. There are a lot of characters, and the author calls them by different names so I was never sure who was who. For example, Mrs. Quin is Ripsie as a girl and maybe a teen and maybe a young woman, but never are there dates so you have no idea of the sequence of events. The time frame jumps literally from one sentence to the next without warning. The "current" events - at least as best I can tell - are written in a past tense voice. O!set events, such as when Ripsie is involved, are written in present tense voice. And the detail. Pages upon pages of deciding what dress to wear, or what is being cooked for dinner. It's hard to tell if anything is actually happening. I started skimming about halfway through the book just to get to the end so I could write this review and warn others. I was excited to read this because I love historical fiction about almost any period in English history, but this book did me in. I have never struggled to read a book as much as this, except maybe War and Peace which I never finished. The biography and pictures of the author at the end of the book are the most interesting. And short.
Do yourself a favor and get a sample of this book before buying it. China Court could have been fascinating with linear exposition that would allow you to get to know the family, consistent voice rather than the mix of present and last tense, and less mind numbing detail.

Absolutely charming!

Beautifully written book about a house and the generation that lived in it. A reminder that life is what we make it. It is a little slow in places but worth sticking through.

Lovely novel about three generations of a family who live in a beautiful country house in Cornwall.

4.5

China Court is largely the story of the house of that name, and give generations of the Quin family who live there. They have made their money through the china clay quarry they own, hence the name.

It starts with the death of Mrs Quin, the matriarch of the family, and the days following, but it's not a linear narrative, so it jumps around in time, using the memories of the various characters to tell the stories of the family. This is probably a pretty risky stategy, and it means there are a lot of characters to keep in mind, but they soon become distinct and it is a lot less confusing than it sounds. I found it surprisingly compelling, especially the contemporary story with the family gathering in the house for the reading of the will. That part of the novel reminded me very much of All Passion Spent.

I was a bit disappointed by the very end of the book, the last scene seemed very out of character, but overall it was a great story and one I will re-read at some point.

“At China Court, loved things were not thrown away.”

If you’ve ever had the experience of disposing of family heirlooms after the death of loved-ones, you may relate to this novel. I have been there--more than once. It’s uniquely painful to spend time assessing the whole of someone’s possessions, many bringing up dreams never reached and hope that remained until that very last minute, now passed. Our things are so much more than things, and our homes are so much more than four or more walls. They hold volumes. Rumer Godden understood this well.

“'To keep’ had become for Tracy the most important verb in the English language. ‘And it isn’t only possessive … It means to watch over, take care of, maintain.’”

China Court is a home that holds a family, a family that began with Eustace and Adza who moved there in the mid 1800’s, stretching out to the youngest grandchild Tracy, and taking us to 1960. Godden structures her story around the family’s heirloom Book of Hours, using the divisions as chapter headings: Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline, Matins. It begins with the current occupant, Mrs. Quin; her death and then her life, as we’re taken back and forth and back again in time.

The wealth of characters seems daunting at first, but they take shape quickly. Godden hints at the outcomes of each of these family members as she introduces them, but far from spoilers, these are more like teasing bits of gossip, and you are propelled through, hoping to get the full story on each of their dramas and heartbreaks. What starts as names on a family tree (thankfully included inside the book cover) fill into individual strands in a complex web of life.

The dramas vary, but each life has heartbreak. Mrs. Quin seems to be saying it’s all what you make of it.

“Even when one is stricken, much remains; often creature things: drinking good tea from a thin porcelain cup; hot baths; the smell of a wood fire, the warmth of firelight and candlelight. The sound of a stream can be consolation, thinks Mrs. Quin, or the shape of a tree; even stricken, she can enjoy those.”

This is such an unusual book. In many ways it was like Godden’s A Fugue in Time, another book that seemed written just for me. I didn’t think it was possible, but I may have enjoyed this even more. Her characters and themes felt even deeper in this one, and the stark line between happiness and unhappiness seemed more blurred, a truth we recognize as we grow older.

“'All unhappiness,’ says Mrs. Quin, ‘as you live with it, becomes shot through with happiness; it cannot help it; and all happiness, I suppose, is shot through with unhappiness.’”

I have just re-read this multi-generational story. I love the atmosphere Rumer Godden evokes here, whether it's Victorian or the 1960s. But why oh why does Peter St Omer have to hit Tracy on their wedding night? It seems to have been accepted in the mid 20thC even by intelligent writers like Mrs Godden, that it was somehow ok for women to be slapped around "for their own good", as if accepting this were a proof of their love for their men, or as if their ladylike inhibitions could be broken down in no other way. No doubt it was accepted as the psychological "truth" of its time, but it is so repellent. It does mar the ending severely for me

So my mother tried to get me to read Rumer Godden for years, and I don't know why I resisted seeing as I'm usually won over by anything set in an English country house (maybe it was because I was a teenager - though hardly a rebellious one). After my local library thoroughly disappointed me by not stocking Dorothy Sayers so I could re-read her and get my Lord Peter fix, I decided to give Godden a try. This book was engrossing, but something about it left me cold. Maybe it was the very odd ending, which involves a woman getting slapped. But I won't write Godden off.

So much that is lovely and honest and sad here, and then you read the last few pages. What was Godden thinking?

An old Cornish country house breathes forth its memories of the generations who have lived in it as it gets a new lease on life in a most surprising way. Each chapter opens with a vignette from an antique illustrated book of hours, for reason revealed late in the story.

I loved the way the characters Ripsie and Tracy, the most rootless characters in the story, cherished not only the house but what it represented of the times that came before them. I loved also the celebration of domestic life and its contentments.

I find this author's use of the present tense here and there a little disconcerting, as is the slipping back and forward again in the timeline, though once I gained familiarity with the characters it was clearer where I was in the history of the family. I liked the idea of past events in and around the house abiding simultaneously with the present.

On a very minor note, I'm always amused that the worst possible thing you could be in a British novel is a *prig.*

It starts as the story of a house but is the story of all the people the house had contained through three generations. Godden’s episodic method of storytelling requires patience, as early on she will allude to characters and events that haven’t been explained yet. But you get to know all the main figures as fragments of their stories are told, slotting into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. A satisfying story except for one weird moment between the two present day characters at the end, which I attribute to the age of the book. It doesn’t sit well with current day sensitivities.

This book took a little more concentration than usual, but overall I enjoyed it. The story skips back and forth over three generations of the Quin family, and it was sometimes confusing. Luckily there was a family tree at the beginning of the book, to which I made frequent reference! The hardest part was figuring out which "Mrs Quin" was being referenced, since there were three of them (actually more than three, but the three matriarchs were the only referenced that way.). A lot of characters, but very well delineated, and most of them were very likeable. Also it had a satisfying ending. There is a lot of information about rare books which I skimmed over fairly quickly, but it was still very interesting. Not something I will reread soon, but a satisfying and enjoyable read.