The Greengage Summer

The faded elegance of 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; 16 year old Joss, the oldest Grey girl, 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 . . . The Greengage Summer is Rumer Godden’s tense, evocative portrait of love and deceit in the Champagne country of the Marne – which became a memorable film starring Kenneth More and Susannah York. In the preface, Rumer Godden explains how it came to be written. `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 `One of the finest English novelists’ Orville Prescott