Customer Reviews

China Court: the hours of a country house; a novel.

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Rumer Godden spins a complex and delicate tale of family, and time, and love. Past, present, and future weave around each other in layers of story centering on an old family home and the generations who live and hate and love there. I first read this story many years ago, and I still find many of Ms Godden's strong characters and unique turns of phrase vivid in my mind. I would recommend this book without hesitation - a re-readable joy.

The first book I checked out of my town's boy's and girl's library, when I was 4 years old in 1955 was Rumer Godden's "The Mousewife." I have since read and reread all of her books in every genre many times, and "China Court" may be my favorite. This was Godden's second novel utilizing abrupt, almost cinematic time-changes, fast-fowrads and flashbacks. The first was "Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time," in which the technique had not been perfected, the third was the incomparable "In This House Of Brede."
This delicately wrought story of several generations of the Quin family of Cornwall is partly a family saga and partly a sensuous tribute to food, flowers and books. Godden's paeans to domesticity and gardens deploy language as beautiful as that of Colette's writings on the same subject. As with all of Godden's work, unrequited love, convention, sex and death are touched on, all with exquisite restraint and tremulous feeling. This is a quintessentially English novel and a book to treasure.

I have read China Court several times, and always delight in reading it. The book, which follows the pattern of a Book of Hours is a family--of several generations--love and betrayal, of Cornish Life in the 19th and 20th Century, and families reunited. Plus, to me is the most exciting, the "treasure hunt" for books. I can always recommend this book to friends, and often do.

I can't remember where or how I got my copy of "China Court", but the publication date is 1960 and it shows some loving wear and tear. I've re-read it countless times and enjoyed each as much as the first. It's a "gentle" book, that's the only way I can describe it, but the story of the five generations of China Court will keep you enthralled. From Eustace and Adza down through the generations ending in Ripsie and her granddaughter, Tracy, this story will draw you back again and again. Enjoy!