Customer Reviews

the Greengage Summer

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This is one of those books I've bought again and again. It's a beautiful coming-of-age story set in the French countryside. I first read it back when the earth was cooling, and I have no idea what became of that original copy. I bought it again as an adult, loaned it to a friend and never saw it again. I recently bought it yet a third time, a used copy on Amazon, and this one I'm not loaning out.
Greengage Summer is a delicious melange of mystery, romance, travel writing, and character study. I'm surprised it's no longer in print, because I truly think it's a classic. It started me reading everything Rumer Godden's written. I like her writing tremendously, but Greengage Summer is her best.
When Mum is confined to bed in a small French village, her children are left on their own in the pensione. It's mainly the story of the oldest daughter's blossoming toward maturity, but it's more, much more, than what appears on the surface.
Read it, and loan it to a friend - but be sure you get it back!

The Grey children are taken to France by their mother to visit the battlefields of WW1 in the hope that it will make them less selfish. However, she is taken ill as soon as they arrive at their destination, the hotel Les Oeillets, and the children find themselves bewildered and frightened in a strange land with a barely conscious mother. They are befriended by Eliot, a charming and enigmatic Englishman staying at Les Oeillets, who sorts everything out. With their mother in hospital, the children are free to explore this strange and exotic new world, so different from the dull suburban English town they have come from. They get to know all the people at the hotel, Mamzelle Zizzi, the beautiful but slightly haggard proprietor, who is clearly besotted with Eliot, Madame Corbet, grim and unsmiling, who equally clearly detests him, and all the rest of the staff. They make friends with Paul, an orphan who is an overworked drudge in the kitchen, but dreams of some day owning his own lorry. The story is narrated by Cecil, thirteen years old, who observes everything, especially the growing attraction between Joss, her exquisitely lovely elder sister, and Eliot. As Eliot spends more and more time with the children, Mamzelle Zizzi's jealousy grown, until it finally explodes one night in a scene that terrifies and bewilders the Grey family. The children try to retreat from the scary grownupworld to their safe childhood idyll, but it is too late, the happy atmosphere is poisoned. As Eliot's behaviour grows more mysterious,and Mamzelle Zizzi continues to simmer with jealousy the story heads inevitably towards disaster. All the characters in this book are fascinating, from secretive, sexy Eliot to the drudge Paul, and you feel totally involved in their lives. The atmosphere of a French summer is so vividly described, you can taste the greengages the children stuff themselves with, and smell the eccentric French plumbing. A gripping and poignant story of lost innocence, this book is based on actual events in Rumer Godden's youth, and is quite unforgettable.

I first read it when I was 12 and then again when I was 22. It is a wonderfully written and deepy perceptive book about growing up (amongst a host of other things). Please read this book if you have not and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Other books by Rumer Godden are also brilliant - eg. In this house of Brede, Black Narcissus, Two under the Indian Sun, The River. She is also one of the very few writers who (IMHO) really loves India and writes like she is an insider and not an outsider. Enjoy.

Like many of the other reviewers here, I first read this book when I was about 13. (I am now in my 40's). A few years ago I was lucky enough to find a copy, but was nervous that perhaps it wouldn't be as good as I remembered...however I enjoyed it at least as much as I did when I first read it! I just gave this book to my 11 year old daughter and am enjoying watching her fall in love with it too. The characters are so fascinating, and the descriptions of the french countryside, the old hotel in which the story takes place, and the food just transport you. You hate to see the book end!
Rumer Godden is a fabulous writer of both adult and childrens' books; this is definitely my favorite.

I was given this book the spring I turned thirteen by my favorite aunt, who had read it when she was about thirteen. It has become as beloved to me as it was to her. It is a beautifully written story about the pain and excitement that accompany the time in one's life when the things of childhood get left behind for the lures of adulthood. Sensitive, it glorifies neither state, but shows the pains and pleasures of each. I wanted to buy if for my younger sister, and am devastated that it is out of print. If you can find a copy, do. It is infinitely worth the time. But be warned, you too will want to pass this treasure on.

A former "diplobrat" who grew up abroad, I identified with Godden's description of a child's first encounter with France. The effect of their foreign adventure on each family member develops along with an excellent plot (not usually Godden's strong point). Even better than the character descriptions is the evocation of French country life at its most seductive -- "next best to being there."

I read this book at the age of 14 (30 years ago) and will always be grateful to Rumer Godden for all she taught me about life. This novel, centered on the conflicts and misunderstandings between adults and children --- and their profound effects --- showed me that somewhere, there was an adult who remembered and understood the pain and confusion of adolescence.

Originally published in 1958, The Greengage Summer is a lush coming of age novel that might have been aimed at the young adult market, featuring as it does the five Grey children virtually on their own in France. Their father is a botanist and seldom home, so their long-suffering mother marches them to the champagne country of the Marne for summer holiday, intending that they should be edified by seeing "what other people have given." The bedraggled troupe arrive at a hotel named Les Oeillets where the proprietress, Mademoiselle Zizi, is horrified at the sight of them. Her "special friend," the cheerful Englishman Eliot, arranges for Mrs. Grey to have hospital care and appoints himself guardian of the children.

The eldest, sixteen-year-old Joss, is taken to bed for some time with a stomach upset. That leaves her thirteen-year-old sister Cecil, our narrator, in charge (so to speak) of the three younger children. They spend their days roaming the gardens, gorging themselves on plums in the greengage orchard, picnicking along the river, and getting their noses into everything while remaining invisible to the adults who don't want to see them anyway. Their slim command of French just adds to the hazy, exotic quality of their holiday.

Ah! but Joss and even young Cecil are "standing with reluctant feet / where the brook and river meet," writes Godden, quoting Henry Wadworth Longfellow's poem "Maidenhood." They learn very little about the war (other than from the bullet holes, blood stains and buried skull carefully restored from time to time at the hotel), but they learn much, much more about the pleasures and risks of adulthood. Joss has blossomed and Eliot can't take his eyes off her, to Mlle Zizi's rage, and then there is the kitchen boy, Paul ...

This book has flashes of humor that remind me of another long-loved book: Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. But English author Rumer Godden reveals the dark side of growing up in "Greengage," as adult passion and greed lead to actions that the children see as betrayal.

So yes, the story is mesmerizing, but oh, the language! It's so rich and atmospheric. "...I can smell the Les Oeillets smells of hot dust and cool plaster walls, of jasmine and box leaves in the sun, of dew in the long grass...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...of the faint noise of the town and, near, the plop of a fish or of a greengage falling."

I listened to this old friend of a book, brilliantly performed by Nicola Pagett. I didn't understand the French conversation quite so well as I did at fifteen, but that was no obstacle to my complete enjoyment of this beatiful book.

Linda Bulger, 2010

When the dog bites, when you're feeling blue, simply get a copy of The Greengage Summer to gorge on its luscious and heady prose. Godden is a timeless writer and I'm fairly sure this started life as 'adult' rather than 'children's' fiction - for all the worth of those meaningless categories. I guess the teen reads didn't exist then and this seething, hormonal coming-of-age novel captures the very essence of that moment when knowing youth casts its spell without being able to foresee the consequences, for it to appeal to younger readers, but I wonder if the hindsight of growing-up add another layer or three. The prose is limpid, laden with resonance and the characters are wondeful. I can smell and see the summer and its dangerous allure. Nicely tragic too (in that noone actually dies, but the consequences of playing with adult-hood are suitably dire!). It is a book I turn to time-and-again and recommend unstintingly to anyone who'll hear me out.

In "The Greengage Summer" five English youths have their vacation trip to the battlefields of France derailed when their mother develops a disabling illness due to an insect bite. While she is in hospital, they stay at a hotel run by two sour proprietors and peopled by an eccentric cast of characters. Each of the youths pursues his or her interests (painting, photography, etc.) while exploring the hotel and the grounds nearby. They befriend the handyman Paul, a young man with a perplexing past, and bond with their temporary guardian, Eliot, whose background, they eventually discover, is even more disturbing. In their summer stay, the children also stumble upon a mystery. As they collide with a foreign adult world, they receive an education, but not quite the one their mother originally intended.