Song for Summer [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Eva Ibbotson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2009

When eighteen-year-old Ellen accepts the post of housekeeper at Hallendorf School of Music, Drama and Dance she wasn't expecting it to be quite so unusual. For deep in the beautiful Austrian countryside, she finds an eccentrically magical world occupied by wild children and even wilder teachers, experimental dancers and a tortoise on wheels. Ellen is particularly intrigued by the enigmatic, and very handsome, Marek, part-time gardener and fencing teacher. Life in Hallendorf seems idyllic, but outside Hitler's Reich is already casting its menacing shadow over Europe. Through her growing friendship with Marek, Ellen begins to encounter the dreadful reality of a world on the brink of war. And by the time she has figured out Marek's true identity and his dangerous mission, she is completely in love with him - and equally sure that her love will never be requited.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Ellen, the lovely heroine of this romantic novel, is raised in London by a suffragist mother and aunts but rejects the liberated life. After graduating from a culinary school, she takes a job in Austria at a run-down boarding school for neglected rich children and transforms it with her beauty, hard work, and good cooking. Like Ellen, all the characters are pleasantly drawn if exaggerated stereotypes: Ellen's love interest, Marek, the school handyman, is really a brilliant composer hiding out from the Nazis; the scullery maid is beautiful and saintly; and all the children are budding geniuses. When the war intervenes, Ellen returns to England to build a sanctuary for her friends and other refugees; eventually she and Marek are reunited, and love conquers all. Ibbotson, who grew up in Austria and fled the Nazis herself, provides rich details of prewar life in Vienna and the alpine countryside. Her prose is like a Linzertorte?well constructed but awfully sweet. Still, this is a lively read. Recommended for popular fiction collections.?Reba Leiding, Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. Lib., Troy, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Ellen is a mystery to her family. Her mother and the aunts who helped raise her were all militant suffragettes and are now part of the Bloomsbury intelligentsia, while Ellen would much rather pursue the domestic arts and follow in the footsteps of her grandfather's Austrian mistress and housekeeper. In the spring of 1937, Ellen does so, traveling to Austria to become a housemother in an eccentric boarding school that specializes in the arts and serves as a haven for adults and children who have nowhere else to go. With her innate kindness and warmth, she transforms the school and finds true love with Marek, the gardener and fencing instructor. As the tentacles of Nazism invade their world, Ellen helps Marek, who is actually a famous Czech composer in hiding, secure the safety of his Jewish violinist friend. Ibbotson, author of The Morning Gift (1993), gives life to characters of great depth and beautifully re-creates prewar Vienna and its surrounding countryside. Patty Engelmann --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Macmillan Digital Audio (June 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230735878
• ISBN-13: 978-0230735873
• Product Dimensions: 4.9 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,560,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars romance for the intelligent reader, September 29, 2004

By 

A. Craig "Amanda Craig" (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Song for Summer (Charnwood Library) (Hardcover)

This is one of my all-time favourite books, the kind of comfort-blanket you can turn to when ill, dull or depressed, and almost as good as Jane Austen in that respect. The story is conventional, in the sense that a pretty young girl goes to work as matron in a boarding school and falls in love, but it's the writing, the details and the characters which give it a kind of magic. (Anyone new to Ibbotson's work should also check out her superb children's novels, especially The Star of Kazan, which has a similar heroine). Ellen is the daughter of a trio of fierce feminists, who are horrified when, instead of pursuing a serious career and finishing her degree at Cambridge, she becomes an expert on matters domestic - cooking espeically. Ellen leaves England to work at a progressive boarding school in Austria, where sensitive children are dumped by rich parents and taught to be forks in drama classes. (The author attended Dartington School in the 1930s). Unfortunately, Hitler's rise to power is impingeing even on the demi-paradise of rural Austria, and it turns out the mysterious Marek is rescuing Jews who manage to escape the camps. A composer who wins your heart instantly because he hangs bullies and Nazis out of windows and refuses to let his music be played by the Reich, he falls reluctantly in love with Ellen, but almost loses her thanks to the coming War.
Steeped in good jokes and high culture, this is the kind of romantic novel that like puff pastry looks light and feathery but is the most difficult of all to make - and find. The wit is delicious. Ellen's serious aunts in Bloomsbury, puzzled and mortified by their relation's femininity, the absurd idealism of the school, and Ellen's quiet battle with disorder are like Cold COmfort Farm only without the snobbishness and anti-Semitism.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another winner from Ibbotson!, September 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Song for Summer (Hardcover)

If you haven't discovered Eva Ibbotson, give her a try now. For sheer warm, lyrical beauty, I think there are few authors who can match her. Every sentence is a gem. I find myself trying to read slowly because I know how unhappy I'll be when the book is finished. This book--dealing with the rise of the Nazis and the coming of WWII--was inevitably darker than some of Ibbotson's, but she handles the subject matter beautifully.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Romance and Excitement, April 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Song for Summer (Hardcover)

This is the first Ibbotson book I had read and it ties with A Countess Below Stairs as my favorite. The author creates such memorable characters that you can't help wanting the story to go on forever. I loaned this book to a friend and we laugh over the characters like Andromeda, the self regulating baby. I could not put it down. I love to tell my friends about Ibbotson, but it seems like all her books are out of print so you have to get them at libraries. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who likes a good story mixed with a little romance.