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