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A review by rubygranger
The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
5.0
I'm so surprised that this book is not one of the Great Classics. I'd never even heard of it before I picked it up. This is one of my new favourite 20th century novels.
The book is narrated by 13 year old Cecil who, with her siblings and mother, goes to France for the summer. However, when her mother gets sick, the children are sent to stay in a hotel with an Englishman called Eliot. They spend halcyon days wondering the French countryside and villages, and Cecil observes the antics of adulthood (as the only french linguist). She sits in between adulthood and childhood this summer, in a very similar way to Leo in The Go-Between.
The book is narrated by 13 year old Cecil who, with her siblings and mother, goes to France for the summer. However, when her mother gets sick, the children are sent to stay in a hotel with an Englishman called Eliot. They spend halcyon days wondering the French countryside and villages, and Cecil observes the antics of adulthood (as the only french linguist). She sits in between adulthood and childhood this summer, in a very similar way to Leo in The Go-Between.