
The faded elegance of Les Oeillets with its bullet-scarred staircase & serene garden bounded by high walls; Eliot the charming Englishman who became the childrens guardian while their mother lay ill in hospital; sophisticated Mademoiselle Zizi hotel patronne & Eliots devoted lover; 16 year old Joss the oldest Grey girl suddenly achingly beautiful. & the Marne river flowing silent & slow beyond them all.. . They would merge together in a gold-green summer of discovery until the fruit rotted on the trees & cold seeped into their bones.. . The Greengage Summer is Rumer Goddens tense evocative portrait of love & deceit in the Champagne country of the Marne -- which became a memorable film starring Kenneth More & Susannah York. An exciting tale this novel has both charm & atmosphere & Miss Godden recaptures with an easy unsentimental naturalness the unfocused vision of adolescence Evening Standard One of the finest English novelists Orville Prescott