The Greengage Summer

Rumer Godden

From Shelf: Summer

A coming of age story set in the summer heat of France's Champagne region.

The Greengage Summer is Rumer Godden's tense, evocative portrait of love and deceit in the Champagne region of provincial France, which became a memorable film starring Kenneth More and Susannah York.The faded elegance of Hotel 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; sixteen-year-old Joss, 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 . . .

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