Taken during the filming of Greengage Summer (1961)
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The Greengage Summer
 'On
and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating
the greengages . . .'
The faded elegance of Les Oeillets, with its bullet-scarred staircase
and serene garden bouded by high walls; Elliot, 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 . . .
'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 of living English novelists'
ORVILLE PRESCOTT
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, Jane Asher and Susannah
York. And in a new preface for this edition she explains how it came to
be written. |
