Macmillan Collector’s Library: The Greengage Summer

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Rumer Godden was born in Sussex in 1907 but spent most of her childhood in India. After reluctantly travelling to England for school, she trained as a dancer and returned to India where she ran a dance school and stayed until the end of the Second World War. One of the UK's most distinguished authors, she wrote many well-known and much-loved books for both adults and children, including Black Narcissus (1939), The Greengage Summer (1958) and Coromandel Sea Change (1991). Her novel The Diddakoi won the Whitbread Children's Book Award in 1972. In 1994 she was awarded the OBE. She died in Rye, East Sussex, in 1998.

A near perfect portrayal of adolescence and loss of innocence set during one long hot summer in France. With an introduction by actress and author Jane Asher. When their mother is suddenly taken ill on holiday, five siblings are left to fend for themselves at the elegant, faded hotel, Les Oeillets. Under the increasingly jealous gaze of the glamorous patronne, Mademoiselle Zizi, the children gravitate towards her mysterious and charming lover, Eliot, for comfort. And, amongst the gnarled trees of the old orchards, thirteen-year-old Cecil watches from the sidelines as her achingly beautiful sister, Joss, is drawn into the heart of a toxic affair. A tense, evocative portrait of love and deceit in the Champagne country of the Marne, Rumer Goddens The Greengage Summer is a hauntingly beautiful coming-of-age story. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collectors Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collectors Library are books to love and treasure.

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