The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden is a 1958 coming-of-age novel, crackling with suspense, and portraying love and deceit in the Champagne country in France.

“On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages…” is a  memorable line from this engaging novel based on an incident in Godden’s youth.

Taking place in the shabby hotel of Les Oeillets, once gloriously elegant, the four children of the Grey family find themselves alone with the shady eccentrics who run the hotel. Like many of Godden’s novels, The Greengage Summer was adapted into a 1961 British film starring Kenneth More, Jane Asher, and Susannah York. Read More→