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melwyk's review against another edition
4.0
This is almost five stars...I loved it all the way through until the last few pages. They were horribly jarring and nearly ruined it for me. So now I stop reading at the second to last chapter. ;)
verityw's review against another edition
3.0
I'm still not sure what I think of this. It took me ages to get into it, but then when I did, I wanted to keep reading and find out what had happened. And yet, at the end, I still wasn't sure what I thought. Odd. Not as satisfying as the big old family novels like the Cazalets, but more substantial than a normal saga. Strange.
charlielovesbooks's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
unabridgedchick's review against another edition
4.0
I'm a Godden fan so I knew I would like China Court, but I was surprised to find I loved it. Despite not being Catholic myself, I find the cultural associations with Catholicism to be appealing and so the plot line with the Book of Hours kept me engrossed in this story. Like others have observed, it feels very contrived at times, but it wasn't enough to keep me from finishing the book.
amy_h_45's review against another edition
5.0
I don’t know how to adequately talk about Rumer Godden books. I fear that describing their plots make them seem boring. They are anything but boring, but they are not page turners. They are paced like life, sometimes fast sometimes slow, always moving forward. Rumer Godden examines living in her books. She always asks the question, what constitutes a good life? Her books explore different answers to this question.
China Court looks at the life of a house and the lives that are lived out under its roof. The story of the generations weave together sometimes from paragraph to paragraph, so that one might feel confused at first until you get a grasp on the members of the various generations. Everything is ordinary, everyday. Meals are made, flowers are arranged, people go riding and hunting, children play, marriages begin and end, hearts are broken, treasures are discovered, both of the spiritual and monetary kind—all of which makes up a life. Godden says that the good life is one that recognizes that life is a continuous thread that stitches the generations together into an ever expanding whole, and that preserves and honors that continuity by protecting it at any cost.
I just love Godden’s work. In her hands the ordinary becomes remarkable and beautiful, the ultimate to be aspired to.
China Court looks at the life of a house and the lives that are lived out under its roof. The story of the generations weave together sometimes from paragraph to paragraph, so that one might feel confused at first until you get a grasp on the members of the various generations. Everything is ordinary, everyday. Meals are made, flowers are arranged, people go riding and hunting, children play, marriages begin and end, hearts are broken, treasures are discovered, both of the spiritual and monetary kind—all of which makes up a life. Godden says that the good life is one that recognizes that life is a continuous thread that stitches the generations together into an ever expanding whole, and that preserves and honors that continuity by protecting it at any cost.
I just love Godden’s work. In her hands the ordinary becomes remarkable and beautiful, the ultimate to be aspired to.
siguirimama's review against another edition
4.0
A swirling of names and all the generations muddled-- the first 50 pages had me skimming over and over again from the beginning working to figure out who was who. But after that I felt I knew them all.
sira's review against another edition
4.0
I loved this book except for the final two pages. The last scene felt out of place and a bit upsetting after such a beautiful story. I would have given the full five stars if it had ended with the wedding.
balancinghistorybooks's review against another edition
2.0
China Court is part of a newly reissued series of Godden’s novels, printed by Virago. This particular novel is dedicated to the famous English poet John Betjeman, and was first published in the early 1960s. It tells the tale of the Quin family, who have been inhabitants of a large house named China Court for several generations.
Tracy Quin, the daughter of a film star, is the youngest member of the Quin family. She has been brought up on various film sets around the world, and has finally tried to put down roots in China Court in Cornwall following the death of her grandmother. The story more or less opens with Tracy and her mother, and then follows other individuals from different generations of the family. Whilst this idea is an interesting one, it has not been written or executed in such a way that renders the story difficult to put down, or even makes it clear.
The Quin family which Tracy descends from is so large – the first generation alone has nine children, for example – that a family tree has been included before the story even begins. Godden has defended her choice of this inclusion in the preface, which states, ‘In real life, when one meets a large family, with all its ramifications of uncles, aunts and cousins, as well as grandfathers and grandmothers, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, their friends, servants, and pet animals, it takes some time to distinguish them; one does not expect to remember straightaway that it is Jane who is married to Bertram, Jack who was born with a club foot, Aunt Margaret who had the unfortunate love affair… China Court is a novel about five generations of a family… I believe if the reader is a little patient – and can bear not to skip – they will soon become distinct and he will have no need to look at the family tree on the frontispiece’.
Sadly, a growing clarification of who is who and the relations between members of the family are nigh on impossible to remember without the aid of the aforementioned family tree, and Godden’s intention falls flat somewhat. So many characters are introduced at one time in places that the family dynamic becomes overly confused. The family tree is invaluable in this respect, but it becomes rather annoying to flip back and forth merely in order to work out who is related to who, and in which way. The introduction of so many people in so short a space renders the novel rather stolid and entirely confusing. The characters blend into one indistinguishable mess. The story is quickly saturated with information about the Quin family, not all of whom are remotely interesting.
The tenses, too, jump around from past to present and back again from one paragraph to the next. There are few breaks between different time periods; rather, Godden has created a continuous narrative which just adds to the confusion. The opening line of the novel is striking: ‘Old Mrs Quin died in her sleep in the early hours of an August morning’. We are then launched straight into the dynamics of the Quin’s country house, which stands in a village which is ‘proudly inbred’. The sense of place which Godden has created works well at times, particularly when her descriptions are lovely – motes of dust ‘glittered and spun in the sun that came through the window’ and ‘A tiny fly whirred in the roses’, for example – and not so well at others. The way in which she describes the geographical position of China Court, for example, is so matter-of-fact that it reads like a piece of journalistic non-fiction. Dialects have been used in the speech of some characters in order to better set the scene, and the intended meaning of such chatter is not often easy to translate. The dialogue throughout has not been split up into the form of a conventional literary conversation, and there are often two or three individuals who speak in any one paragraph.
China Court does not have the same charming feel of The Dolls’ House, or the wonderful exuberance and great cast of Thursday’s Children. The execution of this story is wholly disappointing, and whilst the plot and general idea of following several generations who are intrinsically linked to one another is an interesting one, it has not been carried out in the best of ways. In consequence, it is rather difficult for a reader of China Court to muster that patience which Godden urges us to have.
Tracy Quin, the daughter of a film star, is the youngest member of the Quin family. She has been brought up on various film sets around the world, and has finally tried to put down roots in China Court in Cornwall following the death of her grandmother. The story more or less opens with Tracy and her mother, and then follows other individuals from different generations of the family. Whilst this idea is an interesting one, it has not been written or executed in such a way that renders the story difficult to put down, or even makes it clear.
The Quin family which Tracy descends from is so large – the first generation alone has nine children, for example – that a family tree has been included before the story even begins. Godden has defended her choice of this inclusion in the preface, which states, ‘In real life, when one meets a large family, with all its ramifications of uncles, aunts and cousins, as well as grandfathers and grandmothers, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, their friends, servants, and pet animals, it takes some time to distinguish them; one does not expect to remember straightaway that it is Jane who is married to Bertram, Jack who was born with a club foot, Aunt Margaret who had the unfortunate love affair… China Court is a novel about five generations of a family… I believe if the reader is a little patient – and can bear not to skip – they will soon become distinct and he will have no need to look at the family tree on the frontispiece’.
Sadly, a growing clarification of who is who and the relations between members of the family are nigh on impossible to remember without the aid of the aforementioned family tree, and Godden’s intention falls flat somewhat. So many characters are introduced at one time in places that the family dynamic becomes overly confused. The family tree is invaluable in this respect, but it becomes rather annoying to flip back and forth merely in order to work out who is related to who, and in which way. The introduction of so many people in so short a space renders the novel rather stolid and entirely confusing. The characters blend into one indistinguishable mess. The story is quickly saturated with information about the Quin family, not all of whom are remotely interesting.
The tenses, too, jump around from past to present and back again from one paragraph to the next. There are few breaks between different time periods; rather, Godden has created a continuous narrative which just adds to the confusion. The opening line of the novel is striking: ‘Old Mrs Quin died in her sleep in the early hours of an August morning’. We are then launched straight into the dynamics of the Quin’s country house, which stands in a village which is ‘proudly inbred’. The sense of place which Godden has created works well at times, particularly when her descriptions are lovely – motes of dust ‘glittered and spun in the sun that came through the window’ and ‘A tiny fly whirred in the roses’, for example – and not so well at others. The way in which she describes the geographical position of China Court, for example, is so matter-of-fact that it reads like a piece of journalistic non-fiction. Dialects have been used in the speech of some characters in order to better set the scene, and the intended meaning of such chatter is not often easy to translate. The dialogue throughout has not been split up into the form of a conventional literary conversation, and there are often two or three individuals who speak in any one paragraph.
China Court does not have the same charming feel of The Dolls’ House, or the wonderful exuberance and great cast of Thursday’s Children. The execution of this story is wholly disappointing, and whilst the plot and general idea of following several generations who are intrinsically linked to one another is an interesting one, it has not been carried out in the best of ways. In consequence, it is rather difficult for a reader of China Court to muster that patience which Godden urges us to have.
expendablemudge's review against another edition
3.0
Rating: 3.875* of five
3 JUNE 2020 UPDATE The Kindle edition is $1.99 today only!
When I was a youngster, my mother had a lot of books from the 1930s to the 1960s on her shelves. I was allowed to roam freely among them, because she said that if I was old enough to want to read something, I should be able to do so.
As one can imagine, the large majority of a mother's bookshelf wasn't all that appealing to a young boy...Taylor Caldwell, Mary Lasswell, Anya Seton, Kathleen Winsor, and Rumer Godden were all well-represented. I called them, collectively, "snoozer biddies." Lots of long-face about loves lost, and noble sacrifices in the name of love, and mothers Doing Their All for Their Children, and blah blah blah blah.
Forty years later, I pick up China Court at the prompting of memory and the LT connection cloud bringing Rumer Godden's name back up to me. I half-remember some plot points, I do remember thinking that the rest of the snoozer biddies shoulda talked to this lady, she knew her onions comes to writin', and this was a good story.
It's a good story! I think family sagas always appealed to me, and that's why this book snuck past the general opprobrium of youthful disdain heaped on the other books.
Not everyone in this book is likable, in fact most of them are pretty skeevy...motivated by greed, lust, vengeful meanness to do some extraordinaily good things, and some cruel ones too. It reminded me then, and does also now, of my own family.
China Court is a house. It's not some Stately Manor, it's a big, old-fashined family house. In the early 1960s, big places like this were in a serious period of desuetude in England. This book chronicles the house and the family's intertwined fates at this now-very-distant moment of crisis. It's structured in echo of the Book of Hours Mrs. Quin, the last nineteenth-century native to live in the house, treasured and apparently read often. A Book of Hours, for the non-Catholic, divides the day into periods of prayer. Most of us have heard the terms "Lauds" and "Prime" and so forth, but these are just words...the idea of them, their purpose, is to give a reverential and spiritual cast to a person's every day and every act.
Speaking as a practicing anti-Christian, I think this is one of the best, most missed, ideas that modernity has rendered obsolete. I think, if this system of spiritual organization were to be reintroduced, the number of people who *actually* understood the religion they profess would rise exponentially, and I am just optimist enough to hope that there would be a corresponding reduction in the amount of loathsome hate-speech emanating from them.
As a narrative force in this novel, I think it's excellent and inspired. I think Rumer Godden deserves the attention of today's readers for her technical talent, her spiritual message, and her ahead-of-the-curve ideas. I recommend this to you.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
3 JUNE 2020 UPDATE The Kindle edition is $1.99 today only!
When I was a youngster, my mother had a lot of books from the 1930s to the 1960s on her shelves. I was allowed to roam freely among them, because she said that if I was old enough to want to read something, I should be able to do so.
As one can imagine, the large majority of a mother's bookshelf wasn't all that appealing to a young boy...Taylor Caldwell, Mary Lasswell, Anya Seton, Kathleen Winsor, and Rumer Godden were all well-represented. I called them, collectively, "snoozer biddies." Lots of long-face about loves lost, and noble sacrifices in the name of love, and mothers Doing Their All for Their Children, and blah blah blah blah.
Forty years later, I pick up China Court at the prompting of memory and the LT connection cloud bringing Rumer Godden's name back up to me. I half-remember some plot points, I do remember thinking that the rest of the snoozer biddies shoulda talked to this lady, she knew her onions comes to writin', and this was a good story.
It's a good story! I think family sagas always appealed to me, and that's why this book snuck past the general opprobrium of youthful disdain heaped on the other books.
Not everyone in this book is likable, in fact most of them are pretty skeevy...motivated by greed, lust, vengeful meanness to do some extraordinaily good things, and some cruel ones too. It reminded me then, and does also now, of my own family.
China Court is a house. It's not some Stately Manor, it's a big, old-fashined family house. In the early 1960s, big places like this were in a serious period of desuetude in England. This book chronicles the house and the family's intertwined fates at this now-very-distant moment of crisis. It's structured in echo of the Book of Hours Mrs. Quin, the last nineteenth-century native to live in the house, treasured and apparently read often. A Book of Hours, for the non-Catholic, divides the day into periods of prayer. Most of us have heard the terms "Lauds" and "Prime" and so forth, but these are just words...the idea of them, their purpose, is to give a reverential and spiritual cast to a person's every day and every act.
Speaking as a practicing anti-Christian, I think this is one of the best, most missed, ideas that modernity has rendered obsolete. I think, if this system of spiritual organization were to be reintroduced, the number of people who *actually* understood the religion they profess would rise exponentially, and I am just optimist enough to hope that there would be a corresponding reduction in the amount of loathsome hate-speech emanating from them.
As a narrative force in this novel, I think it's excellent and inspired. I think Rumer Godden deserves the attention of today's readers for her technical talent, her spiritual message, and her ahead-of-the-curve ideas. I recommend this to you.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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