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A review by hayleybeale
The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff
5.0
When my daughter was a lot younger, we both loved the quiet sort of stories about old-fashioned upper middle class families, who were usually artsy in some way and were rich in love, intelligence, and quirkiness if not always in actual cash.They were often British like Hilary McKay’s Cassons but equally could be American - the Pendlewicks and the Melendys for example.
Meg Rosoff’s new novel is like a grown up (in all senses) version of these tales and I loved it. The British family in question has a house down on a beach where they go every summer for the requisite 6 weeks of the British school holidays. The father does something in London and the house has been passed down for generations of his family; the mother is a costume designer for the National Opera. Hope, a cousin of the father’s family has an adjacent house and stays there with Mal, her fiancé and an actor.
The novel is narrated by the unnamed and ungendered oldest child, an artist, who seems to be around 17 or 18. Next is Mattie who has bloomed into sexy womanhood, then pony-mad Tamsin and finally the requisite offbeat younger child, Alex, who is mad about bats and other wildlife.
There are two catalysts that set this summer apart. Hope and Mal decide to get married on the beach and Hope’s two godsons come to stay. Sons of a film actress, Kit and Hugo could not be more different. Kit is all golden charm and charisma; Hugo is brooding, unsocial, and diffident. Kit has the ability to make everyone feel that they are at the center of his universe and they all fall for him, especially Mattie.
Rosoff takes the classic sunshiny family story and wonderfully subverts it into something dark and twisted. Though only a slight novel, it beautifully evokes the sublime feeling of summers that never really exist except in books, and characters that teeter on caricature before revealing their depths.
Thanks to Candlewick for the review copy.
Meg Rosoff’s new novel is like a grown up (in all senses) version of these tales and I loved it. The British family in question has a house down on a beach where they go every summer for the requisite 6 weeks of the British school holidays. The father does something in London and the house has been passed down for generations of his family; the mother is a costume designer for the National Opera. Hope, a cousin of the father’s family has an adjacent house and stays there with Mal, her fiancé and an actor.
The novel is narrated by the unnamed and ungendered oldest child, an artist, who seems to be around 17 or 18. Next is Mattie who has bloomed into sexy womanhood, then pony-mad Tamsin and finally the requisite offbeat younger child, Alex, who is mad about bats and other wildlife.
There are two catalysts that set this summer apart. Hope and Mal decide to get married on the beach and Hope’s two godsons come to stay. Sons of a film actress, Kit and Hugo could not be more different. Kit is all golden charm and charisma; Hugo is brooding, unsocial, and diffident. Kit has the ability to make everyone feel that they are at the center of his universe and they all fall for him, especially Mattie.
Rosoff takes the classic sunshiny family story and wonderfully subverts it into something dark and twisted. Though only a slight novel, it beautifully evokes the sublime feeling of summers that never really exist except in books, and characters that teeter on caricature before revealing their depths.
Thanks to Candlewick for the review copy.