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Product Description
Product Description
The compelling biography of the beloved author of Black Narcissus and The Greengage Summer
Book Description
Born in India, at the height of British colonial power, she lived there until the 1950s. Her career as a novelist began with Black Narcissus which became a bestseller on publication in 1939 - and like many of her novels - was adapted into a film. Her relationship with India, although passionate, was ultimately and perhaps inevitably ambivalent and this ambivalence came to a head in an incident when she and her children were living in Kashmir. A servant tried to poison them and the notoriety surrounding the case forced Godden to leave Kashmir and eventually India itself. Her move from India to Scotland contains parallel themes and adventures akin to themes within her novels.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
This is a fascinating book, following the life of an author probably still best known for novels like Black Narcissus, The River and The Greengage Summer.
Anne Chisholm's biography is at its best when dealing with Rumer Godden's life in India until the mid 1940s. Her portrait of a Kashmir which has long since disappeared is particularly vivid.
And while most of this book was written while Rumer Godden was still alive, Chisholm still manages to convey the more prickly sides to the Godden's character and her sometimes strained relationships with her family and friends.
An easy read and thoroughly enjoyable - and this volume certainly does what every good biography of an author should do - it encourages you to take their works down off the shelf and read them again.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
This is an informative, sympathetic, but not uncritical, biography of a prolific and long-lived author whose life was more than usually filled with incident. It was fascinating to read about the people and places that inspired Rumer Godden's wonderful novels and to learn about what she thought of the films that helped to make them famous. Rumer Godden emerges as a fascinating, determined, but often difficult woman.
Of a total of 311 pages, 233 are devoted to her life up to 1950 (when she was helping with the filming of "The River"). My only quibble with this part of the book is that we hear a good deal about (and from) a number of people whose connection with Rumer Godden seems tenuous, especially in the chapter on her life in Calcutta, presumably in the interests of atmosphere. There is a fascinating account of her time in Kashmir, from which we learn that "Kingfishers Catch Fire" is a scarcely fictionalised account of a real incident.
The part of the book which deals with her post 1950 life is less satisfactory, though there is a good chapter on her connections with Stanbrook Abbey - the convent that inspired "In This House of Brede", and an entertaining and moving account of her final trip to India in 1994, which was filmed for, and prompted by, a BBC documentary. However, at times this part of the book reads almost like a Christmas round-robin letter in its summaries of family events and the many removals from one home to another.
Anne Chisholm seems to take little interest in most of the books Rumer Godden wrote during the second half of her life. For example, she gets the name of the main character of "An Episode of Sparrows" wrong, and is very dismissive of this book, which is a favourite of mine. As probably the first of Rumer Godden's novels to feature a Catholic church and priest strongly I think it warranted more attention since Catholicism played a big part in her later life.
Similarly, there is very little about most of her non-fiction, or her books for children: of the latter only "The Diddakoi" rates more than a passing mention. I should have liked to learn more about some of these books and their illustrators. For instance, although we learn that a soldier son-in-law of Rumer Godden spent time in Cyprus, Anne Chisholm seems to be unaware that "Operation Sippacik" is set there, and was no doubt partly inspired by stories he told his mother-in-law.
However, overall this is a very interesting book, and I did learn about Rumer Godden books (and films of them) that I had never even heard of and will look out for in future.
Of a total of 311 pages, 233 are devoted to her life up to 1950 (when she was helping with the filming of "The River"). My only quibble with this part of the book is that we hear a good deal about (and from) a number of people whose connection with Rumer Godden seems tenuous, especially in the chapter on her life in Calcutta, presumably in the interests of atmosphere. There is a fascinating account of her time in Kashmir, from which we learn that "Kingfishers Catch Fire" is a scarcely fictionalised account of a real incident.
The part of the book which deals with her post 1950 life is less satisfactory, though there is a good chapter on her connections with Stanbrook Abbey - the convent that inspired "In This House of Brede", and an entertaining and moving account of her final trip to India in 1994, which was filmed for, and prompted by, a BBC documentary. However, at times this part of the book reads almost like a Christmas round-robin letter in its summaries of family events and the many removals from one home to another.
Anne Chisholm seems to take little interest in most of the books Rumer Godden wrote during the second half of her life. For example, she gets the name of the main character of "An Episode of Sparrows" wrong, and is very dismissive of this book, which is a favourite of mine. As probably the first of Rumer Godden's novels to feature a Catholic church and priest strongly I think it warranted more attention since Catholicism played a big part in her later life.
Similarly, there is very little about most of her non-fiction, or her books for children: of the latter only "The Diddakoi" rates more than a passing mention. I should have liked to learn more about some of these books and their illustrators. For instance, although we learn that a soldier son-in-law of Rumer Godden spent time in Cyprus, Anne Chisholm seems to be unaware that "Operation Sippacik" is set there, and was no doubt partly inspired by stories he told his mother-in-law.
However, overall this is a very interesting book, and I did learn about Rumer Godden books (and films of them) that I had never even heard of and will look out for in future.
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