Greengage Summer

"This was published in 1955. It’s a coming of age story narrated by a 13 year old girl called Cecil Grey, about her family going to a hotel in France. The father has gone off exploring in Nepal or somewhere, and the mother is bitten by a horsefly on the way down and is hospitalised for the next six weeks. So their five children find themselves temporarily parentless, in a hotel in France where no-one speaks English, suddenly having to deal with a very adult world. The oldest girl, Joss, is 16 and just becoming a beauty. She has a profound effect on all of the men that she meets, which her 13 year old sister observes. There’s this rather renegade Englishman called Eliot who is having a fling with the owner of the hotel, Madame Zizi. Eliot takes a big fancy to Joss and it all goes pear-shaped. Joss is flattered and interested, and ends up snogging Eliot. But it’s actually a rather touching moment of becoming an adult. And that night she also “becomes a woman” because she gets her first period. It’s quite a lovely sexual awakening. To read this as a girl, you will remember your own sexual awakening. There was a hint that Eliot was planning more than a kiss, but luckily it doesn’t happen. The only sex in the book is between Eliot and Madame Zizi. Then it all gets a bit ridiculous at the end, when Eliot turns out to be a jewel thief. This particular book is about discovering love for the first time, almost as a concept in itself. I do think it’s such a totally different experience. The Enchanted April is about mature love, with the longevity and the tedium that can go with it, and the patterns and habits that it forms. But there’s also something comfortable and comforting about that kind of love, albeit sensible and lacking passion. Whereas the love in Greengage Summer is all about passion and unfulfilled desire, and that is what’s compelling about it. This is a book to recommend to people who are either very young, discovering love for the first time, or older and want to remember that feeling of first love and discovery of sexuality. It’s an invigorating book that makes you feel young again, and full of potential."