Jon Godden (1906–1984)

Some authors remain popular for decades after they stop writing. Some get forgotten very fast. And the quality of writing has nothing to do with it in a lot of cases. Jon Godden is one of those forgotten authors - out of print for the most part and never mentioned. And if I judge by this book, this is a very wrong thing to happen.

"In Her Garden" had been first published in 1981 and could as well had been set in the same timeframe (or a decade earlier). Almost nothing in the narrative is show more giving away the exact timing - it is a few decades after the war but beyond that, it is almost timeless. As is the main character Grace - the 75 years old owner of a huge house with a magnificent garden. The book opens with a prosaic enough picture of Grace's step-daughter trying to convince the old woman (just don't call her old in her face... old starts at 80 after all) to sell the house and the garden and to move to London to be closer to her relatives. Which Grace is not exactly keen on doing... although she admits that she needs some help. And help there will be - because as if out of nowhere materializes Ben - the guy that will become her gardener.

It is a slow burn of a novel - we are halfway through the book before anything actually happens (even though the first half of the book contains the magnificent descriptions of the garden and the seeds of a forbidden love - the kind that is frowned upon and that, if not kept in secret, can ruin reputations) And the tone is light and full of sun and summer - you almost feel transported inside of the story and do not want anything to change. But at the same time it is the peace and silence of the English novelists that tell you that something is about to happen. And it does happen - a death and a will turn the silent village into something a lot more sinister. And it coincidences with the end of the summer and the autumn falling on earth. The love story that lies in the middle of the book takes a lot more sinister feeling - especially considering how little actually happened.

Despite the fact that the culprit is pretty clear as soon as the bad things start happening, the story works. Because it could have been someone else. And because the sudden change from a slow and summer story into a dark and autumn one is executed so masterfully that you do not even realize it changed until you start seeing the same people behaving differently (although a few don't change). I wish she had done a bit more foreshadowing but then, the lack of it does not ruin the book.

I am not even sure that a lot of the readers nowadays will read the book to the end - it is for the people that can appreciate a build-up and that don't want everything to happen now. But for the ones that appreciate the novels of yesterday, it is a magnificent book. And I am going to try to find a few of her other books. show less

The book is a charming memoir. I hesitate to call it an autobiography. Jon and Rumer Godden wrote this memoir jointly of their childhood in India. They lived in India during the First World War, and their memory seems excellent.
There is an innocence in the writing, which is amazing, considering they wrote the book many years later. The two sisters create a wonderful atmosphere, and there are moments when you can almost smell the old mud of India and visualize the people surrounding them.
It show more is possible to visualize two young girls living in what is now Bangladesh and enjoying the Indian sun. They were not rich and wrote about their pecuniary constraints without affectation. The sisters compared life in India with life in England. When they sailed back to England, they could not (at first) accept England as home.
Most of us forget that, for many English people, India was home but not home.
A charming book, well worth reading if you want to get a glimpse of life in the Raj, through the eyes of young children. show less

I have read both these authors so I was curious about this memoir of their childhood in India under the Raj. It was fascinating as a collection of impressions and events, far less about day to day life but the places felt very real. I'm not sure how they wrote it, it is very much third person about both Rumer and Jon and how their growing up made them the writers and artists they became. Not what I expected but worth reading.

After being sent to England for a year, to live with well meaning but unworldly Aunts, the sisters Jon and Rummer were now returning to their family and home in Narayangunj, India. It's 1914 and they have come home to escape from the dangers of war. Aged 7 and 6 they spend the next five years in India, where their mother is constantly vigilant of the water they drink, the mosquitoes that invade at night and all the unseen dangers of everyday life. The girls love their Indian lifestyle, and show more the freedom of their childhood speaks of a time that has gone forever. Their father employed as a steamboat agent was allocated a company house and here the family lived with a small number of house servants. To escape the heat of summer the household would move to the hills of Darjeeling or Musoorie for months, and reading about their travels to these hilltop villages was just lovely. It would be magic to spend the summer in a houseboat on the lake in old Kashmir. As sisters, Jon and Rummer were very close, they shared everything, had no secrets! Those five years obviously had a big influence on them both and was inspirational in their later careers as writers. The book ended too abruptly for my liking but then this idyllic time was also about to end as the sisters were changing, as we all do, with age. show less