Two Under the Indian Sun

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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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

This book was in my childhood library and it has remained dear to me. There are some hard truths about childhood in it, a glimpse of life in the Raj times in India and besides it is a good story.
I am fond of the Goddens as authors, although I realize they are dated and mannered, they are as comforting as an old robe.
But why I wonder does this cover show it as authored by Jon Godden instead of Jon and Rumer Godden?

Picked this one up because of my great love for Rumer Godden's "Miss Happiness and Miss Flower," which I borrowed from the library repeatedly.
Expect to discover where the tale of Nona's loneliness in England actually originated. Plan to shelve with my collection of Godden's doll books.

2023: Alas. I rearranged my book shelf and this one is badly mold spotted and discolored. It can’t live peaceably with the rest of the books anymore. I read it… but I have to throw it out to protect the rest of my library from the Ick. Too bad! I quite enjoyed the travelogue of going up into the mountains.
Yay! An important piece of historical information, slotted into the home library, pleases the bibliophilic collectionista in me.

Autobiographical.