The Great Godden

Meg Rosoff, 1956-

Book - 2021

At the house on the beach, everything is always the same. Summer unspools in days of sticky heat and lazy beach walks, the family only reconvening for lantern-lit suppers in the garden with the sea a constant roar in the background. Predictable, familiar - and easy. But everything changes with the arrival of the Godden brothers: Kit, magnetic and lazily seductive, and Hugo, intense and unknowable. By the end of summer, nothing will be the same. -- Book jacket.

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Subjects
Genres
Young adult fiction
Published
Somerville, MA : Candlewick Press 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Meg Rosoff, 1956- (author)
Edition
First US edition
Item Description
"First published by Bloomsbury (UK) 2020" -- title verso.
Physical Description
196 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9781536215854
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

A British family of six takes its annual vacation to the beach for what is sure to be a glorious summer. The narrator, whose name and gender are never revealed, is the oldest of the four siblings, which also include beautiful Mattie (16), Tamsin (14), and young Alex. Just down the shore live cousin Hope and her intended, Malcolm, an actor. It's a happy time, jarringly interrupted when two American brothers, the Goddens, show up, dumped on Hope by her godmother, a famous actress en route to Hungary to make a movie. Kit, the older brother, is the quintessential golden boy, gorgeous and charismatic; soon everyone is in love with him, especially Mattie. Silent, saturnine Hugo, on the other hand, is Kit's disagreeable foil. No one likes him except perhaps the narrator, but even they fall for Kit, who cheats on Mattie to have sex with them. Is that love or something else? Printz Award--winner Rosoff (How I Live Now, 2004) has written an absolutely remarkable coming-of-age story. Everything about it--style, substance, mood, atmosphere, tone, and especially characterization--is spot-on. One wants to read the book several times to tease out how Rosoff achieves her effects. The effort is a joy, just like this unforgettable novel, the first of a planned, summer-themed trio.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Through an unnamed, ungendered teen's sharp eye and knowing narration, Printz Medalist Rosoff tells a dryly humorous story of summer and love gone awry. Each summer, a cued-white London family gathers at their beloved seasonal residence: a gabled, periwinkle blue beach house that's long been in the family. The narrator, whose room features an old widow's walk complete with telescope, watches everything, including three younger siblings--bat fanatic Alex, horse enthusiast Tamsin, and newly beautiful, self-obsessed 16-year-old Mattie--as well as Hope, a younger cousin of their father, and her partner, Malcolm, who live down the beach. This year, there are two surprises: Hope and Malcolm are engaged, and the Godden brothers, gorgeous Kit and sulky Hugo, sons of a once-famous actress, move in with Hope and Malcolm for the season. Kit, a manipulator par excellence, immediately makes a play for Mattie's affections, but also, says the narrator, "slipped between my ribs like a flick-knife." Between Mal and Hope's wedding planning, the Godden brothers' tensions, and Kit's erratic attentions, the summer darkens, leading this effective character study and depiction of childhood's end to a surprising climax. Ages 14--up. (Apr.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A London teen recounts the summer that tore the family apart. Every summer, a White English family with four children holidays at the father's inherited seaside home. Because the father's cousin, Hope, and her longtime Scottish partner, Malcolm, stay a few doors down the beach, the entire family is in and out of each other's houses and lives. Their days have always been filled with sailing, tennis, horseback riding, and jovial dinners, making summer an idyllic time for all. Until this summer. The narrator--the oldest child and an unnamed, ungendered teen with plans to go to art school soon--recalls the insidious transition when teenage Kit Godden, the offspring of a legendary bronze-skinned Hollywood actor, and Hugo, his slightly younger brother, stay with Hope and Mal as the couple plans their end-of-summer wedding. While Hugo seems to lurk in corners, golden-skinned Kit, with "hair like Medusa's snakes," ingratiates himself with the family, starting a controlling relationship with the narrator's 16-year-old "sex goddess" sister and stirring conflicting, sometimes lustful, emotions in the narrator. Through the narrator's keen observations, made more poignant in hindsight and through sarcasm, readers view the twisting and turning development of Kit's manipulation. Although slim, Rosoff's taut, psychological story elicits a slow burn, leaving readers wondering how far and wide Kit's power will extend through the family. It's all just the beginning of the narrator's loss of innocence. A searing coming-of-age novel. (Fiction. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1 Everyone talks about falling in love like it's the most miraculous, life-changing thing in the world. Something happens, they say, and you know. You look into the eyes of your beloved and see not only the person you've always dreamed you'd meet, but the you you've always secretly believed in, the you that inspires longing and delight, the you no one else really noticed before. That's what happened when I met Kit Godden. I looked into his eyes and I knew. Only, everyone else knew too. Everyone else felt exactly the same way. 2 Every year when school ends we jam the car full of indispensable junk and head to the beach. By the time six people have crammed their bare essentials into the car, Dad says he can't see out the windows and there's no room for any of us, so half of everything is removed but it doesn't seem to help; I always end up sitting on a tennis racket or a bag of shoes. By the time we set off, everyone's in a foul mood. The drive is a nightmare of shoving and arguing and Mum shouting that if we don't all pipe down she's going to have a breakdown and once a year Dad actually pulls over to the side of the road and says he'll just sit there till everyone shuts the fuck up. We've been coming to the beach since we were born, and on the theory that life existed even before that, Dad's been coming since he was a child, and Mum since she met Dad and gave birth to us four. The drive takes hours but eventually we come off the motorway and that's when the mood changes. The familiarity of the route does something to our brains and we start to whine silently, like dogs approaching a park. It's half an hour precisely from the roundabout to the house and we know every inch of landscape on the way. Bonus points are earned for deer or horses glimpsed from car windows or an owl sitting on a fence post or Harry the Hare hopping down the road. Harry frequently appears in the middle of the road on the day we arrive and then again on the day we leave -- incontrovertible proof that our world is a sophisticated computer simulation. There's no such thing as a casual arrival. We pull into the grass drive, scramble out of the car, and then shout and shove our way into the house, which smells of ancient upholstery, salt, and musty stale air till we open all the windows and let the sea breeze pour through in waves. The first conversation always goes the same way: MUM (dreamy): I miss this place so much. KIDS: So do we! DAD: If only it were a little closer. KIDS: And had heat. MUM (stern voice): Well, it's not. And it doesn't. So stop dreaming. No one bothers to mention that she's the one who brings the subject up every time. Mum's already got out the dustpan and is sweeping dead flies off the windowsills while Dad puts food away and makes tea. I run upstairs, open the drawer under my bed, and pull on last summer's faded sweatshirt. It smells of old house and beach and now so do I. Alex is checking bat-box cameras on his laptop and Tamsin's unpacking at superhuman speed because Mum says she can't go down to see her horse until everything's put away. The horse doesn't belong to her but she leases him for the summer and would save him in a fire hours before she'd save any of us. Mattie, who's recently gone from too-big features and no tits to looking like a sixteen-year-old sex goddess, has changed into sundress and wellies and is drifting around on the beach because she sees her life as one long Instagram post. At the moment, she imagines she looks romantic and gorgeous, which unfortunately she does. There's a sudden excited clamor as Malcolm and Hope arrive downstairs to welcome us to the beach. Gomez, Mal's very large, very mournful basset hound, bays at the top of his lungs. Tamsin and Alex will be kissing him all over, so really you can't blame him. Mal clutches two bottles of cold white wine and while everyone is hugging and kissing, Dad mutters, "It's about time," abandons the tea, and goes to find a corkscrew. Tam hurls herself at Mal, who sweeps her up in his arms and swings her around like she's still a little girl. Hope makes us stand in order of age: me, Mattie, Tamsin, and Alex. She steps back to admire us all, saying how much we've grown and how gorgeous we all are, though it's obvious she's mainly talking about Mattie. I'm used to being included in the gorgeous-Mattie narrative, which people do out of politeness. Tam snorts and breaks rank, followed by Alex. It's not like we don't see them in London, but between school and work, and what with living in completely different parts of town, it happens less than you might think. "There's supper when you're ready," Hope calls after them. Dad wipes the wineglasses with a tea towel, fills them, and distributes the first glass of the summer to the over-eighteens, with reduced rations for Mattie, Tamsin, and me. Alex reappears and strikes like a rat snake when Hope leaves her glass to help Mum with a suitcase. He downs it in two gulps and slithers away into the underbrush. Hope peers at the empty glass with a frown but Dad just fills it again. Everyone smiles and laughs and radiates optimism. This year is going to be the best ever -- the best weather, the best food, the best fun. The actors assembled, the summer begins. Excerpted from The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.