The Great Godden

by Meg Rosoff

Overview

From National Book Award Finalist Meg Rosoff comes a lyrical, compulsively readable coming-of-age tale that is heady, irresistible, and timeless.

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 . . .
I looked into his eyes and I knew.
Only, everyone else knew too. Everyone else felt exactly the same way.

This is the story of one family during one dreamy summer—the summer when everything changes. In an eccentric, turreted vacation house by the sea, our watchful narrator sees everything, including many things that shouldn’t be seen, while brothers and sisters, parents and theatrical older cousins fill the hot days with wine and tennis and sailing and planning a wedding. Enter two brothers, the sons of a fading film actress—irresistibly charming, languidly sexy Kit and surly, silent Hugo. Suddenly there’s a serpent in this paradise, and the consequences will be devastating. In a propulsive narrative carrying intrigue and a growing sense of unease, Meg Rosoff, best-selling author of the iconic How I Live Now, offers a summer tale of innocence lost that will find its place among the classics of young adult literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536215854
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	697,573
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	850L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Meg Rosoff is the author of How I Live Now, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award. She is a recipient of the Carnegie Medal and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and was named a National Book Award Finalist for her novel Picture Me Gone. Meg Rosoff also completed Mal Peet’s unfinished novel Beck, a promise she made him before he died. She lives in London.

Read an Excerpt

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.

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2021

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.)

Publishers Weekly

2021-02-05
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)

Kirkus Reviews

As a British family of six takes its annual beach holiday, narrator Ell Potter's delivery is informed by the voice of the unnamed, ungendered young adult narrator.… Potter's narration focuses on the emotional arc, tone, and characterizations of this story. Listeners will enjoy this finely crafted novel in which time and traditions endure amid plot twists and the protagonist's struggle to find his footing.”
―AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner

“A British family of six takes its annual vacation to the beach for what is sure to be a glorious summer. ...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.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“While the title may hint at The Great Gatsby and its charismatic protagonist, the keenly self-aware book has much stronger connections to classic British coming-of-age novels such as Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, wherein the affectionate, sharply observed family characterization and the atmosphere play roles as large as any romantic element. . . . There’s enough tension here that readers may hope for a ramp-up into full thriller, but the story moves toward a different kind of satisfying conclusion, with victory lying in an unpredictable tennis match and the ability to preserve the possibilities of future summers.”
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)

“A London teen recounts the summer that tore the family apart... 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.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“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. . . 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.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Meg Rosoff's The Great Godden is a first-rate coming-of-age novel told by an astute and appealing unnamed narrator over the course of one uncharacteristically fraught seaside summer. . . . The Great Godden is filled with equal parts drama and reflection, delivering a riveting novel of love and betrayal that is deftly and elegantly written.”
—Shelf Awareness

“The predictable pleasures of a family’s holiday implode when two brothers—one brooding, one charming—come to stay. A taut page-turner.”

—People Magazine

From the Publisher

As a British family of six takes its annual beach holiday, narrator Ell Potter’s delivery is informed by the voice of the unnamed, ungendered young adult narrator. Connection and joy have always been the context of vacations with Cousin Hope, who lives at the shore. This particular summer will end with Hope’s wedding and begins with the arrival of the two American brothers, left with Hope by their mother. Kit, the elder, is golden in appearance and attitude. He overshadows his brother and even the narrator’s beautiful sister, Mattie. Potter’s narration focuses on the emotional arc, tone, and characterizations of this story. Listeners will enjoy this finely crafted novel in which time and traditions endure amid plot twists and the protagonist’s struggle to find their footing. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile