China Court
Rumer Godden
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From the publisher
Spellbinding, powerfully evocative, shocking – a stay-up-until-2am kind of a book. Rumer Godden’s classic Cornish novel China Court: The Hours of a Country House was first published in the 1961 and now re-issued with an introduction by the award-winning and bestselling author Linda Grant, and illustrated by the acclaimed artist Emily Maude.
China Court is the story of the hours and days of a country house in Cornwall, and five generations of the family who inhabited it. First we meet Ripsie, once an outsider orphan who rose to become a powerful matriarch, and her granddaughter Tracy, the daughter of a film star raised abroad, who returns to her adored family home – China Court – following her grandmother’s death. As Tracy fights to save the old house, her ancestors reveal themselves; family history unfurls; hearts are broken; treasures are discovered; redemption and hope prevail. Or so it seems at first glance.
Master storyteller Rumer Godden weaves a golden thread back and forth throughout this novel – her exquisite prose and detailed observations of place and character enthralling us as she moves seamlessly between past and present, telling the story of the Quin family, and rewarding the reader with an ending that still provokes profound unease over sixty years after it was first published.
A mere passing thought, moonlight through a window or the scent of a flower from the gardens of China Court is enough to spark a memory of incidents long ago, which in turn are used to illuminate the complex family dramas and secrets that emerge as the narrative of this book unfolds.
Yet this is also the story of a house, and of the Cornish china clay country where it is set. Rumer Godden was inspired by her own family home of Darrynane in St Breward, Cornwall, and a grand old house in the Cornish village of Blisland. Thus China Court was created, replete with furniture, portraits, silver and china heirlooms passed down through generations – a haven that sheltered and nurtured the family who lived there. Characters come and go, but the reader stays put, observing the ebb and flow of the Quins from the confines of their family home, surrounded by treasured possessions and the memories they evoke. China Court, too, is a protagonist from start to finish.
It is perhaps fitting that this is also a book about books, with a precious antique Book of Hours providing the structure to Godden’s narrative; meanwhile, in the end, it is books themselves that prove to be the key to the Quin family redemption, if not happiness ever after...
“Rumer Godden’s ‘China Court’ is the sort of timeless English novel that wears as well as a Burberry and is just as impervious to vagaries of fashion.”
The Los Angeles Times
“Godden was a writer who constantly drew on her own life experiences.”
The Guardian
“Her prose is pure, delicate, and gently witty.”
The New York Times