The River: A Novel - Softcover

Godden, Rumer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 150406660X ISBN 13: 9781504066600

Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc., 2021

Synopsis

Facing harsh adult realities, a young English girl in India must leave childhood behind, in this masterful tale from a New York Times-bestselling author.

The Ganges River runs through young Harriet's world. The eleven-year-old daughter of the British owner of a successful jute concern, she loves her life in Bengal, India, on the river's edge, so far removed from the English boarding school she attended before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe.

Often left alone by an overworked father and preoccupied mother, Harriet is enchanted by the local festivals, colors, and vibrant life surrounding her. Now, as she stands on the brink of adulthood--too old to play childish games with her reckless little brother, Bogey, yet too young to be touched by such grown-up concerns as the faraway Second World War--a stranger's unexpected arrival will rock her world.

When Captain John, a handsome soldier returning wounded from the battlefield, becomes her family's new neighbor, Harriet is instantly entranced, beset by a rush of unfamiliar emotions: longing, jealousy, infatuation. But the inevitable change inherent in growing older may be too heavy a burden for a young girl to bear when it carries with it disappointment and heartbreaking loss.

Inspired by the author's personal experiences as a child raised in India--and the basis for the acclaimed classic motion picture of the same name from French film director Jean Renoir--Rumer Godden's The River is a lovely, moving portrayal of childhood's end. Evocative, heartfelt, and bittersweet, it is a coming-of-age story without equal from a major twentieth-century novelist.

About this title

About the Author

Rumer Godden (1907-1998) was the author of more than sixty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children's literature, and is considered by many to be one of the foremost English language writers of the twentieth century. Born in Sussex, England, she moved with her family to Narayanganj, colonial India, now Bangladesh, when she was six months old. Godden began her writing career with Chinese Puzzle in 1936 and achieved international fame three years later with her third book, Black Narcissus. A number of her novels were inspired by her nearly four decades of life in India, including The River, Kingfishers Catch Fire, Breakfast with the Nikolides, and her final work, Cromartie vs. the God Shiva, published in 1997. She returned to the United Kingdom for good at the end of World War II and continued her prolific literary career with the acclaimed novels The Greengage Summer, In This House of Brede, and numerous others. Godden won the Whitbread Award for children's literature in 1972, and in 1993 she was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Nine of her novels have been made into motion pictures. She died at the age of ninety in Dumfriesshire, UK.

Edition details

• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 150406660X
• ISBN 13: 9781504066600
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 140