The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff (review)

Every summer, the narrator’s lively family of four kids and two adults departs London for a beach house, in a holiday existence shared with neighbors Hope and her fiancé, Mal. There’s a disruption this summer in the form of two brothers, Hugo and Kit, the sons of Hope’s movie-star godmother, who have come to stay with Hope and Mal. The narrator correctly predicts that sixteen-year-old sister Mattie will succumb to the preternaturally compelling charms of golden Kit, but the narrator (name and gender never specified) cannot help but fall for Kit too, even while realizing that his blend of sparkling magnetism and likely amorality is bad news. While the title may hint at The Great Gatsby and its charismatic protagonist, the keenly self-aware book (“Every summer needs a theme, and I guess Love and Marriage was marginally better than Death and Despair”) 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. Rosoff makes Kit both convincingly captivating but also evanescent, leaving his conquests regretful and slightly bewildered; Hugo’s seething but largely silent witness to his brother’s mayhem (“He’s an emotional black hole. He sucks the light out of people”) makes him an effective foil. 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.