Eva Ibbotson [this is where I would post a link to her website. Alas, she does not have one. SMA] is a talented writer, whose lush imagery is beyond comparison. Her extensive knowledge of geography, biology, zoology, and history makes the read all the more fascinating and descriptive.
Her books generally take place (from Shelli's experience) between 1920s-1950s, and are some how linked to London.
A Song for Summer was a darker novel, for all that it starts off like the Sound of Music. Good-hearted Ellen travels to Austria in the 1930s to take charge of a bunch of wild children, in this case the boarders at Hallendorf, a progressive school for the arts. In no time, she imposes order, good cooking and high standards of domestic science on the school’s neglected children and its unruly staff of anarchists and Marxists.
Meanwhile Ellen falls for the groundskeeper, a mysterious Czech-of-all-trades who is smuggling Jewish musicians out of Germany in his off hours. No one’s supposed to know that he’s the Marek Altenburg, promising young composer and conductor, a musical genius who can whip the Vienna Philharmonic into shape overnight.
Austria in the late 1930s is no time or place for Ellen and Marek to fall in love, but of course, they do. Hitler invades, and the plot becomes a melodrama of just-missed chances and too-noble sacrifices that seem destined to to leave everyone miserable. There’s enough of a mix of romanticism, irony, nostalgia, and realism that I really wasn’t sure how this one would turn out.
Review by: Blogging for a Good Book: A suggestion a day from the Williamsburg Regional Library, by Charlotte.
Other books by Eva Ibbotson, recommended by Shelli, include: A Countess Beneath Stairs, A Company of Swans and The Morning Gift.
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