Breakfast With the Nikolides

By Rumer Godden

Book Overview

A story of childhood set in the hot and turbulent Indian plains. Louise sets out to India with her two daughters to stay with her estranged husband. They arrive at his farm in the vast and unstable... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380005360
• ISBN13: 9780380005369
• Release Date: June 1980
• Publisher: Avon
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Poetic, unforgettable

"Breakfast with the Nikolides" is undoubtedly an unusual book, but in a very good way. Rumer Godden has a gift of prose, and of imagery. She may not, perhaps, be Thomas Hardy or David Mitchell, but she is undoubtedly a writer whose works remain with you a long time after they are read. Our story opens with the arrival in the East Indian town of Amorra, of Louise Pool and her daughters Emily and Binnie. It is early WWII, and they are returning to Louise's estranged husband (the girls' father) Charles, from years living in France. Charles, the Government overseer of the town, is a mysterious man, whose coldness toward Louise seems at first justified. Godden allows us to see Charles and Louise first from Emily's point of view: her father being a gallant, tall dark hero, and her mother being a cold, bitter woman. As the story progresses we are given insighg into each of them that suggests otherwise. Around them, the town itself is seething with unrest and, in typical Godden fashion, the unrest explodes just as the characters' personal matters do, in a masterly poetic fashion. On first reading, elements of the book did confuse me, partly because of Godden's subtlety, I assume. However, I now know it like the back of my hand and appreciate each time more little links and themes that she places throughout. I highly recommend this book, and other Godden works along with it.