This is a novel about prejudice—or perhaps more accurately—assumptions, preconceptions and misconceptions. It is also a story about growing up. The two themes are intertwined, for part of the growing-up process is having one’s preconceptions stripped away, sometimes painfully, leaving awareness that can feel to the young like a wound from which a scab is torn. Nearly all of the characters in this complex and moving story read each other incorrectly; slowly each person’s truth is revealed and the tale takes surprising and even tragic turns.The book’s first scene is at a Delhi mansion, an oasis of tree-shaded beauty on Shiraz Road. The head gardener is showing his new assistant how to sow flower seeds for the summer display. “What, more flowers!” Ravi’s expression had said. This Delhi garden was already full of them: turrets of roses, long beds of more roses all now in their second flush, borders of delphiniums and lupins, snapdragons, petunias, dianthus, stocks.English flowers. A paradise. Already there is a hint of something false--with English flowers in an Indian garden. And Ravi himself is a mystery. Why is he doing this work? '“Beta--son,” says the head gardener Ganesh to Ravi, “You could do anything…You are educated” Ganesh says it almost as an accusation. “You are much educated.”' There is news of unrest, riots, famine in the land, but the English ladies “still went to Connaught Place to buy cherry cake and canapés for their parties." And all seems peaceful on Shiraz Street; only appropriate as the house at 40 Shiraz Road has been let to a high U.N. diplomat, Sir Edward Gwithiam, whom “Ravi had only seen…as a small colorless man” but who seems to be a man of considerable power.Then one day in late January news filters from the house servants to the gardeners that soon there would be a mem. “A sort of mem,” says Ganesh in horror “for a mem could disrupt even a nation”—or even the United Nations—and worse there would also be “Two miss-babies…They will be noisy and ride their bicycles over our flower beds.”But the “miss-babies” are not babies at all. Una Gwithiam, the quiet one with brains is fifteen, studying at a prestigious girl’s school in Switzerland with hopes of Oxford in three years. Her beautiful and flirtatious half-sister, Hal (short for Halcyon) is twelve, a budding musician. Una and Hal have just been abruptly ordered to Delhi by their father even though their school term still has months to run. Una is quietly devastated; her dream of Oxford in tatters. She is only reconciled because of the special relationship she has always had with her father. But when Una hears that she and her sister are to study at home under a governess rather than attending school she confides her deepest worry to the headmistress, a sense that “There’s something in this not…straight.”Miss Lamont, the governess, the “sort of mem” will be the catalyst for much of the unfolding drama, but this is Una’s story and she is brilliantly drawn. I felt every pang of her disappointment and frustrated young ambition; every surge of anger, resentment, rebellion, jealousy. Una is wounded, but she is also capable of savage cruelty, snobbery and sly deceptiveness. Rumer Godden shows us all these flaws in Una’s character—and yet makes her utterly sympathetic. When a new and secret world unfolds for Una in the summerhouse at Number 40, I was with her all the way despite my adult fears for what might happen.The Peacock Spring is set in post-Independence India, sometime in the 1950s or early 1960s; the book is filled with lush descriptions, crisp dialog and a splendid ensemble cast of characters that made that place and time come alive; and there are also subtle—and sometimes devastating—insights into Indian and English class and racial distinctions. I thought this was just a slight notch down from The Greengage Summer. It was not quite as tightly plotted and sometimes edged towards melodrama, but still, a story to read, re-read and savor, and for those who enjoy tales of India this is a must.Content rating PG for some adult and adolescent sexual situations, mostly fade-to-black, also racial slurs.
An absorbing read -- I started and finished it in one day -- but even though Godden's prose is beautiful and her characters are all fully-fleshed people, I was, inevitably, uncomfortable with how the race issues were handled. It's like when I read The Diddakoi (oh, hm, I haven't done a review of The Diddakoi yet) -- anyway, obviously The Diddakoi was from the point of view of Kizzy and it was all about discrimination is bad etc. etc., but I felt it was basically flawed by the fact that Godden, all unconscious, did actually think gypsies were inferior. It was obvious from a couple of throwaway remarks, the way she distinguished between her main character and, say, the gypsies who come when her grandmother's passed away. (There's one line where she talks about the ingratiating tones that gypsies can always adopt, something like that, and all my hair just stood on end.)Here I got mad annoyed because the sanctimonious little white girls and their UN dad are all, oh, we accept Alix Lamont's mom, all this stuff ~doesn't matter~, and it's implied they're like this because they're so enlightened. More like because they live in a bubble of privilege. There's no acknowledgment in the text that the reason why Alix strives as she does and indulges in all her shifts is because of the massively imperialist, institutionally racist society that's ranged against her, and Una and Edward and Hal are so incredibly sheltered from the ugly side of that -- in fact, they actively benefit from it. Of course, Hem and Ravi do tell Una off when she's being all "~but Indians are so simple and beautiful~", but end of the day, it's just -- it's all personal. I think Godden's position prevents her from having the clarity about the system that's really required to write this and not have it be cringingly awful in places.(Also, does Una really mean what I think she means when she mentions Alix's brown diamond and says "We don't have many diamonds in the family, especially brown ones"? Because URGHHHHH!)Anyway -- yeah. An interesting book by a talented writer, but profoundly flawed IMO.
What do You think about The Peacock Spring (2004)?
Una and Hal go to India with their father. He has a mistress, Alix. Una gets pregnant.
—Sue Kozlowski
Two English half-sisters are sent from boarding school in England to join their divorced U.N.-diplomat father in India.15-year-old Una and younger sister Halcyon (Hal) are respectively gifted in mathematical ability and singing; Una in particular worries that their new Eurasian governess-teacher will not be able to teach to the standard required to qualify her for entrance to Oxford. This proves to be the case; Miss Alix Lamont turns out to have other qualities which the girls’ father, Sir Edward Gwithiam, has chosen her for; namely her beauty and personal charms. He is openly infatuated with Alix, and the girls’ presence is meant to give a plausible reason for her inclusion in his household.Una and Alix find themselves in the position of jockeying for position in Sir Edward’s affections; Alix is strongly entrenched, and Sir Edward intends to marry her. Una, smarting from her father’s rejection (she was always his confidante, but he has distanced himself from both of his daughters since Alix gained his interest), becomes involved with Ravi, a young Indian gardener on to the U.N. estate, who is actually a well-born Brahmin student in hiding for his part in a violent political protest. Meanwhile, Hal has become infatuated with the son of a deposed Rajah, Vikram, who is in turn in love with Alix. This seething mass of emotional undercurrents leads to Una’s disastrous flight with Ravi and the laying bare and reworking of all of the relationships thus involved.Quite a well-done story; generally plausible and sympathetically told. All characters are well-developed and complex, and are treated very fairly by their author in that we see the multiple facets of their personalities and fully understand their motivations. The ending is quite realistic, though not perhaps what one could call “happy”; the various characters move out of our vision with these particular issues resolved but many more looming. All in all I thought it was one of Godden’s better coming-of-age novels; I enjoyed it more than I initially thought I would from the reviews I had read.Suitable for young adult to adult. Frank but not explicit sexual content including extramarital relationships and the sexual involvement between a schoolgirl and an older man; pregnancy and abortion are discussed though mostly by implication. Rumer Godden in this novel has kept abreast of the times; she was 69 when this novel was published and though a bit dated here and there the tone is generally contemporary.
—Barb
Rumer Godden, best known to me for 1969's In This House of Brede, wrote 26 novels over 60 years. Having lived half of her long and prolific life in the Indian subcontinent, many of her books concern the Anglo-Indian experience - this one traces the complexities of that relationship in the post-colonial years (I think late 60s/early 70s in this case).The tricky role of Englishmen returning as relief workers and U.N. representatives instead of imperialists, and the tricky position of Eurasian descendants of intermarriages, threading their way through the already complex Indian caste system provides the backdrop for a coming of age story, with a remarkably sympathetic 15-year-old girl as the central character. Perhaps a few echoes of The God of Small Things in the doomed romance department.
—Bob
