It was difficult in the early twenty-first century to track down Rumer Godden’s out-of-print novels. Many were best-sellers in the 20th century, but had fallen out of fashion. Several of her books were adapted as films, including two versions of Black Narcissus, the first a movie starring Deborah Kerr in 1947, and the second a Hulu TV series in 2020.

Despite filmmakers’ interest in Godden’s novels (there is a long list of films at IMDB), most are “unadaptable,” in my opinion.  No one would dare adapt China Court, a labyrinthine novel published in 1960 about five generations of a family and the history of China Court, their house in Cornwall.   

This is not a traditional family saga: Godden’s style is whimsically post-modern. She plays with time-lines, shifting back and forth, often in the same paragraph.  In the following paragraph, four characters of three generations appear in six sentences.

… the drawing room runs the the width of the house from front to back and needs two fireplaces to warm it.  “Central heating,” says Bella longingly, but there is no money for that.  A great deal of money has been spent; Eustace, for instance, builds on a conservatory that does not match the house at all; Mrs. Quinn pulls it down.  Eustace adds the nursery wing; Lady Patrick makes new stables, but now, for years, little even of repairs and painting has been done.  “It’s too expensive,” insists Bella.  “Too big.”

The central characters are Mrs. Quinn and the house itself. Godden begins with her death: “Old Mrs. Quinn died in her sleep in the early hours of an August morning.”  Mrs. Quinn, nicknamed Ripsi as a child, was drawn to the garden of China Court when she was a young girl; then befriended by the Quinn boys, Borowis, with whom she fell in love, and John Henry, whom she married. She especially loved the garden at China Court.

The characters’ relations to the house over two centuries form the structure of the narrative.  Ironically, Mrs. Quinn’s children cannot understand why she did not move to an apartment in old age. They consider China Court a white elephant and lament its lack of modern conveniences.  Tracie, Mrs. Quinn’s 21-year-old granddaughter, the daughter of an unstable American film star, Barbara, lived with her grandmother at China Court when Barbara’s schedule was hectic. Tracie is the only one who loves China Court.

One of Godden’s earlier novels, A Fugue in Time (1945), is also the story of a house, spanning 100 years.  I look at that as her apprentice work for the more sophisticated China Court.

China Court is a charming read, a book that has held up, and come to think of it, A Fugue in Time would be the perfect companion book. A Fugue in Time was published in the U.S. as Take Three Tenses.