As you probably have already figured out I'm a great advocate of libraries. What other institution anywhere will trust you to borrow materials (often times quite expensive materials), to take home and read, watch, or study, and all on the assumption you will return them in good condition and within the time they allow you. They don't care who you are (with the exception that you live in the same city), or how old you are. Show them your card and you're in. And an even sweeter deal--if they don't have a book you want, they're willing to look for a copy somewhere else and borrow it for you. I'm becoming an addict to interlibrary loan. I do miss buying books, but that hasn't stopped me from finding the books I really want to read. At the moment I've got three ILL books on my night stand and over the weekend put in a request for one more. Shh. I know what I said about only starting a new book when I've finished two already on the go. I plan to stick to my plan, but I might just bend it slightly now and then.
Rumer Godden's The Peacock Spring is on the top of my reading pile at the moment. At the very end of last year I read and loved The Greengage Summer. Godden knows how to realistically write from the viewpoint of a child, something not every author can do with the apparent ease as does Godden. I've wanted to read more of her work ever since, and Nicola's month of reading Rumer Godden's work meant it was time to give in and pick a book. Peacock Spring is set in India where two sisters are summoned by their diplomat father. For Hal (short for Halcyon) it's no problem as she doesn't like school anyway, but Una has a real chance at excelling in her exams and continuing on with her education. Going out to India will only set her back. As you might expect, their experiences in colorful India will be transformative.
My teaser is from the girls' first view of the house where they'll be living.
"To both girls, the Shiraz Road house was astounding. In the hall, there was a fountain--a fountain in the house--splashing under a bougainvillaea plant big as a young tree. Una had taken in too the size of the drawing-room with its long windows opening on vistas of garden; the room was so big it stretched out of sight--there was an alcove round its corner--and it seemed filled with flowers, those narcissi and vases of roses. It had Persian carpets--she had counted three of them in the drawing-room, and here, in the dining-room, was another, she looked down at its border of leopards bounding away from hounds and horsemen in a tapestry of turquoise, tawny browns, and pinks."
I'd love to visit India someday. I would probably die from the heat, but it sounds wonderfully exotic there. Godden grew up in India and has set much of her fiction there, so she's familiar with the country, people and customs. I've still got the first volume of her autobiography to read, but I think I'll stick with Una and Hal for the moment.
Have you got a favorite book set in India?