Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for granting me access to this prior to publication, and I’m curious to see what people make of this.
The Great Godden is a story about a turning point in someone’s life, where they foresee something will happen but feel powerless to resist it even though it will cause discomfort.
What stood out to me after finishing this was the ambiguity of the book. I read this as if the narrator was female, but I don’t think we’re ever actually explicitly told this. It doesn’t make any difference as the book really focuses on the reactions to events. What we do know, though, is the narrator comes from one of those families that seems to be bursting with life, setting up experiences but perhaps overlooking the damage caused by their lifestyle.
Our time span is a summer, a summer where everything shifts. Every year the family have gone to their beach home and effectively lived wild. There’s a fondness and whimsical quality to the writing. We focus on this specific year as this is the year that their cast is joined by Kit and Hugo, the Godden brothers.
Our first sighting of Kit reveals the depths of adoration he seems to inspire in others. He toys with those around him, and our narrator is warned about him by Hugo but to no avail. We watch as one by one those present fall under Kit’s spell, unaware of the chaos he will wreak.
While I loved the idea and style of writing there was a detached quality to this that made it hard to really engage with the story or characters.