A Song For Summer

Another lovely Eva Ibbotson novel, this one from 1997 (she kept writing almost up until her death in 2010). A Song For Summer is set at an eccentric artsy school in Austria, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Our heroine is Ellen, who despite being the child of a famous suffragette, has turned her talents to the housewifely arts and is working as a cook. Our hero is Marek, who despite being a world-renowned composer, is working as a groundsman and handyman in the same establishment (he's secretly rescuing Jews from the Nazis). This time there are three ill-matched couples who need to be disentangled and reassorted, and the obstacles in their way are even more dramatic than usual, including an actual marriage, a terrible fire, and of course the war.

By now I know exactly what I'm going to get from an Eva Ibbotson novel, and if some of her notions are a little old-fashioned, she's also refreshingly candid about sex, and values kindness above all other virtues. There will probably be a big old neglected house somewhere in the mix, a lake or a river and some animals, a precocious child, and music, as well as our star-crossed lovers. My only quibble was an anachronistic mention of Bletchley Park at a time when its very existence was top secret, but I can overlook that. I'm so glad to have discovered Eva Ibbotson.