"
I found this in another edition on Kindle, having been reminded of its existence by a review by Jo Walton, of all things. I'd first read it at the proper age, around 8, in the 1950s, when it was a lot closer to being contemporary than historical fiction as it has become -- 100 years old this year. I couldn't find it sooner because I'd mixed it up in my head with The Trolley Car Family, another kids' book of that vintage. Which does not seem to have a Kindle edition at the moment, or I'd have downloaded it too.

Author Warner, I also see from the end notes, was born at just about the same time as my grandfather McMaster.

Four children run away together when their father dies (the mother, as usual, having predeceased the story) and take up residence in an abandoned boxcar in a woods, where they proceed to survive very well, Swiss Family Robinson style, all wonderfully practical and to-scale. I thought it was great when I was eight, and worried no more about the deceased parents than the narrative does. (They have a whole tragic backstory behind the lines, clearly, involving a disapproved runaway marriage, but the book doesn't much go there, because it's not doing tragedy. Redemption of a sort, perhaps, for the father's father.)

I have no idea how an 8-year-old reader in 2024 would process this, except I expect its world would seem a lot more alien than it did to me.

Ta, L."

"Sometimes it's difficult to know where to begin with Eva Ibbotson and then, I realise, it's here. A sunlit, simple day where breakfast was buttery toast and the world's open to explore. She's simple that way, instinctive; food features heavily, sunlight idyllic days too, feature, but also the world is also there underneath it all, ready to be discovered or ran away from. It's a very particular sort of world populated with pastries and eccentrics, but also a peculiarly distinct ache for something that can never be easily found. Happiness. Problems being answered before they haven't quite realised that they're problems. People finding people. Homes being made out of ash. Hearts being made whole when they didn't think that could ever happen.

And that is Eva Ibbotson for me, an author who brings something perfect to me when I need it; a perfection that isn't, really, going to change the world for me or solve my problems, but a perfection that will give me time to breathe and escape and find myself all over again. She has her rhythms, of course, but in a way I long for them. A noble young woman of noble ways, irrespective of birth, will continue to be noble and resist he slow, soft, endless love she feels for an equally noble man. Noble ways will keep them apart, misunderstandings too, perhaps, before life will bring them back together. Predictable, yes, but also sometimes incredibly vital. Important. A problem solved. The world coming together, aligning.

A Song For Sumer is, in this wonderful new Macmillan edition, a book that seeks alignment. People are out of place. The world is shifting, moving towards an awful, awful war, and people are trying to find hope in it. Ellen Carr has gone to Austria where she shall keep house for an experimental school (so, intensely, always ), and she shall fall in love. You know it, I know it, there's no point in trying to be coy. The question is who and why and where and when, and how many things shall get in their way before they realise that they are meant to be together.

It's darker too than many of the other Ibbotson titles I've read; though the school remains relatively unaffected by the war, and it's set in pre-annexation Austria, there are still moments that are breathlessly pained. Ibbotson really could write, she did write, and we are so lucky that she did.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy. "

"It's been a LONG time since I read a book that made me forgo all other plans and curl up in my bed until the last page was turned. I love when I have to do that.

What is a Song for Summer? It's a romance, pure and simple - but a romance that begins in the most tumultuous of times in a place on the brink of war. Hitler is already stirring and making life difficult in Germany when Ellen arrives in a picturesque village in Austria. The run-down boarding school where she's taken a position is the least likely place to find love, which is fine for Ellen, who has so much more on her mind than finding a man to marry. However, when the fallout of a war's beginning touches Ellen's life, she does not shirk and we follow Ellen's story throughout Europe as the love that we know she's found works itself out amidst the uncertainty of the Third Reich's advance.

I just don't want to spoil any of the rest of the plot. It's too good, even if it took a detour that caught me completely by surprise and I had to work my way back into the story. Let me just say there are opera divas and storks, musicians and rescues, and one of my favorite scenes of community togetherness that I've ever read. Ibbotson's writing is so, for lack of a better word, RIGHT for this story, it felt real and poignant without being sentimental. While perhaps TOO good, I loved believing in Ellen's goodness, her appreciation for well cooked meals and children who are taken care of. So many things that interest me were tied into this book that while perhaps some of the characters seemed slightly one-dimensional, I just loved the story so much that I didn't care in the slightest.

One thing that this book made me think of was the strength of the British when under attack during the war - and about those ordinary people in mainland Europe who would go to such efforts to save even one person from death. I just like reading about people who will stand up and do the right thing even when the odds are absolutely stacked against you. So there was love AND all that other good stuff. What more could I ask for than that?"