Book review | China Court: The Hours of a Country House

Within the space of a day, an old Cornish house known as China Court goes through a family death, an inheritance, and a last-minute wedding, all against a shifting backdrop of stories of the previous five generations of its inhabitants.

Originally published in 1960 and now reissued in a delectable Manderley Press edition, it's a novel steeped in a lost past. Shaped by a medieval ‘Book of Hours’ after which the chapters are named ('Prime' is the first hour of the day and 'Compline' is the hour before sleep), only gradually do we discover the special secret significance of this book within a book.

Rumer Godden was a writer of bewitching readability: characters emerge through their own speech, giving you the uncanny feeling you are eavesdropping on individual household members: Ripsie, Lady Patrick, Borowis, Little Eustace, Damaris. (Why do upper-class people have such strange names, I asked myself?)

She combines warmth with an unflinching awareness of human weaknesses and the unfolding human drama caused by this never stops surprising, right down to the final pages which retain the power to shock, perhaps especially so for today's reader.

Manderley Press produces books which are as beautiful to look at as to read and China Court is no exception: blue-and-white like Cornishware, elegantly typeset, sturdily hardback, but still compact and light enough to fit in a handbag.

For me, this review book is a keeper and I can see it as a perfect present for lovers of Daphne du Maurier's novels (particularly with the Cornish link), or Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles.

Link to the book ⬇️

Author: Rumer Godden

Imprint: Manderley Press

ISBN: 978-1-9196421-5-4 hardback