Product Description
A vivid picture of wartime London and Cornwall through the eyes of five cousins.
Behind the large house, the fragrant camomile lawn stretches down to the Cornish cliffs. Here, in the dizzying heat of August 1939, five cousins have gathered at their aunt’s house for their annual ritual of a holiday. For most of them it is the last summer of their youth, with the heady exhilarations and freedoms of lost innocence, as well as the fears of the coming war.
The Camomile Lawn moves from Cornwall to London and back again, over the years, telling the stories of the cousins, their family and their friends, united by shared losses and lovers, by family ties and the absurd conditions imposed by war as their paths cross and recross over the years.
It is an extraordinarily vivid and lively picture of wartime London: the rationing, imaginatively circumvented; the fallen houses; the parties; the new-found comforts of sex; the desperate humour of survival — all of it evoked with warmth, clarity and stunning wit. And through it all, the cousins and their friends try to hold onto the part of themselves that laughed and played dangerous games on that camomile lawn.
Ingram
Sad, funny, and whimsical, The Camomile Lawn is the story of one extended family's adventures in London during the Blitz. "A distinctive, absorbing novel, told with a true storyteller's verve, an enchanting ability to involve, touch and surprise the reader."
This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.