Breakfast with the Nikolides

by Rumer Godden, Rosie Thomas (Introduction)

Rumer Godden's story is of a family whose relationships with each other are as fragile and complicated as their relationships with India and her people. But just as the cracks and holes in the house they live in are papered over, somehow they manage to sustain the impression of respectability to the outside world. That is until a crisis forces them to confront their differences and ultimately plunges them into outright war.

Genres: Fiction, India, Historical Fiction, Classics, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, British Literature

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

Margaret Rumer Godden was an English author of more than 60 fiction and non-fiction books. Nine of her works have been made into films, most notably Black Narcissus in 1947 and The River in 1951.
A few of her works were co-written with her elder sister, novelist Jon Godden, including Two Under the Indian Sun, a memoir of the Goddens' childhood in a region of India now part of Bangladesh.

Reviews

[Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5★

Love Godden & all my reviews so far have been 4-5★.

Then I read this one.

Set in what now (according to another reader) is probably Bangla Desh, Charles's estranged wife Louise is forced by circumstances to return to him & India. She brings their two children, Emily & Binnie.

I know I should feel (some) sympathy for Louise & her predicament, & Charles living with his repaired furniture but I don't. They were just so repellant & in spite of some beautiful writing & interesting secondary characters & a tragedy, this book was a chore to get through.

For Godden completists only. & you may not be one after reading this book.

https://wordpress.com/view/carolshess...

[Dorcas · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
This is a very odd book, I haven't read another quite like it. The writing itself seems fragmented; sometimes it's difficult to know the difference between actual happenings and thought sequences, which gives the reader an almost out of body experience. The story is rather melancholic, which puts one in a thoughtful mood and I found the writing both spare and incredibly lush, which kept me reading on.

The setting is India. A European man runs a model farm/ college where he teaches planting and farming skills. He lives alone for eight years...until his estranged wife and their two daughters arrive unexpectedly, fleeing the war in France.

From the beginning we sense the tension and antagonism between the couple, and hints of violent unrest litter the novel. (One such clue being the furniture of the home which has all been broken and pieced back together, as well as an ax that hangs over the fireplace mantle carefully shined and polished).  Not long into the story the attention shifts to their awkward 12 year old daughter, Emily and her love for her dog who dies under mysterious circumstances...this, strangely enough, becomes the focal point from which other plots satellite.

Meanwhile, there is a forbidden friendship (romance?) between a Brahmin student and an Untouchable man of learning, a veterinarian.

Tensions, accusations, repercussions, tragedy, possible reconciliation. It's all here.

CONTENT:
Some thematic elements regarding domestic violence, marital rape and possible homosexual leanings on the part of at least one character. Nothing in detail.

[Eric O. Schultz · Rating 2 out of 5]

After the outbreak of World War II, Charles and Louise, an estranged couple, are reunited. For the last decade, the wife has lived in Paris with her two daughters, Emily and Binnie, while her husband works on improving farming (and by extension life) in India (what is probably Bangladesh today). When they are forced together by the war, their past troubles flare up. The wife hates India and can’t wait to return to her old life, but the husband, who is meeting one of his daughters for the first time, is eager for them to stay on. He gifts his oldest daughter, Emily, a cocker spaniel, which she names Don, and it is this plot event that spurs much of the story in Breakfast with the Nikolides, for with the gifting of a dog, Emily starts to grow connected to the place where she was born. This in turn puts her at loggerheads with her Mother.

This is one of those novels in a long line of novels about the problematic nature of white women in a colonial setting such as India. The most famous are A Passage to India, which came before Breakfast with the Nikolides, and The Jewel in the Crown, which came after. Nor was the issue of white women in India put to rest after Indian Independence. Most of the later fictions of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala focus on this. And of course in all the mentioned novels, rape is the central metaphor. In the colonial novels, the rapes are imaginary. The rape in The Jewel in the Crown actually happens, but the person charged is innocent. In the fiction of Jhabvala, all the rapes are real (interesting that as Indians get agency over their own lives, the threat to white women becomes completely real).

These days, such fiction really bores me, mostly because it elides much of history, choosing instead to focus on sentimentality (for white Europeans, that is). Breakfast with the Nikolides is one of those both sides novels. We get a portrait of both Indians and English people, and Godden gives us the good and bad of both. And yet, the characters all feel like paper cutouts. The Indians exist as victims of themselves and their culture, and the white people, with the exception of Louise, are defined by goodness and innocence. Godden suggests that two can’t really speak to one another and make a whole. Indeed, the climax of the book is a conversation between an Indian and a little white girl. The problem with this is that it negates a lot of why the two groups don’t talk to one another. While caste is put up as a reason, white supremacy/ racism is never discussed. While Charles brings farming progress to the peasants of Bengal, we never see all of this in the context of colonialism, which isn’t designed to help the people of India but instead enrich the lives of people in Europe- the poor and rich alike.

Breakfast with the Nikolides, however, ends on an optimistic note. A prayer/ puja is performed, a light is set off into the darkness. In Hindu culture, this is the light of enlightenment dispelling the darkness. But considering Godden’s (and most likely her readership’s) inability to deal with the colonial reality outside of the lens of white supremacy, it is hard to believe that much enlightenment through mutual understanding will come.

And doesn’t the literature of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala confirm that?

[Pascale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mesmerizing, like most of what the unjustly neglected Rumor Godden has written. Set in a sleepy little town in East Bengal, where life revolves around the Agricultural College, the story mostly follows 2 couples: Charles and Louise Pool on the one hand, Indro Narayan Das and his wife Shila on the other. Charles and Louise have 2 daughters: Emily, a gawky pre-teen and her younger sister Barbara (Binnie), who was conceived through rape after a vicious argument between Charles and Louise eight years previously. After this fight, Louise separated from Charles and lived in Paris until the German invasion forced her to seek refuge elsewhere. Unhappy to be back with Charles, unhappy to be in India, and furious that her daughters have quickly adopted Charles as their favorite parent, Louise is a bundle of nerves and mistreats each and every member of the household. Narayan, a young vet with a determinedly modern approach, also has a difficult marriage with his very traditional wife, who is not equipped to be a true companion to him. Instead, Narayan forms a homo-erotic attachment to Anil, a student at the college who comes from a Brahmin family and doesn't take his studies very seriously. Much as Narayan would like Anil to graduate with honors, Anil prefers to spend his time writing poetry. The connecting thread between the 2 strands of the story is Emily's dog Don, a present from her father when the girls and their mother first join him in Amorra. Right in the first scene of the book we see Don running wild into the night, and biting Anil, who is taking a night stroll with Narayan. The following morning Louise convinces herself that Don has rabies, and against her husband's advice sends Emily and Binnie to have breakfast with the Nikolides, their only Western neighbors, so as to have the dog put down by Narayan without interference. When she realizes what has been done behind her back, Emily punishes her mother by keeping up an elaborate pretence that Don is still alive. Later, Anil dies from the dog bite. Nowhere in the reviews I've found online is this major issue discussed. Of course one of the main theme of the book is Emily's coming of age, accelerated through her exposure to the latent or overt violence at the heart of married love. But it seems to me that the story has a different cast if Louise's decision to have Don put down was not exclusively based on spite but on also on a legitimate fear for her daughters and others. Initially Narayan is not convinced that Don carries rabies, and he resents being bullied into killing the dog without further tests. His feelings of guilt lead him to resume Hindu practices he had rejected as irrelevant to modern life. Anil's death seems to be attributed to his encounter with Don, but there's room for ambiguity. Whether this is an added strength in the book, I cannot say. I guess that for once I would have liked the dot on the i. Regardless, this is a very powerful and dramatic story, with Godden's usual theme of men versus women and East versus West treated with her customary sensitivity and subtlety.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of Rumer Godden’s novels are set in India and I really like novels set in India – so it is perhaps surprising that I have not read more of her novels. I have only read about four of Rumer Godden’s adult novels, and I really can’t remember if I read any of her children’s books when I was a child, I may have read The Diddakoi – possibly her most famous children’s book. Rumer Godden whose last book was published in 1997 was an extraordinarily prolific writer, with about twenty seven adult novels, the same number of children’s books, and eleven works of non-fiction to her name. I have to say though that I am rather glad that I still have so many of her books left to read, and anticipate them eagerly. Virago has re-issued a large number of Rumer Godden novels with gorgeous covers. I have occasionally been critical of the cover art selected for the new style VMC’s – but these I think are lovely. I have two more of these newly issued Godden’s TBR and I am really looking forward to them.

Breakfast with the Nikolides is a peculiar little story – but it is one that packs something of a punch. The setting is East Bengal in a small agricultural town by a river. Charles Poole is in charge of the government farm of Amorra, on the same site is the agricultural college, where students work under the principle Sir Monmatha Ghose. Having lived in Amorra alone for eight years – Charles stuns the community with the sudden and inexplicable appearance of a wife and two daughters who have fled the war in Paris. Louise, Charles’s wife, is a complex damaged woman, she hates India, and she hates everything about it – is suspicious of it, and dislikes the people. Their eldest daughter is Emily an angry dreamer on the brink of adolescence has a very difficult relationship with her mother, but instantly adores the father she barely knows. Emily’s younger sister, Binnie, is the child born after the parents separated. Emily quickly falls in love with India, for her it is an exotic exciting place that she loves to explore. Emily and Binnie are enchanted by their glamorous neighbours the Nikolides, with whose children they occasionally play. Charles gives Emily a spaniel, that she names Don, he becomes a constant companion. One day Don is killed, and it is the deceit that surrounds this one incident that serves to unravel the fragile truths of their family life, and culminates in drawing in the whole community in violent uprising.

“Mother was clever. She knew how I felt about the Nikolides, she knew I would forget everything for them… And it seemed to Emily sheer treachery that Louise should have used them against her. One thing – said Emily – I shall never go blind like that again. I shall never be blind…And even to so young a girl as Emily there was something pitiable in the loss of heedlessness. Breakfast with the Nikolides was always to be the last hour of her childhood.”

We also meet young vet Narayan Das struggling to reconcile his young wife’s Hindu traditions with the modern westernised world he is trying to fit into. Narayan’s friend and student Anil working towards his final exams is also drawn into the drama that unfolds.

Breakfast with the Nikolides explores the dark and complex relationship between Charles and Louise – the truth of which is slowly revealed. Charles is something of an enigma, Louise a cold beauty who constantly misunderstands her eldest daughter – she is using Charles as an escape from German occupied France and can’t wait to return to Paris. The novel also examines loss of innocence and betrayal. Rumer Godden’s sense of place is excellent, a small Indian town on the banks of a river, young idealised students and modern thinking men juxtaposed with traditional beliefs and suspicions.

[Katya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the fifth book-length work of fiction by Rumer Godden, published in 1942. This year---2016---is my year to read everything that Rumer Godden wrote, in chronological order of publication. I first read Ms. Godden in 1964, and she became one of my favorite authors at that time. I am having fun gathering all my own copies of her works and filling in the gaps in my collection with the help of Amazon, Biblio, etc.

Rumer Godden was a prolific author of more than sixty fiction and non-fiction books. She wrote a few additional books with her sister, Jon Godden, also a fine writer. They were raised in colonial India, where their father was a British shipping company executive. Rumer loved India and her writing is unique for her point-of-view. Many of her works depict an India in the waning years of the British Raj, with tumultous change looming in the distance.

"Breakfast with the Nikolides" reflects another of Ms. Godden's themes...the wall that can exist between children and adults and the trouble that can cause. The story is set in a village in East Bengal in the time of the British Raj. An English family reunites and falls apart, and so does the Indian community around them.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Driven out of France by World War I, Louise Pool takes her two daughters half way around the world to a small riverside town in what is now Bangladesh to rejoin her estranged husband. Young Emily Pool is thrilled by her new home, but their arrival throws the carefully maintained hierarchy of relationships in the town into disarray.

Like many of Rumer Godden's books, this is not an easy read emotionally. Some of the characters make racist comments. There are events that some readers would find triggering: the death of a pet, reference to past rape. It's a painful coming-of-age story and a portrait of a messed-up marriage, with the characters continually missing possibilities of real connection, but I loved it all the same.

[Nancy Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those I couldn't put down. The writing is exquisite, the setting is exotic, and the characters and their complicated relationships are intriguing.
I could almost hear and smell the bazaar, feel the heat and the night breezes in this agricultural college town in India, where the snooty, rather unlikeable Englishwoman Louise takes here two daughters to rejoin her estranged husband, Charles, to get away from the horrors of World War II. Charles has established firm roots in the fertile riverside dirt of the plains of Bengal.
The precocious Emily (if a main character in a book is a child, he or she is almost always precocious) quickly comes to adore her long lost father, while butting heads with her inflexible mother, and with good reason: impulsive and nervous Louise jumps to the conclusion that Emily's beloved puppy, Don, is rabid, and forcefully takes matters into her own hands. Don is a character of some substance in his own right, as are the town veterinarian Das Narayan, his timid wife, and a strange high-caste poetic student.
There is some comedy in the story; the native villagers don't know what to make of the two decidedly undoglike Pekingeses Louise brings with her from England, and when she takes them to the vet for their inoculations against possible rabies, the vet's intrigued wife asks, "What kind of dogs are they? Or are they cats?" '‘Of course they are not cats. They are poodles,’ said Narayan. ‘Moreover, they are very valuable.’'
Lots to ponder here, quite some sadness, but a beautifully written, full-bodied story.

[Pippa · Rating 5 out of 5]

My only quibble with this book was that Rumer Godden seems to write the same people over and over again. There is never any doubt who she is, either.

Perhaps this sums up what I feel about her. She is not great at creating characters; she uses the ones she knows over and over again. BUT the style, and the beauty of the language, and the accuracy of the fine, detailed descriptions do make this a great book, like all her others. I loved it.

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh dear (more of a 2.5). I wish that I hadn't tried this one - Rumer Godden is one of my all time favourite writers. I adore Greengage Summer and Kingfisher's Catch Fire. I re-read them often and still marvel at their beauty.

I did not enjoy this book - I found it unutterably miserable.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I jumped the gun a bit with my previous post about Rumer Godden's The River , but this time I'm on schedule for #RumerGoddenReadingWeek at Brona's This Reading Life...

Breakfast with the Nikolides is, according to Rosie Thomas who wrote the Introduction for this Virago edition, one of three early novels that reflect the themes and settings that are central to [Godden's] works.

Godden was a writer who continually drew on her own life experiences, frugally mixing and recasting the elements to give them fresh significance, but always relating her work back to the the people, places, human passions and frailties that she knew and understood best.  Here, the place is Northern India, the people are pre-Partition British and the Indians they governed, and the themes are sexual desire, treachery, the conflict of cultures and the loss of innocence. (p.vii)

The central character of Breakfast with the Nikolides is Emily Pool, taken by her mother from India when young but brought back in panic because of the Nazi invasion of France.  Her mother hates India and everything about it, and although there are hints that Emily glimpsed something of her mother's trauma, the novel is an uncompromising depiction of a child who feels torn between her warring parents, and who judges her mother harshly.  Louise's faults are many, and Emily is aware of them all, especially Louise's blatant preference for the younger child, Binnie, who is pretty and biddable (and surprisingly, given Louise's preference for this child) the product of marital rape).  The characterisation of Louise, from the child's point of view—even when Louise is the narrator—is vivid and entirely unsympathetic.

Emily's father treats his problematic wife with indifference, salted by occasional acts of spite.  Louise has two Pekingese lap dogs,  but he gives Emily a dog of her own called, Don.

I asked Charles not to give the children a dog.  I asked him not to give them Don.  He gave them Don...

He gave him to Emily.

'Why Emily? Why not Binnie?  Why Emily?'

'I think,' he said, 'that that little girl needs love.'

In her surprise Louise had stared.  'Emily! Why, Emily won't have love.  That shows how little you know of her.  She is hard.  She is completely oblivious of everyone but herself. She doesn't care an atom for anyone.  She is almost unnatural.'

'You don't like her, do you?'

She answered icily, 'I love Emily more than you could begin to understand.'

'You may love her, you don't like her.'

'I love her and I know her better than she knows herself.' And she said, 'I must ask you not to interfere with the children.' (p.63)

There is an authenticity about this dialogue that suggests auto-fiction, from Godden's own disastrous marriage.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/12/04/b...

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Rumer Godden with all my heart and soul, but like every author she has her good books, her great books, and … books like these. Some of flashes of genius are here, but they’re buried under Louise’s histronics – given the fact that she’s a victim of marital rape, these are far more reasonable than they’re first presented, but Godden also seems to be trying to argue that the histronics drove the rape, which … nope. Definitely the most exemplary part is when Emily is pretending her dog Don is still alive; I winced with how real the tension between Emily and her mother felt at those points. One thing Godden is very alive to is – as Alain de Botton would say – the smallness of the wounds that can bleed the longest and most in families.

The descriptions are supreme, as ever:

‘The wife was elegant, handsome but fragile, with a very white skin that made her more than ever noticeable in an Indian community. Her hair was a deep dark gold; ‘The colour,’ said the sentimental students, ‘of the wheat of the fields when it is ripe’; ‘The colour of curry powder,’ said the not- so- sentimental, ‘very hot indeed.’

‘Memorial Scottish School for Orphan Boys; they had my mind and my body for seven years, and for seven years I learnt to keep my heart shut away in darkness and starvation. Perhaps that is why it grows such extravagant one- sided branches now I have let it out; I am shamed by it and think I shall put it away again.’

‘Did you see the colour of the river this evening, Narayan? It was like the inside of a shell. All the colours are deeper when they lie on that mother- of- pearl, the water- lilies are milk- white and crimson instead of pink and cream, and the hyacinth clumps are purple.’

‘The first to wake in the bazaar were the cats; they ran along the drains under the steps and leaped over refuse and old tins and heaps of leaves without a sound, skirting the sleeping bodies on beds and mats or on the ground; and as they ran the light ran after them, drawing streaks across the houses.’

‘‘I can’t—’ and she cried, ‘I seem to have lost her since I came here.’ ‘What makes you think you ever had her?’ asked Charles.’
OOF.

All the same, this wouldn’t be one of my recommended starter Goddens.

[Nicky Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this novel a lovely surprise.
Yes, of course, it is a novel set in India written by a white British woman and viewed through the lens of colonial experience. Whilst this is something of which any reader coming to it now will be acutely aware, and which raises some questions, the lens doesn't remain wholly unfocused and there is a sense that Rumer Godden takes some awareness and some questions about race, about class, with her into her story.
The story itself benefits from some taut telling - confidently, competently and compellingly crafted.
The heart of the story is a bildungsroman, a coming of age tale of a young girl, a loss of innocence, questions of trust, affiliation and identity.
The story is wrapped in an atmosphere of foreboding - and it feels as though violence - physical, emotional and sexual, both expressed and repressed, is at the heart of this novel.
Whilst the bildungsroman is at the centre of the novel, Godden doesn't settle on a single character or voice in the telling of her tale. It is a story seen or told by a series of relatively unlikeable, flawed characters, many creating or finding their way through a sense of alienation and toxic relationships. But there is a deftness of touch which produces some lyrical and moving passages - the suggestion of a gay relationship or desire is a case in point.
I read the novel with a satisfying sense of enjoying a very adult children's story.

[Lynne Norman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure what to make of this book. The story was interesting, although it ultimately goes nowhere. There were some moments of beautiful prose, alongside really clumsy exposition. The characters were fascinating and complex, but you never really got to the bottom of any of them and the ones you did become more familiar with - namely Louise and Emily - drove you to frustration. The 'big reveal' with regards to the history of Louise and Charles' relationship was shocking - but I found it quite uncomfortable that Charles' behaviour was almost explained away by Louise's poor treatment of him...

All in all, I'm not sure where to land with regards to how I feel about Breakfast with the Nikolides, but I am glad to have read it and would read more Godden.

[Rhonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful and Evocative

What a pleasure this was, discovering my first Rumer Godden book! The sense of place was immersive. You could smell the smells of cardamom and curry and decay. You could hear the bells and the insects and the muezzin and the chittering of the lizards on the walls. You also felt the oppressive heat and longed for a brush of cool breeze. Though really just sketches, the characters nonetheless were rich and thoughtful and the author moved amongst their points of view brilliantly. In it all is a compassionate wisdom for the human condition, in its frailties and cruelties and desire for meaning. This is a parable, a jataka, a morality tale, but of the gentlest, most forgiving sort. I cannot wait to read my next Godden novel.x

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though sometimes listed as one of Rumer Godden’s “children’s” books, Breakfast with the Nikolides is a decidedly adult novel, chock full of dark and difficult themes: sexual desire, frustration, betrayal, revenge, reconciliation. Written early in her long career, the fifth of her twenty-four novels, Godden remarked that though the book was received without much comment, it came very close to her personal goal of “truthful writing”.

This is one of the “Indian” novels, started in 1940 as Rumer, her two young daughters and their governess sailed back to India, where Rumer had already spent the majority of her life, to escape the potential German invasion of England at the start of WW II.

Inspired by Rumer’s experiences living in the rural Bengali area of India as the daughter of British Colonialists, the vivid depictions of the setting and supporting characters were drawn from first-hand observation and feel clear and true. This was one of the novels Rumer Godden felt was “vouchsafed” to her – she drew a definite distinction between “a book written when you are looking for something to write, searching for a theme, and one that seems to arise of itself, demanding to be written.” Breakfast with the Nikolides was a book that demanded to be written, and though it seems at times the author is still working on clarifying her “voice”, on the whole it is a successful experiment.

In the small East Bengal town of Amorra, the Government Agricultural Farm flourishes under the guidance of English agriculturalist Charles Pool. Though he has lived and worked intimately with the local community, he still remains, after eight years, something of a mystery man. The assumption is that he is a bachelor of celibate habits; he lives an exemplary life of dedication to his goal of converting the local farmers to his new and productive ideas, and he is a respected lecturer at the progressive agricultural college which has now been established at the farm.

One day Charles goes down to the jetty on the river to meet the paddle-wheel steamer, where he meets a beautiful woman and two young girls – his wife Louise and their daughters. Louise, 11-year-old Emily and 8-year-old Binnie have travelled the long and arduous way from war-torn France where they had been living until forced to flee the German occupation.

Emily and Binnie are enthralled with their new environment; Emily in particular hopes that she will never have to leave. Her father, against her mother’s wishes, gives her a spaniel puppy, Don, and this action precipitates a far-reaching set of events ending both in tragedy and elemental change for all of the protagonists.

Lovely Louise is a woman with some serious personal issues. Long estranged from her husband for reasons which we gradually get some clues about, she also has a very difficult relationship with her eldest daughter, whom she seems to misread at every turn. Despite Louise’s insistence that their unification as a family is only temporary, Charles and Emily begin to gradually build up a fragile relationship of trust and affection, which Louise openly resents. She is not looking for a reconciliation; rather she has turned to Charles as a temporary refuge until the war is over; she makes it clear that as soon as she can she will return with her daughters to “civilization”.

The spaniel Don becomes sick; Louise suspects rabies, and, without explanation and in an attempt to shelter her daughters from an emotional trauma and a real physical danger, sends the girls for an unexpected morning visit to a neighbouring family. “Breakfast with the Nikolides” is an unexpected treat, and the girls happily go off, unsuspecting of the drama that will ensue upon their return. (One of my personal small disappointments in this novel is the too-brief introduction to the rather intriguing Nikolides children, Jason and Alexandra, whom we tantalizingly meet for only a few moments before the story whirls on its way without them.)

The young college veterinarian, Narayan Das, becomes involved in the saga, as does one of the agricultural students, Anil, passionate and poetical son of a wealthy and influential Brahmin family.

As events unfold, we see that the marriage of Charles and Louise has foundered because of deep faults on both sides; neither party is innocent here, and though we never get the full details, we learn enough to sympathize even more deeply with the children of this tempestuous union. Godden concentrates to a great degree on showing us the feelings of Emily, who perhaps could be described as the chief character; another one of Godden’s “waifs in the storm” who suffer as the adults in their lives behave badly. Our heroine Emily weathers this episode of the familial storm, and, though emotionally battered and bruised, finds a certain peace of her own by the story’s end, though there are many loose ends left unravelled, just as in “real life”.

The place-portrait of the Indian village is also one of this book’s strengths; Godden’s intimate familiarity with the time and place she writes about is apparent in her clean yet detailed descriptions. Very nicely done.

This is a novel for mature teens and adults, who would best be able to appreciate what the author has presented here; I suspect a younger reader would soon lose interest.

I had to double-check the publication date; this novel has a very contemporary feel to it. Well worth reading, and a good companion piece to Godden’s other adult novels, which show a range of styles as she continually experimented with and honed her considerable craft.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breakfast with the Nikolides is not as powerful as The Battle of the Villa Florita, although it shares a theme, children caught up in the battles of their elders. It's 1941, in British India. Charles Pool is the director of a demonstration government farm in Bengal. Suddenly, after eight years, his estranged wife, Louise turns up with two girls, Emily and Binnie, fleeing from the German invasion of France.
It is not a happy reunion. Louise always hated India, and by extension, Charles. He doesn't want to see her but won't turn her away. It's a complicated and at times an unrealistic book about two girls and their parents, trying to figure out what they want.

[Maura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am still musing over the title of this one. Rumer Godden's novels are always thought-provoking; this one is no exception. The breakfast and the Nikolides seem to hardly figure in the story at all, so what meaning do they have to be chosen for the title? Godden often refers to past events so obliquely that you have to read like a detective, combing the text for clues and meanings. But it makes every word significant. I would not count this as a favorite - I didn't enjoy it as much as many of her other novels, but it was interesting nonetheless.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dashed through this book compulsively, even making time in the mornings before work. Couldn’t imagine where it would go next. Godden writes so interestingly about themes we are concerned with in 2019: white privilege, multiculturalism, gender roles, cultural competency. Yet her books are never preachy or dull or difficult. I hope her reputation is resurrected for modern audiences. I heard her describe this one as “a family reacting to the death of a dog” and was captivated by the thought of what that would look like to her. It was a wild ride that I could not have predicted.

[Debbie Shoulders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all of the other Godden books, I have read this one takes place in India but focuses more on the cultural divide. Charles Pool has been estranged from his family for eight years making a living by establishing a farm in East Bengal. His wife, two daughters, and their dogs show up unannounced to escape the war in France. Louise and her oldest daughter Emily do not get along. When Emily's dog is suspected of rabies, Louise forces the local vet to euthanize setting into place a series of events that force a confrontation with the local people.

[Genevieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been reading Rumer Godden's books since I was a child. I found this one in a crowded used book shop. I don't think I would recommend this one to everyone as there is an outdated attitude around marital sexual violence but the over all story is classic Godden. The pull and tension of people and their place in society, and the stubborn nature/desire all carry. It is a book of overwhelmed senses. You can feel, smell, and touch so many things. She knew too well about the English in India. The best description, "they interfere"

[Ry Herman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was all in on this book for about the first three quarters of it, and then in the end it just kind of falls apart. After that, it doesn't really recover until the last two pages or so. There's still much to admire in the writing (not surprising from the author of An Episode of Sparrows), and the mother-daughter tension between Louise and Emily is electric, but it's not enough to completely make up for the problems.

[Christine Watts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really three and a half...a slowly evolving plot accompanied by vivid , luminous descriptions of Assam`s landscape. The themes of loss of innocence, betrayal and sexual desire hold the reader`s attention along with the seeming simplicity of the story. The emotional fragilities of the characters are distilled through the eyes of a child who has to confront the death of her beloved dog and the reactions of the deceitful, attritional adults around her.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

PUJA
I read this for the virago modern classics online group.

An exciting but tragic novel with wonderful descriptions of Indian life during WW2. It shows the problems of colonialism in a similar way to ‘a room with a view’. I was sorry the main female protagonist, Louise, wasn’t more likeable although one of the reasons for her behaviour is explained at the end. As a dog lover I found the treatment of Don upsetting. Having dealt with people bitten by dogs in India I know the treatment nowadays is better, but still frightening. I liked Emily, who reminded me of many of my childhood heroes, but found the mother/daughter relationship a bit extreme. Charles seems a basically good person but less so when the truth behind Louise leaving becomes clear. The problems of the caste system and the importance of religious rituals are shown, and the way the latter give comfort. The bromance would probably be more developed in a modern novel but it is quite daring for the times. Although I haven’t been to India as an adult I could smell and hear the bazaar. I felt pity for Shila and wondered if her husband was not only ashamed of her lack of education but also gay. The novel is what would nowadays be called a coming of age story, which wouldn’t have been a theme in the 1940s. As for the title - in my opinion it shows how clever the author was.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

loc.126:
"Europeans in India are like cut flowers; that is why most of them wither and grow sterile: they cannot live without their roots, and so few of them take root; but Charles had taken root. They had almost forgotten that India was not his native soil."
loc.440:
"A rich street is much the same all down its length, it betrays nothing, but a poor street betrays everything."

[Deborah Terrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant, lyrical story.

This story is carefully plotted and yet has the feeling of a dream. Set amid the beauty and squalor of India, it is both a love story based in the author's childhood, and also the story of a family - many families. One of the best crafted books I have read.

[Melliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is such an odd little book. The style and beauty of the language and the detailed descriptions of India are mesmerizing, but the characters are excessively opaque, both to one another and to the reader. I would have liked to know more, and more in depth, about all of them. There are many inchoate feelings not adequately expressed, at least for me.

[Margaret Wichorek]

Beautifully written coming of age novel about a young girl, Emily, who returns to India with her little sister, Binnie and her mother because they had to leave France because of the Nazi invasion. The mother, Louise, had left her husband eight years earlier. She hated India and her husband , Charles, refused to leave. He was in charge of a large model farm and his mission was to instruct Indian farmers on modern methods, so that they could have better crops and conserve the land. There was also an AG college on the grounds. Because of a very thoughtlessly cruel act, Emily becomes completely estranged from her mother and much heartache ensues before a sort of reconciliation occurs. The author writes such wonderful descriptions of both the land and he characters. Wonderful book. I've always been an admirer o Godden's books and this is one of her best. Black Narcissus is probably her best known, though.

[Cooch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four and a half stars

A very good stylish novel told using an innovative multi viewpoint narrative style, with very evocative descriptions of the Indian landscape and culture. It captures something of the multi cultural ferment of the India of its time.

[June · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a favorite, with very little about the Nikolides in it at all. I am still pondering the title. Does it refer to all that happens when we're Elsewhere?

This strangely unsettling tale explores all that we miss in those nearest, and what that omission means for us and them.