I first read this book about five years ago, but I’ve known Rumer Godden for years. I came across her story The Story of a Doll’s House as a child. I remember the central figure was a Dutch doll with bright red cheeks and jet black hair, jointed arms and a stern expression.

Rumer (it means gypsy) was brought up in India, a colonial child. I remember seeing a documentary made about her when she was a wonderful crusty old lady, with a strong face and a stern manner, in fact, rather like the Dutch doll except that her hair was white. The documentary took her back to her family’s home in India, a wonderful mansion, now ruined and reclaimed by the lush landscape. Rumer spoke in a crisp English tone about her early marriage and visits to different parts of India. She wasn’t happily married the first time around, in fact her husband eventually abandoned her with two children in Calcutta. They moved to the mountains and opened a school, sold herbal teas and survived a poisoning by two servants. These incidents feature heavily in the novel Kingfishers Catch Fire.

Its central character, Sophie, is an irritating and engaging mix of innocence and selfish pigheadedness. She has a romantic view of poverty and fails to understand why the locals do not welcome her attempts to treat their illnesses with herbs, at the same time becoming resentful when they expect her to perform miracles of healing. She has ambitious plans for self sufficiency which fail utterly to take reality into account. She spends extravagantly on things she cannot afford – a beautiful carved writing desk, an embroidered rug, and the beautiful kingfisher lamp. She is exasperated at times by the dependency of her two small children, pushing them almost cruelly into self reliance. This headstrong attitude alienates her almost entirely from the only other European adults in the region and results in her youngest child becoming injured and lost in the mountains . Yet she wants desperately to provide her children with enriching experiences and memories – she constantly sees the beauty in things ordinary. She has above all things, energy and a yearning for adventure, to see what lies over the next hill, all the while believing that it simply must be better than what lies on this side.

The novel’s language is lush and evocative, Rumer draws beautiful pictures of the little house in the steep mountains, the ineffective stove and the wonderful kingfisher lamp which gives the novel its title. She smothers the reader with the heat of India, the sound of the insects, the scent of the flowers. A bright ribbon of unnamed yearning runs throughout the book, leaving the reader somewhat unsettled, wondering where Sophie’s footsteps will lead her.

I was very gratified that another member of the group thought it was the best of the books read so far. You may like to read about Rumer Godden on the following link:
 www.lunaea.com/words/rumer/biography.html

Trixibelle