Fleeing Paris during the second World War, Louise Pool and her two children, Emily and Binnie, arrive in the town of Amorra, in East Bengal, to stay with Louise's estranged husband, Charles. As they adjust to life in this verdant, remote Indian outpost, where Charles manages a sprawling farm, tensions bubbling under the surface gradually start to boil over, both in the family and the wider community. Godden's strength is in her astute picking apart of family relationships, sexual tensions and the transition from childhood innocence to adult awareness. The vision of colonial India in this Virago reissue of her 1942 novel is, however, very much of its time: it is lush, beautiful and exotic, but also wild, threatening and full of hidden dangers. It becomes a metaphor for the family unit itself, where ugliness simmers under a pleasant exterior, and it is one dreadful action by Louise – the matriarch, and the character least at home in India – that precipitates the tragic events of the narrative.
