Although The Greengage Summer is a novel for young adults, the theme of growing up is appropriate for an adult audience, one that will pick up on the more subtle nuances of this novel. The story revolves around five English children who are stranded alone at a French hotel after their mother becomes ill and is taken to a hospital.

Cecil, thirteen years old, is an intelligent and observant girl, and through her the reader becomes aware of the cultural differences between the French and the English. The people at the hotel are practical, unsentimental, and realistic, and treat the children as miniature adults or as nuisances. Coming from a sheltered family environment, the two older girls, especially, are exposed to adult intrigues, jealousy, and love. Concerned only with her own feelings, Mademoiselle Zizi, owner of the hotel, resents their intrusion and later sees Joss, the...