Breakfast With the Nikolides

Breakfast with the Nikolides / Rumer Godden
London: Virago, 2013, c1942.
220 p.

I recently read this Godden book; I have a number of her books and have enjoyed many. This one, however, I didn't enjoy. I found a few elements that were engaging, but overall it was too problematic and unfortunately dull for me. 

It's set in a small town in India (other readers place it as current Bangladesh) -- Charles Poole is an agricultural specialist based in this location, to teach new farming methods to the locals. His estranged wife Louise suddenly arrives with two daughters in tow; she's fleeing Paris under German occupation. But she hates India; the culture, the people, the climate, everything. She's a miserable woman and Charles is very self centred. He is happy to have his daughters with him, though, and gives the eldest, Emily, a spaniel. This dog turns out to be the crux of much of the action of the book that follows.

Emily is an adolescent who does not get on with her mother at all, they are opposites and Emily is a proto-emo teen. But she instantly adores her father, whom she barely knows, and this creates another wedge in the family. 

There are descriptions of their lives, their glamourous neighbours the Nikolides, and many of the locals, including a veterinarian whose life intersects with the Pooles in a vital way. There is also a local student whose obsession with the veterinarian leads to tragedy. 

I felt that there was a bit too much going on here, and the story felt disjointed. Godden can often write in a fragmentary, dreamy way, especially in her India novels, but I didn't think it worked well here. I struggled to finish it, and didn't feel any sympathy for the characters who felt wooden to me (except for maybe the veterinarian's wife). Charles and Louise were just nasty, and the descriptions of India felt old-fashioned, without any self-awareness.  This one wasn't a winner for me!