A Song for Summer
Ellen, the lovely heroine of this romantic novel, is raised in London by a suffragist mother and aunts but rejects the liberated life. After graduating from a culinary school, she takes a job in Austria at a run-down boarding school for neglected rich children and transforms it with her beauty, hard work, and good cooking. Like Ellen, all the characters are pleasantly drawn if exaggerated stereotypes: Ellen's love interest, Marek, the school handyman, is really a brilliant composer hiding out from the Nazis; the scullery maid is beautiful and saintly; and all the children are budding geniuses. When the war intervenes, Ellen returns to England to build a sanctuary for her friends and other refugees; eventually she and Marek are reunited, and love conquers all. Ibbotson, who grew up in Austria and fled the Nazis herself, provides rich details of prewar life in Vienna and the alpine countryside. Her prose is like a Linzertorte?well constructed but awfully sweet. Still, this is a lively read. Recommended for popular fiction collections.?Reba Leiding, Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. Lib., Troy, NYCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.