1st Quarter outside Reading Book Review

A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson. Penguin Group, 1997. Genre: Historical Fiction


This book is about a girl named Ellen who goes and becomes a matron at a school for kids at Hallendorf. She discovers that all the teachers and kids are free-spirited. She befriends the kids and also is friends with the groundskeeper of the school, Marek. Marek is undercover at the school and goes on mission to save his colleague Meierwitz to help him escape a concentration camp. Ellen helps him out and ends up falling in love with him. Although Marek feels the same way, the conflicts of the war make him push her away because he doesn’t want her to get hurt. In the end they overcome these problems and right before Marek leaves for Canada, Ellen leaves her husband to go with him.


“Ibbotson, who grew up in Austria and fled the Nazis herself, provides rich details of prewar life in Vienna and the alpine countryside. A lively read.”

-Library Journal

The author writes about life in Austria before the war. It is written in the third person omniscient because you can see and hear the thoughts from each of the character’s point of view. It describes what life is like in the time of war. It is different from the book “Briar Rose” that I read previously this year. They were both about the Nazis and times during World War Two but in “A Song for Summer” the story is about the present tense whereas in “Briar Rose”, Becca is trying to unfold her Grandmother’s past.
Ibbotson’s writing style is unique because she leaps forward into the book and then explains after to the reader how the characters got there.


“Built by Habsburg count for his mistress, its towers housed bedrooms and boudoirs, not emplacements for guns; pale blue shutters lay folded against pink walls roses climbed toward the fir-floor windows,” (17)

I’m sorry to say that this book was not one of my favorites. I didn’t enjoy it because I felt that the author didn’t describe the character’s appearance or setting as thoroughly as could. I felt so confused in the middle of the book because the points of views were changed so much. I also felt like there was so much happening in the book that it was rushed and didn’t flow as nicely as I would’ve liked. Although this isn’t one of my favorite books I do give the author pros for writing basically about the experiences during the war over in Austria and putting it out there for the world to see and get the war from a perspective of a matron.