In Coromandel Sea Change, Godden presents the reader with an exotic and glittering world, but the issues and characters she creates are very much part of our own. Her conflict is much more than just a confrontation between East and West, it is also a conflict between men and women, between arrogance and sensitivity. It is the story of an awakening — Mary's — towards a more spiritual way of life. This is also an issue in The Greengage Summer (1958) — a young girl's maturing through a sincere love, and in her convent novel In This House of Brede (1969). Discussion groups might want to focus on the man/woman conflict as a feminine spiritual Eastern attitude versus a masculine, active, selfish Western stance. It is interesting that in most of Godden's novels, the spiritual side is almost exclusively represented by women, while the masculine heroes are...