Giant's Bread is a novel by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by Collins in April 1930 and in the US by Doubleday later in the same year.
One man who does not personally like the composition, but can see the genius that scored it, is Carl Bowerman, an elderly and distinguished music critic, who joins the owner of the Opera House, Sebastian Levinne, for a private drink.
In their place he has four imaginary friends, the most important of whom is called Mr. Green, a florid man who loves playing games and who lives in a wood that borders on the grounds of Abbots Puisannts.
Someone who promotes a different reaction is Walter's sister, Nina, an artistic woman who impresses Vernon by her playing of the grand piano in the house.
A few weeks before the end of the war, Walter Deyre is killed in action and Vernon inherits Abbots Puisannts, though as he is not of age so it is held in trust for him.
Sebastian is starting on his career as a patron of the arts, opening a gallery in Bond Street, while Joe has artistic tastes and Vernon is at a loose end as to what he wants to do – money, or the lack of it, still being a concern.
He has a life-changing moment when he is forced to attend a charity concert at the Albert Hall and suddenly overcomes his childhood hatred of music, so much so that he declares that he wants to be a composer.
Vernon reaches twenty-one and is bitter to learn that his financial situation means that he cannot afford to move back to Abbots Puisannts.
He is forced to agree that he will work at Uncle Sydney's firm, but life takes a different tack when, after a gap of several years, he meets Nell Vereker again at Cambridge.
One night, while Nell and her mother are abroad, Vernon is introduced to a professional singer called Jane Harding at a party hosted by Sebastian.
Vernon finishes his composition and, suddenly scared of rumours that Nell is going to marry George Chetwynd, proposes to her, but she asks him to wait.
Events reach a crisis point when Joe absconds with a married man, and this prompts Vernon to accuse Nell of not having that sort of courage.
Six months later, Vernon is sent to France and Nell becomes a VAD nurse, finding the work and the treatment meted out to volunteers like her hard to take.
Struck by the man having the same name as his imaginary childhood friend, he happily agrees but is then dumbstruck to read in one of the magazines of Nell and George's marriage.
In the confusion of the evacuation, as the ship starts to tilt badly and go down into the water, Vernon sees Nell, she and Chetwynd having been on board but sailing in a different class of passengers.
The reviewer, unaware of the true identity of the author, praised the "arresting prologue" and stated that the early years of Vernon Deyre were "described with charm and capture the child's point of view.
In Giant's Bread there are traces of the careful, detailed writing of the English novelist, and there are hints of Mary Roberts Rinehart's methods of mentioning a finished episode and explaining later how it all happened."
"[2] Gerald Gould reviewed the novel in the 4 May 1930 issue of The Observer when he wrote, "Giant's Bread is an ambitious and surprisingly sentimental story about a young man with musical genius, mixed love-affairs, a lost memory, a family tradition, and other commodities out of the bag of novelist's tricks.