The relationship between Rupert and Anna also feels closer and more real than those found in any of her other books. Unfortunately, he’s stupidly noble when it comes to refusing to jilt the odious (but hilarious) Muriel. He’s modest and quiet, loyal and intelligent, and scientifically-minded (why must she taunt me this way?). Rupert might tie (or perhaps best) Quin Somerville as Ibbotson’s best-written hero.
While all of Ibbotson’s characters are generally gifted with sharp tongues (thereby redeeming them from their otherwise unrelenting perfection) Anna’s is also coupled with the extreme confidence of one who has had a position of authority and who has been obeyed all her life. Slavs do things with such style, even fictional ones. And because she’s Russian she is much more fun than any of Ibbotson’s other heroines. Yes, she has the Disney Princess-esque traits that Ibbotson imbues all her characters with (beauty, goodness, effortless charm, and most likely the ability to call small animals to dress her in the mornings) but so strong are these characteristics that I am powerless to resist them. But then Rupert, the young Earl, returns with his fiancée and it does not take long for him to discover his odd new servant who curtsies like a ballerina and is fluent in three languages.
Armed with The Domestic Servant’s Compendium by the redoubtable Selena Strickland, Anna takes to her new work with determination, earning her place among the other servants at Mersham, even if they suspect that the new housemaid would be more naturally suited to life above stairs. Now, penniless in London, the practical Anna seeks out a position as a housemaid at Mersham, the seat of the Earl of Westerholme. Countess Anna Grazinsky fled her native Russia with her mother, brother, and English governess in 1919, her father having been killed in the war and the family’s assets seized by the Bolsheviks. It’s just as entrancing as all her other works and easily ranks as my second favourite of Ibbotson’s novels, after The Morning Gift.Īll Ibbotson plots are rather silly but this one is sillier than most. Does my pleasure in reading A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson come from the story itself or from the warmth I feel towards that which I know so well? Having read four of Ibbotson’s other adult novels so recently I thought this might suffer by comparison, particularly as it was her first book for adults, but it really doesn’t.
0 kommentar(er)
