My Two Titties
Jan. 18th, 2009 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselSep 2008
The Observations - Jane Harris - Faber and Faber, 2006
* * * *
Thought that would get your attention... Actually it’s a quote from the list of attributes with which the heroine, Bessy Buckley, sets out into the world. It’s characteristic of the book as a whole, which is a darkly humorous Victorian melodrama told from a female point of view.
Bessy is a pert Irish teenager with an extremely dodgy past who finds herself in the quiet Scottish estate of Castle Haivers. There she is taken on as a maid by the gracious and beautiful lady of the house, Arabella. At first all is well, but soon Arabella starts to give some strange commands. She peremptorily orders Bessy out of bed in the middle of the night to make her some cocoa, then praises her extravagently and tells her to drink it. She tells her to sit down and stand up over and over again until Bessy rebels. And she makes Bessy write a diary recording her most intimate thoughts.
The reason for Arabella’s odd behaviour is soon revealed and the rest of the book describes the consequences that ensue. Other characters are introduced including Arabella’s husband James (a pompous businessman who is angling to become an MP), the oily Reverend Pollock, and Hector, a forward highland farm boy who speaks in a peculiar demotic that is one of the book’s few missteps (“I fwhill be coming with you, hand you can be making me dinner. Hand hafterwards fwhee can be making a baby”). There is also a secondary plotline concerning the mysterious death of Arabella’s previous maid Agnes. The focus and chief interest of the book remains, however, the relationship between Bessy and Arabella.
It is unfortunate, therefore, that I didn’t find this entirely convincing. In particular, Bessy’s reaction when she discovers why Arabella is behaving as she is seems out of keeping with her background and character, and contributes to the general sense that Harris was struggling to develop the story past the initial interesting premise. It would also have been good to learn more of Arabella’s history. Still, this is a fine first novel with an engaging heroine and an enjoyable sense of the grotesque. Dickens, if he could have got past the crudity, would have approved.
The Observations - Jane Harris - Faber and Faber, 2006
* * * *
Thought that would get your attention... Actually it’s a quote from the list of attributes with which the heroine, Bessy Buckley, sets out into the world. It’s characteristic of the book as a whole, which is a darkly humorous Victorian melodrama told from a female point of view.
Bessy is a pert Irish teenager with an extremely dodgy past who finds herself in the quiet Scottish estate of Castle Haivers. There she is taken on as a maid by the gracious and beautiful lady of the house, Arabella. At first all is well, but soon Arabella starts to give some strange commands. She peremptorily orders Bessy out of bed in the middle of the night to make her some cocoa, then praises her extravagently and tells her to drink it. She tells her to sit down and stand up over and over again until Bessy rebels. And she makes Bessy write a diary recording her most intimate thoughts.
The reason for Arabella’s odd behaviour is soon revealed and the rest of the book describes the consequences that ensue. Other characters are introduced including Arabella’s husband James (a pompous businessman who is angling to become an MP), the oily Reverend Pollock, and Hector, a forward highland farm boy who speaks in a peculiar demotic that is one of the book’s few missteps (“I fwhill be coming with you, hand you can be making me dinner. Hand hafterwards fwhee can be making a baby”). There is also a secondary plotline concerning the mysterious death of Arabella’s previous maid Agnes. The focus and chief interest of the book remains, however, the relationship between Bessy and Arabella.
It is unfortunate, therefore, that I didn’t find this entirely convincing. In particular, Bessy’s reaction when she discovers why Arabella is behaving as she is seems out of keeping with her background and character, and contributes to the general sense that Harris was struggling to develop the story past the initial interesting premise. It would also have been good to learn more of Arabella’s history. Still, this is a fine first novel with an engaging heroine and an enjoyable sense of the grotesque. Dickens, if he could have got past the crudity, would have approved.