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St. Martin's Press
May 2012
On Sale: May 8, 2012
288 pages
ISBN: 1250020360
EAN: 9781250020369
Kindle: B003J4VEIQ
Paperback / e-Book (reprint)
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Historical
From the creator of the Emmy Award-winning Downton
Abbey... "The English, of all classes as it happens, are addicted to
exclusivity. Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will
invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them." The best comedies of manners are often deceptively simple,
seamlessly blending social critique with character and
story. In his superbly observed first novel, Julian
Fellowes, creator of the Masterpiece sensation Downton
Abbey and winner of an Academy Award for his original
screenplay of Gosford Park, brings us an insider's look at a
contemporary England that is still not as classless as is
popularly supposed. Edith Lavery, an English blonde with large eyes and nice
manners, is the daughter of a moderately successful
accountant and his social-climbing wife. While visiting his
parents' stately home as a paying guest, Edith meets
Charles, the Earl Broughton, and heir to the Marquess of
Uckfield, who runs the family estates in East Sussex and
Norfolk. To the gossip columns he is one of the most
eligible young aristocrats around. When he proposes. Edith accepts. But is she really in love
with Charles? Or with his title, his position, and all that
goes with it? One inescapable part of life at Broughton Hall is Charles's
mother, the shrewd Lady Uckfield, known to her friends as
"Googie" and described by the narrator---an actor who moves
comfortably among the upper classes while chronicling their
foibles---"as the most socially expert individual I have
ever known at all well. She combined a watchmaker's eye for
detail with a madam's knowledge of the world." Lady Uckfield
is convinced that Edith is more interested in becoming a
countess than in being a good wife to her son. And when a
television company, complete with a gorgeous leading man,
descends on Broughton Hall to film a period drama,
"Googie's" worst fears seem fully justified. In this wickedly astute portrait of the intersecting worlds
of aristocrats and actors, Julian Fellowes establishes
himself as an irresistible storyteller and a deliciously
witty chronicler of modern manners.
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