Snobs

Snobs
By Julian Fellowes
BBC Audiobooks America, 2005. 9 CDs. Fiction

Edith Lavery is the daughter of a moderately successful English accountant and his social-climbing wife. While visiting a stately home as a paying guest, Edith meets Charles, Earl of Broughton and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. After dating for a few months, Charles proposes and Edith accepts. But is she really in love with Charles? Or with his title, his position, and all that goes with it? Charles's mother, the shrewd Lady Uckfield, suspects 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, her worst fears seem fully justified.

Julian Fellowes also wrote the screenplay for Gosford Park, Vanity Fair, and The Young Victoria (to name a few) and is the creator of the hugely popular television series Downton Abbey. While it seems like he specializes in period dramas, this book is set in present-day England, and it kind of blew my mind. I had no idea that these kind of attitudes still existed in the English aristocracy, but of course now I feel a bit foolish for not realizing it sooner. The story is ultimately about Edith, but I think it's largely a commentary on the social nuances of the upper class (it definitely makes you take a harder look at the Cinderella fantasy). True to everything else I've seen from Julian Fellowes, his characters are completely real: not entirely bad, and not entirely good either. Just flawed humans with unique personalities thrown into situations like wind-up toys that knock about and end up where they will. While I found most of the book fascinating, I was a bit annoyed with the foolishness of some of the characters, even though their motives and choices are fully explained by Fellowes. Despite understanding them, I still inwardly cringed for them.

We currently only have this on audiobook, but I thought the narrator had it spot-on, pitch perfect. His accent was just a bit pretentious and he didn't once stumble on any of the French pronunciations. Quelle joie!

BHG