snobs

Not anyone I've met, just the title of the book I finished reading. Written by Julian Fellowes (who some of you might know as the actor who plays Lord Kilwillie on "Monarch of the Glen" and who others might recognize as the screenwriter of "Gosford Park"), it's a comedy of manners set, mostly, in high English society. What is different is that it is set in Modern high English society, because other than that (and some immodest passages, very few and very short, but nonetheless there) it is hard to disguish from Trollope. There is the same attention to detail, the same confidential tone in the narrator (bowing slightly to current trends in literature, however, the narrator is a character in the book instead of the omniscient author of the Victorian era), the same setting of English high houses, and the same dazzling multiplicity of rounded-out characters. It's one of those books where even the minor characters seem to be as well known to the author as the major ones. It makes me want to re-view "Gosford Park", which I didn't much like the first time I saw it, now that I have a better idea of what bits of society the screenwriter might have been trying to comment on.

It's the story of a society ladder-climber, a girl named Edith who succeeds in securing the heart of an Earl. And, then, her subsequent boredom in her marriage, adultery, and all the fall-out of that. It's not a very morally satisfying book in one sense: you could say that she gets away with it. But it is morally satisfying in another sense, because her character is showed as what it is, it isn't romanticized.

It's also fascinating just because the author does what I like best: finds ordinary life fascinating. He manages to tell day to day life really, really well. Some books just tell you the high points, and not all the little bits in between. But if you don't get the little bits in between, you really have no good idea of why the high points should be thought high.

Again, if you want to read it, I do have to warn you that it has several explicit bits. They're not written in that romance-book style that tries to make everything seem thrilling, and they do pertain to the story, but I wouldn't want anyone reading my review to pick up the book and be unpleasantly surprised by them. It's definitely not a Christian book, but it is a really good exposition of human nature. In particular, it lays bare what pride and ambition can do to a person. Partly possible, it feels as you read the book, because the author knows his territory firsthand.

I do predict that if you like Trollope, you'll like "Snobs".

-Jess