Julian Fellowes, creator of the Emmy-Award winning TV series
Downton Abbey, established himself as an irresistible storyteller
and a deliciously witty chronicler of modern manners in his first novel,
Snobs, a wickedly astute portrait of the intersecting worlds of
aristocrats and actors.
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, 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, Earl of 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.
