Customer Reviews

Countess Below Stairs

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Born into an aristocratic family in tsarist Russia, Anna Grazinsky was lavished with affection and material wealth. As her father freely admitted, he spoiled her--yet she remained unspoiled. Anna's life of privilege ended with the war and the Bolshevik Revolution that took her beloved father's life and forced Anna to flee with her mother and younger brother to the relative safety of England. Betrayed by the family nurse who absconded with the family jewels the Grazinskys were going to use to support themselves, they were forced instead to share the small living quarters of Anna's devoted English governess.

Determined to do her bit to help with the family's expenses, Anna takes a temporary job as a maid at the country estate of the Earl of Westerholme. The senior staff at Mersham is reluctant to take on the obviously unsuitable foreigner, but they are desperate for the help. The war has left them short-staffed and the new earl himself is soon to return to take up residence after years at the front and a long hospital convalescence. With an overly large and ridiculously outdated housekeeping manual for her reference, Anna is fervent in her new duties, although she is nearly overcome by the sheer physical strain, lack of hygiene, and loneliness. But the tight-knit group quickly takes to the radiant Anna, and she to them.

When the house is readied and the young earl himself arrives, he too is intrigued by the mysterious maid. His initial interest does not distract him from his immediate purpose, however. While he recovered from his war wounds, he was nursed back to health by an angel of mercy. The angel was not only exquisitely beautiful, she was also wealthy enough to save the Westerholme estates from the crippling death taxes that threatened them with financial ruin. The earl would marry his angel and fortunes would be restored.

But all would not remain well for Rupert, the earl. Muriel, the angel, had a dark side. Unlike Anna who was spoiled yet remained unspoiled, Muriel was spoiled and turned rotten to the core--evil, ungrateful, manipulative behind a lovely façade. Gradually, her actions and beliefs alienated almost everyone around her even as her physical beauty continued to entrance them. Rupert's friends, family, and even servants began to despair for him, knowing that he was too much of a gentleman to back out an increasingly odious arrangement. And, to make matters worse, even as he stood at the edge of the abyss with Muriel, Rupert could only snatch glimpses of a forbidden heaven with Anna.

This is a beautiful, magical book. Once I picked it up, I read it in one sitting. I loved the descriptions of postwar England--complete with the fascination with the occult, the rise in the "study" of eugenics, the ugliness of anti-Semitism, decline of the aristocracy, etc. I also enjoyed the look at life downstairs at large country house--how the servants reacted to Anna's mistake about the reference to the "tweeny," for instance--that was a subtlety that was beyond me before reading this book. I was also mesmerized by the beautiful, romantic love story between Rupert and Anna. By today's standards, of course, it was a very chaste love story, but it was so very sweet. And, I should actually say *stories* because the Tom/Susie courtship was a wonderful secondary storyline.

Truly, tho, not to give short shrift to any of these things, or even the Honorable Olive, what I liked most were the brief descriptions of émigré life and how the Russian nobility coped with their new lifestyles. It brought back memories of watching Anastasia or Ninotchka/Silk Stockings. In reality, life probably wasn't a grand adventure, but you had to admire Anna, Sergei, Kira and the others for accepting their new lot and still embracing life for all it was worth.

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I think the difficulty that some readers might have with this book is that it is hard to categorize. What kind of book is it and who is the intended audience? Even after reading it, it still wasn't clear to me. At times it reminded me of a Nesbitt book, but it wasn't really a children's or YA book. On the other hand, there was a fantastical naivete that didn't quite place it in the adult realm. I think the reader just needs to suspend any preconceptions and enjoy the wonderful magic Ms. Ibbotson weaves.

Amazon's branch in the UK carries this in paperback and her others as well. Readers also use interlibrary loans to find her novels. I virtually pulled an "all nighter" to finish this novel and that rather says it all. A young Russian countess is forced to work as an English earl's housemaid because of having fled revolutionary torn Russia. The earl is engaged to a beautiful heiress who is another one of Ibbotson's high comic characters. She believes in eugenics, getting rid of unfit people. The people in the earl's village and household use that vice to sink her boat with the earl. This is a fitting failing for the time period because it is right before Hitler and WWII. Ibbotson always seems to have the other woman as the villainess for the hero's affections. However, she presents them as such high figures of comedy that they are not at all clichés. I also love Ibbotson's use of time periods that few others seem inclined to use. This is right after WWI and the effect of that war on the survivors is part of the story. Ibbotson was a native of Vienna who settled in England herself so she brings all of her eastern European insight into her novels. This resembles a delightful fairy tale but there is no paranormal or fantasy aspect to it.

Anna Grazinsky is a member of the Russian aristocracy, or White Russians, during the Russian Revolution. Her family is forced to flee from their comfortable life in Russia to England, where they are safe from the revolutionaries. But in England, the Grazinskys are left with nothing. Anna has a very resilient spirit, and instead of moping around and wishing for her old life, she is grateful for the safety of her family and secretly takes a job as a maid so that her little brother can still attend school. With her take-charge attitude, Anna proves that not all rich girls are snobby brats, like modern heiresses lead us to believe.

While many of the servants at the Westerholme residence are skeptical of the new foreign girl, Anna quickly charms her way into their hearts. With her deep curtsies, bright smile, and cheerful demeanor, Anna is beloved by all. She does each task assigned to her as best she can, never slacking on the job.

When the young and handsome Earl of Westerholme returns home from World War I, Anna is immediately drawn to him. And it seems that he feels a similar attraction to her. But Anna's identity as a countess is still a secret, and she does not have the social standing that she once held in Russia. Plus, the Earl is already engaged to the beautiful but vicious Muriel Hardwicke. Muriel nursed Earl Rupert back to health when he was wounded in the war, and he proposed to her. But that was before he met Anna.

In the weeks leading up to the wedding, Muriel begins to take over the Westerholme household, arbitrarily firing servants that do not fit in with her vision for Westerholme. None of the servants or neighbors are fond of Muriel, and as the wedding date approaches, all of Rupert's friends and family are leery of the impending marriage.

At the costume ball thrown prior to the wedding, Anna's true identity as a countess is revealed, and Anna and Rupert dance the night away. Everyone can see that they are a perfect couple, but can Rupert and Anna come to terms with their feelings for each other before his marriage to Muriel?

Although A COUNTESS BELOW STAIRS has a very fairytale-like romantic plot, Anna is far from the typical princess. She has a feisty spirit and genuinely fun personality that immediately draws you in. Eva Ibbotson does a great job in breathing life into the generic fairytale plot. Anna's story is very similar to what much of the Russian aristocracy experienced during the communist revolution, and Ibbotson shows that even though life is unpredictable and rarely kind, if you embrace all opportunities and make the most of your situation, you will find happiness.

Reviewed by: Amber Gibson

Anna and her family flee war torn Russia during the revolution to seek salvation in England, leaving behind the riches they knew as members of the extended Russian royal family. Many of the former aristocracy of Russia settle down as servants to the British gentry, and Anna decides to take a job as serving girl so that her brother can go to school. She doesn't tell her family her plans, as her brother would refuse to go to school if he knew she had to work as a servant to keep him there. At the new manor house, everyone can tell that Anna is not of servant stock, but with a warm smile and deep courtesy (and armed with a very outdated housekeeper's guide), she manages to win her way into a job and quickly shows that it doesn't matter what her breeding, she can and will work hard.

Once at the manor house, she meets the young earl for whom she works and of course love is in the air. Unfortunately, he has brought a fiancée home from the war with him, a young woman named Muriel who is determined to make the world a perfect place through eugenics, which is the practice of selective breeding (see extras for more details). A love triangle ensues, but it's not hard to tell who will end up with whom, as the heroine always gets the guy in a tale like this.

This book was one of those predictable, fluffy books that is still somehow a charm to read because of the language and characters. The heroine is too good, the rival is too evil and silly, but I found myself enjoying every page anyway. The portrayal of Russian royalty on the run from the Russian Revolution is absolutely believable, and Ibbotson's descriptions make the world come alive. Russian history and culture are things I never really studied, but have always been interested in, so I found the book fascinating on that factor alone.

A cozy book, A Countess Below Stairs is rather predictable and will appeal to readers of Meg Cabot and Sharon Shinn. Setting and descriptions will draw the reader away for a few hours as they are immersed in post WWI England and the manor house's society. Plotwise, this book is nothing extraordinary, a fairytale mixed with reality, and it's not a fantasy book in the most pure sense. It's more along the lines of Ever After or Just Ella - explaining a classic fairytale with how it could have happened in a world without obvious magic.

Anna is an adorable character, and you could never wish her ill will, but she also strikes me as a little too good. A few of the characters love to talk about her glowing aura, and Anna is set up as the kind of person you only meet once or twice in your life, the kind of girl so utterly nice that you can't help but dislike her because you look so horrible in comparison. Other reviewers describe her as feisty, but I simply can't see where they would get that from. She just accepts everything that happens and moves on with her life, whether it's in a palace or servants' quarters. A bit too much like Disney's Cinderella for me to truly care about her.

My biggest problems with this book were its predictable nature (sometimes it was a bit too obvious) and the main villainess, Muriel, the fiancée. Now, I think she could have been a believable character, and the motivation of eugenics and wanting to create a perfect world could have worked, yet there was no reason to empathize with her, and I didn't feel the reader could find a common ground with her or her beliefs. Petty and jealous, the villainess was set up to be the exact opposite of the heroine, but not in a well developed way. It's just another love triangle where there is only one obvious choice and the hero/ine spends waay too much time debating over a choice they will obviously make in the end without regret.

I read "a countess below stairs" on a light-reading binge and while I did have fun with it, ultimately I found it slightly dissatisfying. I think it's telling that the most absorbing passages were those dealing with the hardships the immigrants endured and how they coped with them, and that these are only a tiny percentage of the story.

There were some truly two-dimensional antagonists to the heroine that I almost felt sorry for simply because Ms. Ibbotson apparently cared too little for them to give them actual lives.

The heroine is puzzlingly charming for a bona-fide mary jane. She can do no wrong, is always candy-dipped-beautiful, and even the hero ought to be sick of her by the end of the book, but he's not, and strangely, neither was I, though I longed for her to get into a genuine scrape or two. Everything falls into her lap; romance, peer-respect, job skills, removal of the only real "villain", presumably on the strength of her inner beauty, while there is a distinct lack of struggle on her part.

If you enjoy light romance and period genre writing then there is no reason you won't get some hours of good escape out of this story. The writing is well above the stuff that is usually peddled to this market, at least on the surface.

Anna, despite her lavish upbringing, has always been a mild and very well mannered child with endless opportunities for the future. But then came the Russian Revolution, and with her father dead and their family betrayed and left penniless, Anna, her mother, and her younger brother flee Russia and head to England to live with Anna's English nanny, Miss Pinfold. But Anna is restless there, and without anything to do, and resolves to get a job as a serving maid, much to Miss Pinfold's horror.

But Anna is not to be dissuaded. She takes a position at the Westerholme estate to help with the preparations for the return of the estate's young earl, Rupert, who is to arrive with his fiancé. It is here that Anna enchants the entire Westerholme estate, from the animals to the butler to the Earl himself. But Anna is determined to keep her previous status a secret, something that is becoming harder to do as the wedding preparations progress and the bride's true colors begin to show.

Subtly humorous, ironic, and utterly captivating, Eva Ibbotson is one of those rare and wonderful authors that can construct a story so well, each reader--as reluctant as they may be--cannot help but find themselves completely charmed and enthralled. A Countess Below Stairs is no exception. Each of the numerous and colorful characters is presented in such a way so that you feel like you know them intimately, making for a more meaningful and enjoyable read. The novel is full of historical facts and tidbits of information, but rather than detract from the reading experience, they add just the right touch of seriousness. Though at first this novel might seem predictable, Ibbotson cleverly fools the reader, giving them an amusing, rewarding, and completely unforgettable ending.


[...]

This is such a beautiful book. It and 'The Morning Gift' are Eva's best books. Unfortunately I haven't found it in English anywhere and have only read it in German, but I think the beauty of the story crosses the language barrier. I know the 'evil' fiancee is a cliche, but we are willing her, wishing for her to be evil. This is a fairytale given a more believable setting.

COUNTESS BELOW STAIRS is the kind of book that stays with you for years. Beautifully written with a great plot, it is one marvelously happy adventure. You will root unconditionally for the heroine, hiss the villain, and fall in love yourself with the hero and his dog. What more could any romance lover want? What a shame COUNTESS hasn't been re-printed yet in paperback. A word of warning: Do not lend your copy to anyone - not your best friend, not your mother! I lent mine to someone and *never* saw it again. If I ever find another copy, I'm locking it up!

Oh how I loved, loved, loved this book! The emotional story of Anna was a joy to read. So much so that I actually read it overnight - I couldn't put it down. I was mesmerized by Anna's touching story - how she overcame hardship - was actually living through hardship - but managed to find love - but didn't know she found it until it was right in her face. The story played out like a seduction of emotion - it is very well written. The book has a lot of depth and instead of being just a romance, it's also a story about family and the ties that bind us all together. It's a wonderful story that you'll be glad to have picked up.

I enjoyed reading A Countess Below Stairs and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a fun, fast read. I picked it up as a YA book, although I don't really see why it wouldn't be considered an adult romance (except no sex, perhaps that is the reason).

At times the heroine was a little too good. I would have liked to see her less perfect and more human. I loved the villianess, she was evil, but evil with a reason. I saw the ending coming from almost page one. But since the journey was enjoyable and there were several twists and turns that surprised me, I won't hold it against the writer.