Customer Reviews

Love and War: An Upstairs Downstairs Saga

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I had to force myself to finish this novel, which is never a good thing. The book is not long, but the pace is draggy, and with a plot and characters as dry and unexciting as these, it was a definite chore to finish LOVE AND WAR.

I'm an unashamed lover of fiction and non-fiction about Edwardian-era aristocrat and servant classes, with the First World War thrown into the mix. That's what attracted me to LOVE AND WAR in the first place. But maybe all that reading has given me too much familiarity with the time period. It also makes it difficult for me to forgive a novelist who just doesn't have the writing chops to bring off a touching love story, or is too weak a writer to create a believable, albeit fictionalized, 1910's atmosphere and background for her characters.

I think many authors who try to use this period of time totally miss the mark. Ms. Herries uses what I can only term 'stock characters' of masters and servants - for example, the hidebound aristocratic parents; the devoted family butler; the aristocrat son who goes reluctantly but dutifully to war, and the servant girl who's on the move away from her class. And she uses stock situations, like the potential love affair that's hinted to happen between the last two (in the next installment of this trilogy). And then the author throws in some bare 'stock' about the First World War, such as army superiors who are cruel to the main characters, or don't know their arse from their elbow in conducting the war, and that trenches are crappy places to be, what with the cold and mud.

Of course, many of these things are based in fact, but the writer who chooses to re-use them fictionally needs to bring something new to the table - fresh nuances, emotional resonance - BELIEVABLITY. Otherwise, it's all just (at least for me): been there, read that.

I don't knock Ms. Herries for trying to write something of her own about a family and its servants during the First World War, but I do knock her for being un-original, unmemorable, and just really dull. It doesn't help that the writing doesn't 'flow' at all. It's flat as a pancake and oddly abrupt at times, lacking gracefulness.

Also, I have to mention that I was immediately struck by the odd fact that she seems to have borrowed a little from the Poldark series by Winston Graham when it comes to surnames for her characters, particularly Carne and Trenwith. One name I might have overlooked - but two? And why use Rose for the name of the maid (shades of Rose the house parlourmaid from the old TV serial, Upstairs, Downstairs)?