The Servants (Paperback)

by Michael Marshall Smith (Author)
Key Phrases: master mark, West Pier, Diet Coke, The Meeting Place (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. At the start of Smith's superb, offbeat contemporary fantasy, 11-year-old Mark has moved to Brighton, a decaying English resort town, with his sickly mother and her new husband, David. Mark hates David, hates his parents' divorce and hates Brighton, where he has no friends and little to do. Then the old lady who lives in the tiny apartment beneath David's recently purchased townhouse takes him on a tour of the old servants' quarters. When Mark sneaks into the quarters on his own, he begins to see the long-dead servants at their jobs and realizes that something is seriously wrong. As this secret downstairs world becomes more and more disordered, Mark discovers that its problems are somehow related to his mother's advancing illness. If he can help the servants, he may just be able to save her life. IHG Award–winner Smith (Spares) portrays a child's irrational anger with devastating accuracy, and Mark's visits to the surreal and intensely symbolic world of the servants are powerfully depicted. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
When 11-year-old Mark moves with his ill mother and hated stepfather to the English resort town Brighton, he discovers that their new house holds a secret. In the long unused servants' quarters, the past is alive, and the servants are still at work. At first this orderly world comforts Mark, who hates how his family has fallen apart. He sees signs, however, that the servants' world is also failing, and its disorder is finding its way into his present reality. To restore harmony to his home, Mark has to venture into the servants' quarters and fix what has broken. The realism of both present-day Brighton and its past, rich in period detail, makes the connections between them especially eerie, though it is a leap to believe that Mark, in aiding the servants, eases his mother's cancer. Mark's frustrations and selfishness are in keeping with his age, and he does some believable growing up. Hutley, Krista --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Eos; Reprint edition (September 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006149416X
• ISBN-13: 978-0061494161
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #547,242 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a sweet, lovely story, August 1, 2008

By	Mary Jo DiBella (Rochester, New York USA) - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

I finished this a couple of hours ago, and I've been trying to think of how to review it without giving spoilers...because you do not want spoilers, you want to read this story and see it unfold like a flower in front of you until you smile and cry at the same time.

Mark is not a happy boy. His parents have split up, his mother has remarried, and he's been moved away from his London home and the father he loves. Every day, he does all he can to make the people around him as unhappy as he is.

One day he meets an elderly woman who shows him a secret area underneath his house, a group of rooms that at one time were occupied by the household's servants. Mark senses that there is more to be seen here, and he comes back again and again, each time finding out something more. Clearly there is some supernatural component to the mystery he wants to unravel, some message that is critically imporant for him to understand. As this happens, he discovers additional things about his life that might just make him rethink his opinion of what has happened to him.

At some point I realized what was happening, and it was just slightly before Mark did. It is always so important for the servants to work together for the good of the house they love, isn't it?

What a wonderful book. What a lovely story.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, A "Must" Read, Bound to be Best-Seller, July 30, 2008

By	R. Crane (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

This book was written by an award winning author, and there is no doubt that it is equally deserving of awards. It is superbly written and I could not put it down. It is a story that takes place on several levels at once, but to describe it as simply "another coming of age story" shows a lack of understanding and insight. It is far more than that.

It focuses on an eleven year old boy, Mark, whose mother has recently re-married and is apparently dying of cancer. The hostility the boy feels towards his new stepfather, David, is brilliantly depicted as it colors every thought and motive Mark ascribes to him. He interprets every action his stepfather makes, every word said, as a challenge to his own relationship with his mother, and cannot accept the fact that his parents' marrriage is truly over. When David goes to the supermarket and always brings back only 2 or 3 cans of Diet Coke (never enough for Mark), Mark sees this as another deliberate effort to undermine and belittle him. We learn much later that the reason David brings so few cans of Coke has nothing to do with Mark, but everything to do with David's care and concern for Mark's mother: He has to carry all the groceries several blocks and is carting many huge gallons of water for Mark's mother, unable to carry much else with all the food etc.

At first we see David only through Mark's eyes and Mark's distorted perception of the world around him. But as the story progresses we see David differently, as absolutely devoted to Mark's mother, marrying her, even though he knew she was dying, and spending every waking moment trying to make her happy, even tolerating and being generous towards her increasinly bratty son. As the story evolves, so does the relationship between stepfather and stepson, as Mark gradually comes to understand David. It is beautifully told.

On another level, this is a story that takes place on a paranormal level, which is equally absorbing.

David has moved the family from London to Brighton into an old renovated house. The family lives above the street and below at the basement level, lives a mysterious old woman. Mark is bored to death,daily doing nothing but walking along the seashore and trying to master a skateboard. He meets the old woman who invites him to tea and shows him the back of the basement rooms, which in the old days, used to be servants' quarters, a fact that David does not know.

Mark's curiosity is piqued and he starts surreptiously visiting the rooms and is astounded by what he sees. As much as I would like to reveal more here, I won't spoil the story for you, except to say that with each visit the scene changes and is a terrific metaphor for what is happening with the cancer inside Mark's mother's body.

The ending will bring tears to your eyes.

This book might help children traumatized by divorce and resenting new stepfamilies. It shows how every incident and event can have multiple interpretations. It is also just a wonderful story.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A captivating story with deep meaning, August 7, 2008

By	William Polm "bill197" (Murrieta, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

This is a gripping story that started a bit slowly for me. It took a while for me to get really interested. But after a number of pages, things started getting much more interesting.
The main character is 10-11 years old, and I wondered, Can I really identify with a main character that is that young? The answer is, Yes.

Years ago I learned in my literature classes, and as most of you know, in great literature, as well as poetry and even the graphic arts, there are symbols. The thing about symbols is that they are not simple but instead are usually very complex; what they symbolize and their meaning usually cannot be precisely defined. That is their strength: they leave room for the reader's interpretation, which as with poetry must often be an intuitive one. A right-brain thing.

This story has symbols like that. Who and what exactly is the old lady? As I read, not only did I get drawn into the narrative and the boy's experience, I sensed meaning at the heart of the events. I found my understanding of the characters became clearer and deepened. Yet much of the mystery tantalizingly remains--those symbols and some of the action sequences. Meanwhile, I came upon gems of wisdom that read almost like poetry:
Why was the old lady watching the starlings, since there were so few of them? Because "Somebody must...or they might just fly away. Never come back."
"Sometimes things do change, and that's okay. You go from one place to another, become different to what you were..."
"He thought maybe that was the best you could do with memories, with the way things had been. You couldn't expect to actually walk in them again....Most of the time."

Highly recommended, and intriguing read that becomes part of the reader's experience, and gainfully so.