Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What a sweet, lovely story, August 1, 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (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.
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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
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disconnection, October 11, 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
More a coming of age story than a paranormal, The Servants tells of the mysterious goings-on in the basement apartment of Mark's new home. His mother is newly remarried, but seriously ill, and Mark hates his stepfather. When he makes the acquaintance of the old lady who has lived "forever" in the lower flat, she shows him the unused rear section of her living quarters, which once upon a time was used by the servants.
Mark is lonely and miserable. As he continues to visit and partake of rock cakes and curiously strong tea with the never named, but wise and enigmatic lady, he begins sneaking into the servants domain. What he experiences there, both literally and figuratively, forms the catalyst for the resolution of this plot. And therein lies the problem.
Author Smith is a competent writer. His descriptions are very effective, filled with sensation and mystery, as are his characters.
But too much of the surrealism, and its connection to the events in the concluding chapter, are left disconcertingly vague. Perhaps I missed something, but the final few pieces of Mark's puzzle will not quite allow themselves to be manipulated into their proper places. The vital connection that would validate the denouement is missing.
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