Snobs FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
First-time novelist Julian Fellowes, who wrote the screenplay for Gosford Park, here shines his literary light on the quirky, exasperating, yet enchanting world of the English aristocracy and the subtle distinctions that set its denizens apart from the lesser mortals of the mere upper middle class.
Snobs is narrated by a young, vaguely struggling actor who was born into the world of stately manors and bumbling, idiosyncratic peers. At Ascot, he introduces his beautiful but more common friend Edith to Charles, current Earl Broughton and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. Charles falls in love, and while Edith does not, she cannot quite render herself impervious to the attractions of becoming a countess and leaving her job as a clerk. So, they marry. Inexorably, Edith discovers that the charms of big houses and myriad social privileges don't always bring happiness. And when a company of actors -- led by the handsome but vacuous Simon -- arrives to shoot some footage at Broughton Hall, Edith grabs at the chance to live a more exciting life.
Fellowes evokes the spirit of Evelyn Waugh and other Bright Young Things in this clever, relentlessly funny send-up of the delicately stratified milieu of the English nobility -- a carefully cloistered and oddly captivating world. (Spring 2005 Selection)
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Snobs is narrated by a journeyman actor who moves comfortably among the upper classes, while chronicling their foibles. And what a tale he has to tell." "Edith Lavery, the attractive only child of a moderately successful accountant and his social-climbing wife, earns a living answering the telephone in a fashionable Chelsea estate agent. While visiting his parents' house as a member of the public, she meets Charles Broughton, Earl 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 she thinks goes with it?" Partaking in events and never shy of commenting is Charles Broughton's mother, the shrewd Lady Uckfield, known to her friends as 'Googie'. Edith, she decides, is a young woman on the make. And when a television company descends on Broughton Hall to make a period drama. 'Googie's' worst fears are fully justified.
FROM THE CRITICS
Jonathan Ames - The New York Times
When you read a book, you're lost in time. All the more reason to read Snobs. It will distract you pleasantly. It's like a visit to an English country estate: breezy, beautiful and charming.
The New Yorker
Fellowes, a late bloomer who wrote the script for “Gosford Park,” again portrays the British upper class in his début novel. One Edith Lavery marries up, snagging the Earl of Broughton, a man who lives for his country estates and thanks his wife after each of their brief sexual encounters. Edith soon takes up with a handsome actor and runs for cover from her mother-in-law, the formidable Googie. The polite firefights that ensue are very readable, but their presentation is somewhat muddled. Fellowes, who, the dust jacket reveals, has a son named Peregrine and a dachshund named Fudge, may identify too closely with this social stratum. Although he convincingly portrays the habits of the entitled, they escape the skewering that the title leads us to expect. The result is a watered-down satire that eventually becomes an apologia for Edwardian England, where everyone knew his place and no one was tacky.
Publishers Weekly
Wodehouse gets a modern twist in this brilliantly acerbic tale of snobbery and marital tomfoolery in 1990s London. Our nameless protagonist, a jovial, perceptive sort of 30-something fellow hanging affably about the fringes of society, introduces his middle-class but sleek and beautiful friend Edith Lavery to the earnest but dull Lord Charles Broughton. Much to the dismay of "civilized" society, Charles falls in love and proposes to the social-climbing but largely indifferent Edith. Even after she is married, Edith is snubbed and humiliated at every turn (in the slyest, politest possible way, of course), until she moves out in a huff with her married lover, Simon Russell, an actor/ego-on-legs who is eating up the publicity that comes with being seen with a countess and eager for this entr e into society (he doesn't realize Edith has been cast into the societal dung heap). To Edith's consternation, the glittering world of theater turns out to be just as small-minded and dull as that of society, with the added disadvantage of it not involving much money. Gossipy and dishy, this debut by the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Gosford Park is a merciless and hilarious sendup of snobbery and social jealousy, revealing the pettiness and self-absorption of both the envious and the envied. Agent, Cathy King at ICM (U.K.). (Feb. 10) Forecast: Fellowes's satire of the English class system, a bestseller in the U.K., translates well for American readers. Anglophiles in particular will be in Brit-hit heaven. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Fellowes, who won the 2001 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Gosford Park, gives readers another glimpse into life among the upper classes in this delightfully satirical tale of the blond and beautiful Edith Lavery. Desperate and on the brink of turning 30, she chooses a husband for his money and status and almost immediately regrets her decision, as Charles turns out to be decent and honorable but totally boring (in and out of bed). The narrator, an actor friend of the social-climbing bride, describes Edith's growing frustration with married life and her ill-advised decision to run off with a sexier man, only to discover that her old life held many charms-not the least of which was oodles of money and parties at Ascot. What's a girl to do? The satire is biting but not distasteful, and Fellowes offers up a host of interesting characters-especially Googie, Edith's aristocratic mother-in-law, who would make a great subject for a novel-plus an insider's view of England's class system. Highly recommended wherever British fiction is popular. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/04.]-Nancy Pearl, formerly with Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An archly amusing first novel that returns to the territory Fellowes staked out in his Oscar-winning screenplay for Gosford Park: class snobbery among England's aristocrats and arrivistes. This story of "a latter-day Cinderella" couldn't be simpler. Egged on by her rapacious mother, estate agent Edith Lavery sets her sights on an available earl, lands him, leaves him for a dishy actor of no great eminence, and then wonders whether she wasn't better off surrounded by a world that never accepted her as one of its own and a husband considerably slower and stupider than she is. Nor are the characters especially compelling; the nameless narrator, a well-born actor who floats through the tale as a suspiciously useful confidant and omniscient intelligence, is particularly devoid of interest, even when he's becoming a husband and father. The distinction of the novel is in its practiced eye for class distinctions (e.g., "that fatal, diffident graciousness that marks the successful social climber") and the long-bred behavior that keeps the aristocracy tethered in place despite the determined assault of numberless parvenus (so that the phrase "'not quite a gentleman'" becomes "the stock response to original thought"). Edith's tug-of-war with her quietly iron-willed mother-in-law, Marchioness Uckfield, over the dull but invincibly goodhearted Charles Broughton stands out from the narrator's tireless commentary, but the commentary itself, as patient and tireless as Trollope's in recording tiny social slights and oversights, is the real treat here. If you can call it a treat, since Fellowes's merciless dissection of the snobs he adores, unfolding in a series of brilliantly epigrammatic paragraphs, isin cumulative doses tiresomely repetitious, even boring, in its insights. A wonderful commonplace book of wit and wisdom on snobs and aspiring snobs-there are no former snobs-disguised as a novel that's perhaps both too rich and too dry to take in all at a sitting. Author tour. Agent: Susan Howe/Orion
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