There's someone we'd like you to meet. Her name is Bessy Buckley and you're going to love her.
She's the heroine of The Observations, a novel by Jane Harris, now out in paperback. It's set in Scotland in the 1860s and it follows young Bessy as she tries to leave behind her past by taking a job as a servant in a country house. Do we even need to point out that Not All Is As It Seems?
What makes this book so fresh, so engaging, and such a perfect summer page-turner is the character of Bessy herself. Ms. Harris takes the cliche of a merry Irish lass and makes her an utterly memorable narrator. She's funny, earthy, swears in a hilarious vernacular. She has an innocent quality, though innocent she's not. She is, by turns, perceptive and thick-headed, wily and vulnerable.
Fans of Dickens and Wilkie Collins will especially love The Observations, but just about anyone will find Bessy Buckley irresistible.
written on Friday Jul 13, 2007
maid,
manor,
book.
