As
a recent fan of Downton Abbey, I feel the need to transition from the show and
genre back to real life (the new season doesn’t start until September). When I
came across a Hellogiggles post that recommended Wentworth Hall by Abby Grahame for
fans of Downton Abbey, I was intrigued and I picked it up.
What
a mistake.
My
first tip off should have been that the blog post author said she had to finish
watching Friday Night Lights. I’ve never actually seen more than 3 episodes of
Friday Night Lights, but from what I’ve seen, it’s not really my type of show.
High school, drama, high school drama, mediocre acting and mediocre writing are
all things I try to avoid, especially in my TV shows.
Edit: I apologize for
the Friday Night Lights prejudice; The Writer’s Guild of America listed Friday
Night Lights in spot 22 on their list of 101 best written TV shows of all
time.
It is also interesting to note that they placed it above Frasier, Friends, SNL,
Modern Family and US Office, which are all shows I count as well written. But
hey, to each their own. I may not like high school football drama, but some
people do.
Secondly, the writer of the post admits to never having seen an episode of Downton Abbey, but from what she’s “gleaned by looking at cast pictures and glancing through Kate Spencer’s recaps, Downton Abbey features pretty dresses, Maggie Smith wearing big, beautiful hats, and scandal.” Maybe that’s what some fans get out of the show, but there is so much more to the show than that! It’s about intrigue, relationships, family, compromise, justice, tricks to get ahead, and there’s a fair amount of fashion in it, too. I like Downton Abbey for the intrigue, the writing, the characters, the acting etc.
Secondly, the writer of the post admits to never having seen an episode of Downton Abbey, but from what she’s “gleaned by looking at cast pictures and glancing through Kate Spencer’s recaps, Downton Abbey features pretty dresses, Maggie Smith wearing big, beautiful hats, and scandal.” Maybe that’s what some fans get out of the show, but there is so much more to the show than that! It’s about intrigue, relationships, family, compromise, justice, tricks to get ahead, and there’s a fair amount of fashion in it, too. I like Downton Abbey for the intrigue, the writing, the characters, the acting etc.
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To be fair, Maggie Smith does wear a lot of hats. And the same expression, apparently. |
Maggie and Lila Darlington are the daughters of a Lord and Lady Darlington, owners of the crumbling Wentworth Hall in Sussex. Maggie is 18 and recently back from a long excursion in Europe. Lila, 16, is disappointed to find out that her older sister has changed from the wild, high-spirited, energetic girl that used to play and get into all kinds of mischief to a cold and reserved “mature” woman. Luckily for Wentworth Hall, which desperately needs money, recently orphaned twins Teddy and Jessica Fitzhugh are coming to stay with the family until they turn 18 and inherit their father’s self-made fortune. Teddy is to be matched with Maggie, but she does not reciprocate his feelings. However, everyone at Wentworth Hall is hiding secrets, some of which are exposed and satirized in a column in the local newspaper.
The
back cover promises secrets and intrigue, but the book only provides the
former. The entire book is just lacking. The characters are two-dimensional and
not very well developed, even to the point of being stereotypes. Grahame half-heartedly
tries to introduce some character development to several of the characters, but
the only part that shows is the half-heartedness. Jessica Fitzhugh is portrayed
as haughty and just plain mean, but then Grahame tries to pass it off as
someone who was set off by the uptight and aristocratic people she met in
London and is proud of her father’s self-earned money. With good writing it is
possible to pull that off, but Grahame misses and it falls flat. It’s as if she
read through the first draft and decided to throw in justification or a
backstory to close up a loophole or add complexity to a character, but it just
isn’t believable. Someone did not spend enough time paying attention in
Creative Writing 202. If she wants to see how a character develops and how
haughtiness can be perceived, she should take a look at Jane Austen’s
Fitzwilliam Darcy or
Emma Woodhouse.
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I need to re-watch this Darcy scene for literary reasons.... |
Then look at the parents! Lord and Lady Darlington don’t have any personality at all. They don’t even come close to their counter-parts in the satirical column because you can’t satirize a person without any personality at all. Teddy is reduced to a wrench thrown in Maggie’s love life (and isn’t even granted a personality), Lila is the stereotypical younger sister who seems to have a crush on almost any man that crosses her path but is ignored by most adults, and the oldest brother Wes is simply a plot device.
The
characters are not only simple, but they are also contradictory. This is even
more of a shame since a character that simple wouldn’t be hard to keep
consistent. Even appearance, the most basic aspect of a character, isn’t
consistent. Maggie is described as having “soft blond hair” on one page and
only a few pages later, Abbey Grahame says that “her dark curls fall free.”
Personalities, I understand, are harder to get down and keep consistent because
humans are complex creatures, but I’m pretty sure you should be able to
remember a hair color. Lila is supposed to be quiet, yet everything she does in
the book screams the opposite. Maggie herself is riddled with inconsistencies,
and not just in hair color. I easily guessed the writer of the column I within
a few paragraphs, not because of my sleuthing skills or the clues hidden in the
book, but because it was the most obvious. And even when it is revealed who
wrote the column, it is inconsistent with that character’s narration of
previous chapters. You can’t write what a character is thinking, then
contradict it later when they’re being viewed from another point of view!
That’s just bad writing.
This book was described as having a
Gossip Girl-esque quality to it in the sense that everyone
has secrets, drama arises, and someone
at the house is anonymously writing a satirical column about the
Darlington family and their drama in the Sussex Gazette. The column
is supposed to be
satirical, but it is outlandishly so and certainly out of taste of 1912. The
scandals promised couldn’t hold a candle to those found on Downton Abbey; they
are all simplistic and are “fixed” much too easily for real life. Not only that,
but like a good murder mystery, there needs to be clues and consistency. When a
maid talks about the baby and its mother to Lord Darlington, she asks if he
could see the loving way the mother looked at and handled the baby. That would
have been fine had there been any evidence for it earlier! In fact, the mother
and the child are hardly shown together and in the rare scenes that they are,
there is no loving manner to be found, even if you squint.
Yup, that's exactly what people in my high school and college looked like. |
After
all the trudging through the beginning and middle, I had hoped the ending would
at least by a welcome respite and be somewhat satisfying. How wrong I was. The
ending is probably one of the most poorly wrapped up endings possible. All the
family’s so-called scandals are revealed at once and only Maggie and Michael’s
storyline is hastily wrapped up in, I kid you not, 19 paragraphs. And I’m being
generous. No one else gets an ending! You never quite find out what happens to
Wentworth Hall or the Fitzhughs, or even more importantly, Nora, Ian, Wes or Lila.
It
also seems like the book was hastily researched, if at all. Did servants in a
house really address their employers and people of the house so informally? Were
pencils so popular and common that a servant would make a grocery list with a
pencil and pad of paper? And how much does the author know about fashion? She
describes fashion in ways that do not appear authentic, but definitely
romanticized. I suppose that is rather nit-picky, like the Jane Austen super-fans
who criticized Pride and Prejudice film adaptation for their fashion,
historical inaccuracies (like Mr. Bingley knocking on and opening Jane’s
bedroom door while she’s sick)or
just plain inconsistencies with the book.
But still. If you’re going to write a book, and you want it to be good, you have to do your research. Fact check, fact check, fact check. Why do you think the New Yorker is so reputable? They have tons of great fact checkers. Then there are some basic editing errors that should have been taken care of. I would like to say that it was due to some decoding or downloading issues when I got the e-book, but sadly, I cannot vouch for that. Due to the book’s quality and other errors, I would not put it past the editor to let some basic grammar and punctuation mistakes slip by as well. I’ve read fanfictions that are written better than this book.
But still. If you’re going to write a book, and you want it to be good, you have to do your research. Fact check, fact check, fact check. Why do you think the New Yorker is so reputable? They have tons of great fact checkers. Then there are some basic editing errors that should have been taken care of. I would like to say that it was due to some decoding or downloading issues when I got the e-book, but sadly, I cannot vouch for that. Due to the book’s quality and other errors, I would not put it past the editor to let some basic grammar and punctuation mistakes slip by as well. I’ve read fanfictions that are written better than this book.
Maybe
that’s exactly what Abby Grahame was going for when she wrote this. Maybe she
didn’t want a great book. It is her first novel, after all. Maybe she wanted a
1910s historical drama that was a mix between Downton Abbey and Gossip Girl. However,
the only thing she got from Downton Abbey was the setting and what she got from
Gossip Girl was the over-the-top drama and an anonymous gossip writer. If you
want to shut off your brain and read a hybrid of Downton Abbey and Gossip Girl
despite my scathing (all right, just unfavorable) review, I would ask why you’re
even reading in the first place. Just go watch Gossip Girl. There are so many
other books that you can benefit from, and they have better writing and better
stories. From the books that I have read, I would say Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal was enjoyable and The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne
(creator of Winnie the Pooh, actually) was recommended to me. Looking at some reviews on
Amazon.com, I think Kate Morton and Julian Fellowes (writer of Downton Abbey)
have some books that are well written and are similar to Downton Abbey. If you
really like classic literature, you could always try Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.
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