Manservant and Maidservant
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pushkin Press
Published:26th May '22
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Horace Lamb runs an austere household with tyrannical force and cruel thrift. His five children shiver through the winter and learn that a fire is not a thing to be taken for granted. Hierarchies are more lightly enforced in the servants' quarters, where Bullivant and Mrs Selden attempt to rein in their young charges. When Horace suddenly turns attentive and caring, the real difficulties begin: the taut order of the household slackens, setting loose old grievances. Her own favourite among her novels, Manservant and Maidservant is Ivy Compton-Burnett at her witty, lacerating best. A ruthless satire of power struggles and petty economies, it exposes the violence and cruelty at the core of Victorian family life.
'Original, artful and elegant... To read her for the first time is a singular experience' - Hilary Mantel
'Shrewd, sly, mordantly funny and magnificently odd, few literary voices are as distinctive, or as entertaining, as Ivy Compton-Burnett's. To see a novel of hers back in print is always a cause for celebration' - Sarah Waters
'Compton-Burnett anatomised primal emotions in a genteel arena: there are shades of Jane Austen here, as well as Pinter and Muriel Spark, but she remains entirely original - funny, shocking, horribly true' - Justine Jordan
'Bonkers... a tightly repressed mania holds sway. Relief takes the form of howls of laughter from the reader' - Geoff Dyer
'She is as much part of our great twentieth-century fictional heritage as Virginia Woolf or Elizabeth Bowen... She writes wonderfully, giving her often ghastly characters mordantly witty lines worthy of Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde' - Guardian
ISBN: 9781782278689
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
320 pages