The Servants' Quarters - Hardcover

Freed, Lynn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151012881 ISBN 13: 9780151012886

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 2009

Synopsis

The Servants’ Quarters, a complex and sophisticated love story, evokes a vanishing world of privilege with a Pygmalion twist.

Haunted by phantoms of the Second World War and the Holocaust, young Cressida lives in terror of George Harding, who, severely disfigured, has returned from the front to recover in his family’s stately African home. When he plucks young Cressida’s beautiful mother and her family from financial ruin, establishing them in the old servants’ quarters of his estate, Cressida is swept into a future inexorably bound to his.

In the new setting, she finds that she is, after all, indentured. She is conscripted to enliven George Harding’s nephew, the hopelessly timid Edgar, to make him "wild and daring." And she takes on this task with resentful fury, leading the boy astray and, in the process, learning to manipulate differences in power, class, background, and ambition.

Only slowly does she come to understand that George Harding himself is watching her. And waiting.

About this title

Review:

"Freed delves deep into the morass of sexual and filial love without mitigating complexity, and leads her reader toward insight and understanding with a deft and delicate touch." -- The Washington Post Book World.

"Freed is a beautiful writer, dead-on brilliant, rich in humor, possessing a dark and comforting wisdom." -- Anne Lamott

""The Servant's Quarters" is Lynn Freed's best novel yet. Cressida, a young girl who watches those around her patch up their wounds from the war and carry on with the weight of pretense, is as observant and as wickedly truthful as any Jane Austen character." --Amy Tan

"Freed is a beautiful writer, dead-on brilliant, rich in humor, possessing a dark and comforting wisdom." -- Anne Lamott

""The Servant's Quarters" is Lynn Freed's best novel yet. Cressida, a young girl who watches those around her patch up their wounds from the war and carry on with the weight of pretense, is as observant and as wickedly truthful as any Jane Austen character." --Amy Tan

"Freed is a beautiful writer, dead-on brilliant, rich in humor, possessing a dark and comforting wisdom." -- Anne Lamott

"The Servant's Quarters is Lynn Freed's best novel yet. Cressida, a young girl who watches those around her patch up their wounds from the war and carry on with the weight of pretense, is as observant and as wickedly truthful as any Jane Austen character." --Amy Tan

"Freed is a beautiful writer, dead-on brilliant, rich in humor, possessing a dark and comforting wisdom." -- Anne Lamott

From the Back Cover:

"Freed blends Dickensian musings on class with a Brontė-like love story, set against the backdrop of South Africa after the Holocaust." --San Francisco Chronicle

 

"A story of civilization and savagery, brisk as a strong cup of tea." --O Magazine

 

"The Servant’s Quarters is Lynn Freed’s best novel yet. Cressida, a young girl who watches those around her patch up their wounds from the war and carry on with the weight of pretense, is as observant and as wickedly truthful as any Jane Austen character." ?Amy Tan

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0151012881
• ISBN 13: 9780151012886
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216