One of the many, many benefits of my old style of library-going was that I really love book sampling. In the evening before bedtime, I would climb into bed with five or six books and start sampling them to get a sense of which one I should read first. I’d read the first twenty or so pages of each, and toss them over the side of the bed if they displeased me. Sampling books in bed is lovely. I did it recently with the largest batch of desirable books I have ever managed to procure from the library in New York, and the big winner of my book sampling was The Observations, a book to which I have been weirdly resistant in the same way that I am nearly always resistant to historical fiction.

The Observations is about a Victorian Irish girl called Bessy who takes a job as a maid in a manor house near Edinburgh. The mistress of the house, Arabella Reid, is generally kind, though she sometimes acts in ways that Bessy can’t understand — angry one second and kind the next; asking Bessy to sit down and stand up, sit and stand, sit and stand, until Bessy refuses to go on. Bewildered, but enjoying the attention, Bessy becomes devoted to her mistress. When she discovers that she’s the subject of Arabella’s study of the behavior of house maids, she comes up with a plan for revenge. What begins as a silly prank spins out of Bessy’s control INTO MADNESS.

MADNESS!

Victorians and MADNESS!

(Just wanted to make sure y’all know what’s going on in this book.)

I had a slightly grumbly mindset when I started The Observations, because of my aforementioned, inexplicable mistrust of historical fiction even when a bunch of people have said it is good and even when it is set in a time period I like (wooooo Victorians!) and even when it deals with elements of the time period that are of particular interest to me (VICTORIAN MADNESS!!!!). But it won me over. The best thing about the book is Bessy’s narrative voice. She is funny and pert and a little unreliable, and although she can take care of herself and talks tough, you can see the cracks in her facade.

I’ve probably overstated the role that MADNESS plays in this book, but only because, you know. I like MADNESS in Victorian novels. If you like MADNESS too, this book could be for you! And even if you don’t, Bessy’s narration is so enjoyable that you will probably like it anyway.

My one complaint is that the ending felt too pat. Oh how I hate an unwarrantedly optimistic ending! And that’s what this ending felt like. It wasn’t, like, happy. You would be hard-pressed to call it a happy ending. Some grim things occur. Some grim revelations are revealed. But still the ending made me feel like the author was asking me to be happier than I wanted to be. I was rendered contrary by this. I was all like, Quit it, Jane Harris! I’ll feel how I want to feel!

Other reviews are findable here! I wish I could remember who recommended The Observations to me in the first place, so that I could say thank you. I have been intending to read it forever and ever, and at last I finally did.

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Don’t call me a fairy.  We don’t like to be called fairies anymore….I am a changeling – a word that describes within its own name what we are bound and intended to do.  We kidnap a human child and replace him or her with one of our own.  The hobgoblin becomes the child, and the child becomes a hobgoblin.  Not any boy or girl will do, but only those rare souls baffled by their young lives or attuned to the weeping troubles of this world.  The changelings select carefully, for such opportunities might come along only once a decade or so.  A child who becomes part of our society might have to wait a century before his turn in the cycle arrives, when he can become a changeling and reenter the human world.

Recommended by: A Life in Books

The Stolen Child is about the lives of the changeling who takes the place of Henry Day in the human world, and the child who becomes Aniday in the changeling world.  They are both writing.  It is quite cool.

There are so many things you could do wrong with a plot like this, and Mr. Donohue steers clear of most of these things; or if he doesn’t quite steer clear of them, he has the excellent sense not to linger on them.  Like: Henry Day in the human world becomes paranoid and insane (but just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you).  I think insanity must be so much more fun to write about than to read about.  I am not a fan of crazy person stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” being an exception (but it is brief!), so I was glad that he didn’t properly Descend Into Madness.  I was also glad that the whole plotline of the fairies frantically trying to find a place to live didn’t go on for too long, because it got boring fastishly.

This wasn’t one of those books that you can’t put down – unlike with Looking for Alaska, I had no problem closing this book at the end of a chapter and going to sleep – but it had its own appeal.  It was somewhat wistful, which I am in favor of, and although the fairies could easily have been soulless and aggravating (pitfall alert! and well played, Mr. Donohue), in the end they were endearing and melancholy.

Actually melancholy is a good word.  This is a melancholy book.  It creates a mood.  Now I am melancholy. But I liked this book.

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