The House at Tyneford

I scooped up Natasha Solomons book, The House at Tyneford (2011), on one of our Costco trips a couple of weeks ago because the sales plug on the cover caught my eye: “Fans of Downton Abbey and Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden will absolutely adore The House at Tyneford.” 

Well, I’m a huge fan of Downton Abbey and I’ve been told I will like The Forgotten Garden, but I didn’t exactly adore this book. It was o.k. It kept me entertained. For the most part though, it was kind of dreary and morose. There was none of the sparkle of Downton Abbey and even less of the addicting intrigue.

The premise of the story was interesting. It is 1938 and Elise Landau is a 19-year-old Jewish girl living in Vienna. Her mother is a famous opera singer and her father a well-known philosophical writer of novels. She has always been taken care of, is somewhat spoiled, and used to parties and champagne. She is not as beautiful, talented, or graceful as her older sister, and this gives her a bit of a complex. In order to keep her safe her parents send her off to England to become a parlour maid. Obviously, she begins her new life resentful and forlorn, but she is transformed when she strikes up a friendship with the son of the master of Tyneford, Kit. The rest of the novel revolves around her romance with Kit, her relationship with her sister (who has fled to California with her husband), and trying to figure out how to rescue her parents from Vienna. 

If you’re going to read this book, be warned, Solomons writing is bloated with description. 

In terms of style, the first page of her novel was an easy indicator of things to come. In-fact, Solomons seems to have copied her style directly from Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 classic, Rebecca. 

Here is a sample of the first couple of paragraphs from Rebecca:

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited. No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden and supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkept, not the drive that we had known.”  

Here is a portion of the opening paragraph of The House at Tyneford:

“When I close my eyes I see Tyneford House. In the darkness as I lay down to sleep, I see the Purebeck stone frontage in the glow of late afternoon. The sunlight glints off the upper windows, and the air is heavy with the scents of magnolia and salt. Ivy clings to the porch archway, and a magpie pecks at the lichen coating a limestone roof tile. Smoke seeps from one of the great chimneystacks, and the leaves on the unfelled lime avenue are May green and cast mottled patterns on the driveway. There are no weeds yet tearing through the lavender and thyme boarders, and the lawn is velvet cropped and rolled in verdant stripes. No bullet holes pockmark the ancient garden wall and the drawing room windows are thrown open, the glass not shattered by shellfire. I see the house as it was then, on the first afternoon.” 

Eerily similar, are they not? I don’t suppose it’s a crime to copy someone else’s style, but by the time I got to the last 50 pages I just wanted to plow through the description of every hill, flower, wave, and cloud so I could get on with the story line. In the end, even though the characters weren't overly lovable and the plot was a bit transparent, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a light weekend read. Just don’t expect anything nearly as tantalizing as Downton Abbey, no matter what the book cover says!