Julian Fellowes wrote the script for Gosford Park, though why I’m telling you that I don’t know, since I’ve never seen the movie. Skip the movie: read this novel. It’s absolutely hilarious. Snobs is about a blue-blood actor who runs around among the upper classes in England and, in the process, introduces his friend Edith to an earl. And Edith marries the earl! If this novel was a romance, the whole thing might end there…but it’s not. Before long Edith is married and bored, and along comes an actor named Simon, with a beautiful chin and a roguish face. Disaster! Except it’s all such incredibly funny disaster, and so ironically put, that you enjoy every moment of it.
So described, Snobs sounds like an ironic take-down of modern life – and so it is. But the novel surprised me. It’s also the story of a true, fierce and abiding love, the kind that each of us would be glad to brush up against.
One Comment
Don’t skip the movie!! The same urge that makes me re-read all of Julia Quinn’s books and yours delights in re-watching Gosford Park. Add in all those amazing British actors (Helen Mirren, Eileen Atkins, Stephen Fry, Alan Bates, Derek Jacobi, Clive Owen, Emily Watson…and I could go on!), if you’re any kind of Anglophile you will nearly swoon with pleasure at watching them work. Do check it out, as I will the book reviewed, since a review from you puts on my Probably Buy list, and “screenwriter of Gosford Park” puts in on the GO NOW AND BUY! List.