Margery Sharp (1905–1991)

In the late 1930s, the family of working-class Londoner Cluny Brown decide that she needs to learn to "know her place" and send her off to be trained as a domestic servant at the country pile of the Carmel baronets in Devon. Shenanigans ensue.

Much of Cluny Brown is the kind of light, witty comedy you find many women authors producing in interwar Britain, with our namesake character's naive honesty highlighting many of the absurdities and assumptions of the class system. Some of the characters act in ways that I didn't find entirely convincing—there's a bit of that Wodehousian tendency towards abrupt engagements and so on—but I could roll with it as part of the style of the period. Since Margery Sharp wrote this in the late 40s, however, there's a little bit of melancholy foreshadowing of the war to come which provides an acid that leavens some of the giddier elements.

Where the book worked less well for me was the ending. I can see why Cluny didn't end up with the chemist, because Sharp did her work to show how there was a fundamental incompatibility with their characters. But Cluny being paired off right at the end with Adam Belinski in what we're told is a true love match just didn't convince me at all, and felt dated in a way that many other parts of the book avoided. Yes, I can see that throughout, Sharp is positioning both of them as outsiders in many ways—but you need something beyond thematic similarity to make a couple convincing. Moreover, Belinski is shown throughout the novel to be a relentless womaniser who comes this close to sexually assaulting Betty. Despite what the epilogue says, I think that if Cluny Brown does have a happily-ever-after, it won't be with him.… (more)