Undermajordomo Minor

DeWitt’s disappointing follow-up to the much-acclaimed “The Sisters Brothers” seems to be all style with little substance. The published reviews were encouraging, but, alas, proved to be overly enthusiastic. With the exception of the title character — Lucy Minor — there was little character development or attention to coherent plotting in this messy attempt at genre bending. On the surface, it was a gothic fairy tale with notes of adventure, romance and touches of magical realism, but most of the plot was just silly and too fragmented to take seriously as literature. Most of the action was contrived and telegraphed long before it occurred. Lucy — I had a chronic problem visualizing a person with this name as male — was show more naïve, deceitful and flippant, making him difficult to really care about. The other characters were quite eccentric, which made them somewhat interesting, but so superficial that they seemed like cartoon characters included to add a backdrop for Lucy to show off his cleverness. Rationales for their actions and beliefs were almost totally absent from the narrative. The baroness sums up my reaction to this novel when she tells Lucy: “I for one find it an annoyance when a story doesn’t do what it’s meant to do. Would you not find yourself resentful at the promise of an entertainment unfulfilled?” Yes, definitely! show less

Patrick DeWitt's 2015 novel “ Undermajordomo Minor” suits its title. It's cute, charming, unconventional and fun. Except for the train that passes through the novel regularly, the story could take place at any time in the past thousand years or so. It all feels like a fable or fairy tale, like something from the Dark Ages.

Lucien Minor, called Lucy, is a young man who feels out of place in his own hometown, so he accepts a position at a baron's castle as an undermajordomo, without having a clue about what the job entails.

It turns out that the baron is quite mad, given to roaming the castle at night and eating live rats. Yet each day he writes a love letter to the baroness, who left him, and it becomes Lucy's job to hand that letter show more to the engineer as the train flies by each morning. That is, until one day the engineer carries a reply: the baroness is returning home. That means restoring both the castle and its baron to dignity and respectability.

Meanwhile Lucy finds his own true love, Klara, a lovely girl who also happens to be pursued by a giant warrior, whose own true love happens to be fighting a nonsensical, never-ending war. When separated from Klara. Lucy begins to understand what happens to the baron when the baroness is away.

Hardly anyone in the story can talk in a straight line, which becomes frustrating for Lucy but delightful for the reader. The conversations are great fun even if they often go nowhere. Lucy witnesses an orgy, confronts the giant and falls into a Very Large Hole. Anyone who loves “The Princess Bride,” which is just about everybody, should love DeWitt's novel. show less

Lucien Minor isn’t having such a good life. A severe illness has him on death’s door but his father walks through it in his stead. The love of his life (so far) is engaged to another, someone considerably larger than Lucy. And his self-serving lie that might have sown discord between them has backfired. It’s a good thing he is leaving town soon to take up the position of Undermajordomo at the nearby castle of Baron Von Aux. Unfortunately the Baron is mad, which has its dangers. And even when he isn’t mad, he and his friends are substantially depraved. It hardly seems likely that Lucy will find happiness in his new surroundings. But he does. For a time.

Patrick DeWitt writes with a beguilingly simple style. His dialogue borders on show more Beckett. The absurdist comedy that permeates the book is a thin surface over sadness and disappointment, love found and lost, and the veil between thought and violence. The reader might easily feel lost in this unnamed country and time. But the lilting style pulls you along and you find, in no time, that you’ve completed the book. All is not right with the world, but at least Lucy has a direction and a clue as to where his happiness lies. I enjoyed the book much more than I expected to and that’s enough warrant to gently recommend it to others. show less

The plot and way the story is told is delightful, very arch and amusing and old-fashioned in a way that made me think of The Sisters Brothers (although perhaps that could be chalked up to the fact that Dan Stiles designed the jackets of both books, in the editions that I have). The only thing I really didn’t like was the orgy scene. It was completely unexpected, quite crude details, and I happened to be reading this book on the bus, which was really embarrassing. On the plus side, this has basically pushed French Exit to second place in my overall Patrick deWitt ranking.

from James:

If a majordomo is the manager of the estate, then his assistant could be called the Under-majordomo and if his last name is Minor, he would be Undermajordomo Minor. deWitt obviously likes titles that you have to puzzle over. The Sisters Brothers is another. That alone gives you some idea of the type of books he writes: they're witty and entertaining yearns, but not silly or easily dismissed.

The story has the feel of a fairytale askew. Lucien Minor is a young man when he leaves home after being offered a placement at a castle. He makes friends, gets a puppy, finds love and becomes embroiled in the affairs of the house and village. Along the way he learns of the man he was hired to replace and tries not to re-create his fate.

If show more you like seemingly-absurd yet serious novels that never fail to entertain, give Patrick deWitt a twirl. show less

Totally unlike The Sisters Brothers, though the quirkiness is still there. Some great thoughts on identity and taking responsibility for one's own life (most of the characters just stay in their life regardless of how bored they are, but the protagonist has an instinct for survival and "progress"), and of course what it means to love. There's an element of magical realism and the tone of the book is akin to a fairytale -- Grimm's style. The writing style is amazing -- concise, terse, and captivating. I love it! There's one scene that comes out of left field and is so off-the-wall strange but told with such matter-of-factness that I wasn't sure I was reading it right, but I was. Where did it come from? Totally bizarre, but makes the book show more that much more memorable. don't read this one if you love The Sisters Brothers; read it if you like deWitt's writing style and quirkiness and want good literature. show less

I'm not familiar with deWitt's earlier work, so can't make comparisons, but my general feeling about Undermajrdomo Minor is that it's strongly reminiscent of a Wes Anderson film with the same oddball characters, dry and strangely stilted dialogue and a plot that never makes a lot of sense. Some readers are going to love it, some will hate it, many will be tempted to say, "Buh? I don't get it."

A picaresque novel, it follows the adventures of Lucien "Lucy" Minor, a compulsive liar and coward, as he attempts to make his way in the world. He takes the job of Undermajordomo at the castle of Baron von Aux, a weird and forbidding place with strange rules such as, be in your room by ten at night, and always lock yourself in. Um, why? asks Lucy. show more And the answer is: because.

He soon finds out why when he meets the Baron, filthy and naked, eating a rat he's just killed barehanded, which pretty much ensures that Lucy will never forget to lock his door.

For all his faults, Lucy has a good deal of charm, and he makes friends fairly easily. To be honest, it's not difficult in the castle, or in the town which is surrounded by two armies that regularly battle on the outskirts. He makes friends with a pair of thieves, Memel and Mewe, and falls in love with Katja, Memel's daughter and Mewe's sister. It's his love for Katja which propels much of the last half of the novel, and sees him embarking on a new adventure by the end of the book.

I can't honestly say why I enjoyed the book, or even why I finished it. Every time I picked it up, I thought, "Do I really want to do this?" Obviously I did, in spite of what felt like a plot so thin you could see through it. But in the end it didn't matter. Like a Wes Anderson film, the parts proved to be far greater than their sum, and just as enticing, at least to me. The dialogue, hilariously stilted, (everyone speaks in the same voice) threw me out of the story repeatedly, and yet I enjoyed it. The characters, awful as they sometimes seemed, were still charming and funny. It's a dark, dryly funny story, violent, and weirdly sexual. show less