Fiennders Keepers

by Jean Marsh

Book Overview

One of the coauthors of the Emmy award-winning Upstairs, Downstairs delivers an extraordinarily gripping novel of emotional and social change in turn-of-the century England. At Fiennders Abbey, a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031215528X
• ISBN13: 9780312155285
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 408 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Memorabe but Americans will find it hard to relate to

In 1878 England, the aristocratic Fiennders family employs the Bowden family in various estate jobs. When their teenage children show signs of falling in love with each other, the matriarchs of both families step in and separate the pair. Fourteen years old Mary Bowden is married off to the local blacksmith. Richard Fiennders eventually weds an Earl's daughter. ...... Marriages to other people, becoming parents, leading separate lives, and two decades apart fail to sever their love for each other. However, after twenty years apart, can these two individuals consummate their love for each other and live happily ever after? ..... Most readers will find the novel moves too slowly on the order of some of the more gentile and literary PBS offerings. Though the characterizations are brilliantly portrayed, the English class distinctions and related mores will mean absolutely nothing to most readers. The ending also does not seem to belong to the rest of the story. However, for those who enjoy a novel that is a veddy British social class tale, this is the book to read because fans of that genre will remember the story line for a long time. .......Harriet Klausner