Troy Chimneys

By Margaret Kennedy

Book Overview

A Regency romance turned on its head: "Tense, touching, human, dire, and funny." --Elizabeth Bowen

First published in 1953, Troy Chimneys masquerades as the private memoirs of Miles Lufton, a minor politician in Regency England. Lufton--wry, worldly, and self-deprecating--recounts the struggle between two selves: the man of feeling and the ruthless social climber. As he maneuvers his way into love and power, the duel between his personalities threatens to undo him.

Kennedy's ingenious construction--an epistolary pastiche of letters, journals, and "found" documents--makes the reader both detective and confidant. The result is a tragicomic confession, a novel of manners with Austenian wit, but one that refuses Austen's consolations. For as Anita Brookner observed, in Kennedy's late style "virtue does not triumph, patience is not rewarded, people do not receive their just deserts."At once playful and penetrating, satirical and poignant, Troy Chimneys is both a brilliant recreation of Regency style and a modern exploration of ambition, duplicity, and moral compromise.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1946022306
• ISBN13: 9781946022301
• Release Date: March 2022
• Publisher: McNally Editions
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Troy Chimneys uses innovative form to speak indirectly, but powerfully, about life choices and moral

This novels combines a diary and letters from two eras in British history to create a novel that captures the changing notion of the individual in the regency period. The main character is caught in an age when "gentleman" is being redefined. The novel explores issues of identity, love, class, morals, and money. It conveys "seize the day" in one of the most compelling, poignant twists of plot that I've read.