Cluny Brown

Cluny Brown / Margery Sharp
NY: Open Road Media, 2018, c1944
254 p.

After my last experience with The Nutmeg Tree, I quickly moved on to Cluny Brown, another audiobook read by Anna Parker-Naples. This narrator is perfect for these books, as she has the character nuances down, able to switch between accents and tones of voice subtly and appropriately - it makes listening so easy to follow along with! 

This book isn't quite so frothy and fun as the last; it's not set on holiday in the French countryside, rather, it follows the motherless, rather gauche Cluny Brown as she makes her way in the world from her upbringing with her Uncle, a plumber in London. 

Cluny gets herself into situations, mostly because she doesn't recognize when people's intentions are not as innocent as her own. And she has no sense of her place in the class system; she takes herself to tea at the Ritz, and goes to a single gentleman's home to fix his sink for him. Her Uncle Arn despairs of her - he's conventional and doesn't know what to do with her. So, he finds her a solid, respectable position in service at Friars Carmel, in Devon. 

Cluny's never been in service, she's barely been in the countryside. But she takes to her new job as philosophically as she does to everything. However, the shining light for her is that she takes the neighbour's dog out on her afternoons off. 

Meanwhile, Lord and Lady Carmel have a son, a dashing one that comes home with a couple of friends, trailing a Polish expat along with them. Mr. Belinski is a little fussy, a little charming, and because he's not English he talks to parlourmaids. I enjoyed the way that Sharp plays with these characters; someone more unimaginative might have tried to create a link between Andrew Carmel and Cluny, but Sharp doesn't go that far. Cluny has a suitor, the town's pharmacist. But nothing is ever what it seems with Cluny. 

I enjoyed this one for the look at the shifting sands of class and society in the 30s in England. Servants are scarce, there are lapses in social expectations, and there is room for Cluny to slide between the expectations for someone 'like her'. It was interesting in many ways, but felt a little pointed, on the edge of cynical here and there. I did appreciate the writing, and the way that Sharp didn't take the expected or easy option in any of the storytelling. This kept me on my toes, and there was lots to enjoy. Some of the characters were a bit broadly drawn, but overall it was worth reading. And definitely worth listening to in this rendition.