Name: Manservant and Maidservant
ISBN: 9780940322639

Ivy Compton-Burnett

At once the strangest and most marvelous of Ivy Compton-Burnett's fictions, Manservant and Maidservant has for its subject the domestic life of Horace Lamb, sadist, skinflint, and tyrant. But it is when Horace undergoes an altogether unforeseeable change of heart that the real difficulties begin. Is the repentant master a victim along with the former slave? And how can anyone endure the memory of the wrongs that have been done?"

Manservant and Maidservant

Trever

Although set in Victorian England and written by an author who lived through the Victorian period, there's very little about Manservant and Maidservant that's Victorian. The characters, true, talk like they're all Oscar Wilde, but Compton-Burnett clearly sees right past their facades. Nobody ever means what they say here, and everyone has skeletons in their closets (or out in the open). Although it can get a bit hard to follow if you don't pay attention, Manservant and Maidservant is masterfully executed and clearly had an influence on authors like  Henry Green and possibly  William Gaddis.

Manservant and Maidservant

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