Read Online A Countess Below Stairs Generated By Eva Ibbotson Paperback

Ibbotson como autora noté mucho que escribía tanto para adultos como para niños: tiene un lenguaje sencillo pero luminoso.
Tierno pero sin excesivas fantasías, Idealista pero también real, Es un libro muy soñador,  

Anna es un personaje maravilloso, tiene el espíritu de los cuentos rusos, pero también de la cenicienta, y despierta un sentimiento protector en el lector.
El resto de personajes: son todos tan entrañables que cuando aparece la bruja del cuento a fastidiarles me salía mi lado violento.
Es un libro precioso. i havent been able to read a single book in likeyears so naturally today i picked up and finished the secret countess.
AGAIN.

ive read this book liketimes, i dont even know, its absolutely bonkers but just so charming which is exactly the vibe that anna, the titular secret countess, has anyway, it made me feel better today.
thanks eva ibbotson!!!!

tldr this is a very donkeyskin kind of story except shes a russian countess whose family jewels were all stolen and shes taken work below stairs in an old fancy english country house to help get it ready for the Return Of The Stoic And Deeply Sensitive War Hero Earl Who Embodies The Ideal Qualities of British Nobility and his rich as yet undiscoveredly horrible, eugenicist bride to be.
you can guess how it goes from there,

this book is very old fashioned in the sense that it contains a lot of prose and descriptions that would be considered racist or ableist or at least not terribly well informed, and it really should upset me that the earl has an emotional breakdown over the idea of anna cutting her hair and FORBIDS IT bc knowing she has her beautiful luminous cloud of hair will give him one thing to be happy about after the wedding which of course he cant get out of for Reasons and he must have one thing, anna! and yet that whole scene always makes me be like “ HE MUST HAVE ONE THING, ANNA!!!!!!!! romance!!!!!!!!” so basically im Problematic and just be Canceled forever ツ/ whatever its a pandemic and im tired and i love this dumb book This was a sweet, feelgood read, which I was in desperate need of.
I turn to these sort of books when I'm recovering from illness or surgery, You know, those books that are comfort food This is one of them,

Anna, along with other Russian nobility, finds herself among the working class of England after the fall of the Tsar.
Czar I always mix those

up, Anyhow, she is uncomplaining and determined to be happy in her circumstances, Anna is wise enough to know that the answer to most anything can be found in a book, so she embarks upon her new housekeeping endeavor with The Domestic Servants Compendium, by Selena Strickland, tucked into her bag.
She references this massive, three volume tome often in regards to her duties as a maid, much to her below stairs companions' amusement and sometimes irritation.


Now, I loved Anna immediately, Her fellow servants quickly grew to love her, Almost everyone came to adore Anna, Normally, this Mary Sue type business is nauseating for me, I can't quite figure out what makes Anna such an appealing heroine, She's alive and full of life, and her attitude is contagious, She brooks zero nonsense and isn't afraid to be frank about it, all the while being kind, Maybe traditional Mary Sue characters tend to lack passion They also tend to be tragic, and Anna simply is not.


The other displaced Russian characters and their similar perseverance and joy made me want to hang out at their club.
I'd specifically like to spend more time with Prince Sergei, Anna's gorgeous cousin and now taxi driver! The downstairs servants were likewise enjoyable, but I have no desire to join their ranks.
Proom, the butler, was my favorite! Such a sense of loyalty and family below stairs that extends to those living above.
A few beautiful, yet ugly villains to despise, My hate for Murial was honed into something as sharp as I felt for Delores Umbridge!

It's no surprise there's a love story in all this.
While it's a central theme, it's danced around in the story very lightly, Things unfold gradually and are barely hinted at, never overtaking the story or becoming boring, My only disappointment was in Rupert, While I would've had him behave in a less noble and martyrish manner, my real beef was that he gave up on Anna so easily.
Proom had to scheme to get them into the same room, Come on! That is so NOT what a romantic hero does, He was supposed to give up his stupid pride amp go after the girl! It all turned out in the end, but I feel an opportunity was missed for him to act the hero.


stars. Highly recommended. It made me happy.
This story reads like a 'poor girl who really isn't a poor girl meets the young handsome lord and falls in love and lives happily ever after with the guy' kind of fairy tale.
From time to time I have problem suppressing my disbelief but in the end, . . the good writing love how the author describes things and her lovely prose and the reasonable characters and the reasonable romance save this story for me.


I think it is a good story for teenagers, but if you wanted your book to have more to do with Russia and its culture then this book may not suit your taste.
Im so glad The Morning Gift was just a blip in the oeuvre!

This is Ibbotson at her most joyful and witty.
The Secret Countess is more compelling and politically nuanced than Downton, but retains the endearing camaraderie and fierce loyalty that exists below stairs.
It is also wickedly funny,

Anna is a wonderful heroine although her character leans towards the naively optimistic Mary Sue, she is a plucky, hardworking, and genuinely decent person.
As always, its Ibbotsons side characters that really steal the show with their idiosyncrasies and angst, This one also one of the best antagonists of all time meet Muriel: shes a snob, and shes really into eugenics.


There are one or two incidents that might prove somewhat problematic, namely the condoning of one older man who as the servants rather delicately put it is prone to pestering the maids.
The romance for me was also a little lukewarm and all the more frustrating when I know Ibbotson can write some electrifying sexual tension.
I never had a real sense of Ruperts character,

Beautiful and uplifting it gives you a little faith in humanity, Eva Ibbotson wrote five books for adults or young adults that clearly fit together A Countess Below Stairs, The Reluctant Heiress, A Company of Swans, The Morning Gift, and A Song for Summer.
I was strongly considering giving one of themin order to make certain that anyone who follows my reviews discovers just how special I think Ms.
Ibbotson's writing is, but I couldn't decide which, It wouldn't be right to give all of themstars, because that would double my total count ofstar books at present, and after a certain point they read as a little bit formulaic, which I would admit diminishes their literary value just slightly.
But. A Countess Below Stairs was the first one of the five that she wrote, so I will take it on first and give credit here in particular for the freshness of her ideas.
It's not my personal favorite of the five, but still it's a,star book and I feel that many people ought to read it,

What's so exceptional about this book First and foremost, Ibbotson's glorious, sensitive, cultured, loving, wondrous soul shines through in every word.
This is a woman for whom Vienna at the peak of its cultural glory is a heaven on earth a place where intellectuals and creative spirits gathered and thrived unlike any other time and place in history.
She bequeaths her main characters with a love of music that defines them entirely she believes that it is impossible to feel so much about music without having a soul to match the beauty of the work, and she depicts how people connect because of their shared love of that kind of beauty.
If you haven't realized it yet, that is exactly what I believe and how I experience the world, so I would happily disappear into Ibbotson's creations and live there forever.


Beyond that, Ibbotson is a phenomenal writer, Her use of language is sophisticated, and her subtle sense of humor is a delight, These are incredibly elegant books, To brand them as "romance novels" or "young adult fiction" is dreadfully misleading and fails to capture how utterly unique these books are.
While they are undeniably Romantic, that capital R is of the utmost importance they are Romantic like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov are Romantic, not romantic like Twilight is romantic.
The love stories are a joyous part of the novels, but they are not the sole purpose of the novels.
The heroines love music and art and their country and the land and LIFE more than many people ever get to love anything.
It's miraculous to feel it through them,

I can see how some readers might find thenovels I mentioned repetitive after a point, but I love them all and would read anotherif Ibbotson had written them.
If you really love classical music, The Reluctant Heiress has the most powerful musiccentered plot of all, with the added bonus of some hilarious descriptions of a fictional Modern opera that the titular heiress ends up supporting.
If you are more interested in dance than music, I would recommend A Company of Swans first, and if you're more interested in the intellectual/academic life in Europe in the earlyth century, then The Morning Gift is for you.
Both The Morning Gift and A Song for Summer are also particularly resonant if you are of Jewish descent or are sensitive to the historical aspects of what happened to the Jewish people leading up to the Second World War.


I don't think my review has adequately captured the gentle, luminous beauty of these books, but I hope if my review has touched and intrigued you at all, you'll try the book whose short description interests you the most.

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