Undermajordomo Minor is an adventure, a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behavior, but above all it is a love story and Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing. In the Times Literary Supplement early this year, Anna Katharina Schaffner rather took to task the idea of the twee. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behavior is laid bare for our hero to observe.

He also encounters the colorful people of the local village-thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty whose love he must compete for with the exceptionally handsome soldier, Adolphus. While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle’s master, Baron Von Aux. The novel is a gothic fable set in an unspecified time and location that has been compared to 19th-century Central and Eastern Europe. Born in British Columbia, he has also lived in California and Washington, and now resides in Portland, Oregon. deWitt is the author of the Ablutions: Notes for a Novel, as well as The Sisters Brothers, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. Undermajordomo Minor is a 2015 novel by Canadian-born author Patrick deWitt.It is his third novel and was published by House of Anansi Press on September 5, 2015. The following is from Patrick deWitt’s novel, Undermajordomo Minor cover. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants.

Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. From the bestselling, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers, comes a brilliant and boisterous novel that reimagines the folk tale.Ī love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, Undermajordomo Minor is Patrick deWitt’s long-awaited follow-up to the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Sisters Brothers.

Undermajordomo minor by patrick dewitt