Undermajordomo Minor
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4.0 • 44 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
On the The Scotiabank Giller Prize 2015 Longlist
A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners.
Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for begetting brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as undermajordomo, he soon discovers the place harbours many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle’s master, Baron Von Aux. In the local village, he also encounters thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty whose love he must compete for with the exceptionally handsome partisan soldier, Adolphus. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder.
Undermajordomo Minor is a triumphant ink-black comedy of manners by the Governor General’s Award–winning author of The Sisters Brothers. It is an adventure, and a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behaviour, but above all it is a love story. And Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Canadian author Patrick DeWitt made the Man Booker shortlist with his 2011 farce The Sisters Brothers. His sharp wit and dazzling prose are in full effect in Undermajordomo Minor. This strange, thrilling adventure stars a milquetoast young man, Lucien (Lucy) Minor, who escapes the confines of his small, unhappy life by accepting a position as an underling at the Castle Von Aux. We loved every moment of this tall tale, which dishes up mystery, murder, war, and perilous love. DeWitt’s gift for black comedy reminds us of vintage Monty Python.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his delightful and dark new novel, Booker nominee deWitt brings his amusingly off-kilter vision to a European folk tale. After nearly dying from an illness that claims his father, Lucy Minor, a bored and pompous young man, leaves his fairy tale like hamlet of Bury to begin a new life as assistant to the majordomo at Castle Von Aux. Just getting there proves to be an adventure: Lucy is beset by thieves, learns of his predecessor's awful fate, and is relieved of his last coin by Adolphus, an exceptionally handsome soldier fighting a war in the forest. Once at the castle, Lucy befriends the thieves who robbed him, competes with Adolphus for the love of the beguiling Klara, and attempts to restore the Baron Von Aux to sanity. Lucy's earnest actions only create more trouble when a dinner party descends into grotesque bacchanalia, a lecherous guest loses his teeth, and Adolphus makes a final play for Klara's heart, driving Lucy to the edge of the Very Large Hole, where he vacillates between killing himself and someone else. DeWitt (The Sisters Brothers) uses familiar tropes to lull the reader into a false sense of grounding, delivering with abundant good humor a fully realized, consistently surprising, and thoroughly amusing tale of longing, love, madness, and mirth.
