A Countess Below Stairs By Eva Ibbotson Release Date: Buy it Today! Puffin   Ratings Action Romance Characters Overall Purchase on Amazon. Purchase at Powell’s. Find independent bookstores near you.

Anna and her family flee war torn Russia during the revolution to seek salvation in England, leaving behind the riches they knew as members of the extended Russian royal family. Many of the former aristocracy of Russia settle down as servants to the British gentry, and Anna decides to take a job as serving girl so that her brother can go to school. She doesn’t tell her family her plans, as her brother would refuse to go to school if he knew she had to work as a servant to keep him there. At the new manor house, everyone can tell that Anna is not of servant stock, but with a warm smile and deep courtesy (and armed with a very outdated housekeeper’s guide), she manages to win her way into a job and quickly shows that it doesn’t matter what her breeding, she can and will work hard.

Once at the manor house, she meets the young earl for whom she works and of course love is in the air. Unfortunately, he has brought a fiancée home from the war with him, a young woman named Muriel who is determined to make the world a perfect place through eugenics, which is the practice of selective breeding (see extras for more details). A love triangle ensues, but it’s not hard to tell who will end up with whom, as the heroine always gets the guy in a tale like this.

This book was one of those predictable, fluffy books that is still somehow a charm to read because of the language and characters. The heroine is too good, the rival is too evil and silly, but I found myself enjoying every page anyway. The portrayal of Russian royalty on the run from the Russian Revolution is absolutely believable, and Ibbotson’s descriptions make the world come alive. Russian history and culture are things I never really studied, but have always been interested in, so I found the book fascinating on that factor alone.

A cozy book, A Countess Below Stairs is rather predictable and will appeal to readers of Meg Cabot and Sharon Shinn. Setting and descriptions will draw the reader away for a few hours as they are immersed in post WWI England and the manor house’s society. Plotwise, this book is nothing extraordinary, a fairytale mixed with reality, and it’s not a fantasy book in the most pure sense. It’s more along the lines of Ever After or Just Ella – explaining a classic fairytale with how it could have happened in a world without obvious magic.

Anna is an adorable character, and you could never wish her ill will, but she also strikes me as a little too good. A few of the characters love to talk about her glowing aura, and Anna is set up as the kind of person you only meet once or twice in your life, the kind of girl so utterly nice that you can’t help but dislike her because you look so horrible in comparison. Other reviewers describe her as feisty, but I simply can’t see where they would get that from. She just accepts everything that happens and moves on with her life, whether it’s in a palace or servants’ quarters. A bit too much like Disney’s Cinderella for me to truly care about her.

My biggest problems with this book were its predictable nature (sometimes it was a bit too obvious) and the main villainess, Muriel, the fiancée. Now, I think she could have been a believable character, and the motivation of eugenics and wanting to create a perfect world could have worked, yet there was no reason to empathize with her, and I didn’t feel the reader could find a common ground with her or her beliefs. Petty and jealous, the villainess was set up to be the exact opposite of the heroine, but not in a well developed way. It’s just another love triangle where there is only one obvious choice and the hero/ine spends waay too much time debating over a choice they will obviously make in the end without regret.  As much as it can frustrate me, I really love a book that sets up a believable love triangle.  Nothing is coming to mind though, except the musical Wicked.

Ratings Reasons:
Action 2 – The pacing was only fast enough to keep me interested, and I felt like the book was a bit long sometimes.  Not much happened as far as straight out action.

Romance  3 ½ – It was cute, it was developed enough, but it wasn’t stellar. A few times, towards the end, I just wanted to hit them both over the head, due to the characters’ thoughts of “He/she can’t love me because…”

Characters 3 – The people in the book were interesting and held their own distinct personalities. Like many fairytales though, they fell into stereotypes: the torn love interest, the wicked competition, the kind mentors/servants, the noble brother, etc.

Overall 3 ½ – This was an enjoyable book, but no more so than many others that I’ve read. I’d still recommend it, however, and once I started, I didn’t stop till I finished. Yet I’m not sure how often I’ll reread it, and it didn’t really have a lasting impact.

Extras:
Author Eva Ibbotson has written quite a few books which are currently being republished by Penguin. Countess Below Stairs and A Song For Summer were both re-released this last spring, and A Company of Swans and The Morning Gift will be out this fall. All of these books are similar historical fluffy romances, at least according to a local YA bookseller who has read the upcoming ones. I’ve started A Song For Summer, and I do find it pretty similar to Countess. She also wrote the popular The Secret of Platform 13 and other books for younger readers.

As I was reading, I kept feeling like I’d read this story before. That it must be based off of a fairytale. Now, Cinderella was of course my first thought, but that’s because of how Disney has possessed my mind. It’s easy to forget that plenty of Grimm’s fairytales had similar elements.  Finally, I found the tale I was looking for. It’s apparently called Princess in Disguise, and it’s a Grimm’s fairytale like I thought. I had a children’s picture book of it called Princess Furball as a child, due to the animal furs she wears while running away from home.

“Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. The goals of various groups advocating eugenics have been to create healthier, more intelligent people, to save society’s resources, and lessen human suffering” (from Wikipedia). Muriel’s actions are driven by her passion for eugenics, and she hopes that by marrying the earl, she can further fund her dream for the world. Now, this is very time appropriate as the first World War has just ended and the second is on the horizon. Famous men of the time (Alexander Graham Bell, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler) all believed in this concept, and you can probably already see the connection with the Nazi beliefs. Since WWII, the belief in eugenics has died down, primarily thanks to the Nazis.

Anastasia (the Fox animated movie) was the film that first introduced me to Russian history, architecture, and legend. Okay, so it’s not really accurate, but it’s a beautiful movie and an enjoyable romp across Europe with singing demons and an undead (and falling apart) sorcerer.  The story follows the lost Anastasia’s quest to be reunited with her grandmother in Paris.

If you want some background on the time period, check out this summary of the Russian Revolution. And here’s some information about what happened to the rest of the royal family.

Parents:
Parents: 10+ Now, you might have to explain eugenics to your kids, but other than that, it’s pretty all ages appropriate.  Russian history is another element that might need a bit of background, but I always think we should be reading something just beyond our grasps, to encourage us to learn something new.

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