The House at Tyneford, by Natasha Solomons, is also a historical romance, although not as clean. This story is also set during WWII, and based on the writer's Jewish family who sent their daughter from Vienna to England to be a maid. Just when you think you know all the exciting bits of WWII, here comes another trend worth studying. Many Jewish bourgeois young adults from Europe escaped Nazism by getting visas to work at large English estates before the fighting got hot. I did not know that. What a humbling experience! Of course if they knew what was going to happen in the next five years to their people they might have felt better about leaving early. But hindsight and all that.
Elise arrives with their family jewelry sewn into the seams of her clothes, and her father's latest novel hidden in a viola. Again, an evolution into the person life means for you to really become. She finds that she has to live differently and love differently and be a different person after all, eventually even changing her name to something less European and more British. There is love and beauty and great writing, and then nearly to page 300 the f-bombs let loose. 5 of them all together. Lest you think me prudish, I don't enjoy hearing or reading that word and I'm not telling you not to read the book based on that, I'm just letting you know. Also there were 2 rather descriptive, short love-making scenes.
This novel reminded me of Downton Abbey but with less characters to keep track of. I have found myself thinking of these people after I was done turning the pages, so that's always a good sign.
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