Review: The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig

The Ashford Affair by Lauren WilligFormat read: hardcover borrowed from the Library
Formats available: ebook, hardcover, paperback, audiobook
Genre: Historical fiction, Women’s fiction
Length: 367 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Date Released: April 9, 2013




My Review:

Two women in one family, across two generations, are both manipulated by people who love them “for their own good”. Because the other person believes that they “know best”. And their lives operate in parallel courses, although Clemmie at the end of the 20th century does not know the ways that her beloved Grandma Addie manipulated her life…or the secrets that she took with her to the grave.

At the beginning of the century, we see six-year-old Addie Gillecotte being taken under the wing of her eight-year-old cousin Bea in Ashford Park, after Addie’s parents’ sudden death in a auto accident. Bea is the spoiled and willful daughter of the Earl of Ashford, and Addie spends her girlhood never quite measuring up to her cousin’s shine or her baleful aunt’s expectations. Addie lives in the shadow cast by Bea’s glow, while Bea counts on having Addie to love her best.

But the First World War intervenes. Bea was taught to be an ornament. Addie was expected to be useful. Addie’s training makes her competent, where Bea discovers that she is ill-prepared for the world after the war, especially a world where so many of the men came back shell-shocked or part of the famous “Lost Generation.” One reason the 1920’s roared may have been because that was the only sound some of them could still hear.

Bea has always gotten everything she ever wanted. She was the daughter of the house, and it was expected. Addie finally found one thing that she wanted for herself. Bea stole that from her to fill up the empty spaces in her own life, and deceived herself into believing that what she did was best for Addie.

Then Bea ran away to Kenya to escape the scandal. Five years later, she invited Addie to visit her, and to gloat. But that’s not what happened.

Clemmie knows none of the history of her family. She doesn’t even know that her Grandma Addie lived in Ashford Park. Or about Bea. All she knows is that her own life is a shambles. She’s sacrificed seven years of her life to become a partner at a prestigious law firm, because her grandmother and her mother both emphasized how important it was for her to be independent.

The price of that independence has been to lose touch with everyone around her. She misses her last chances to say goodbye to the woman who was the main support in her life. Then the secrets unravel and she discovers that nothing was as she thought it was.
Who was her Grandma Addie? Really? And does it matter after all?

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn WaughEscape Rating A-: The comparisons are not merely inevitable, but most are lampshaded during the course of the book; Brideshead Revisited, Out of Africa, and the multigenerational family sagas of Barbara Taylor Bradford. But also the works of Belva Plain who wrote stories very similar to Bradford with the exception that many of her heroines were Jewish, and last, but definitely not least, Downton Abbey.

The two points of view, Addie’s and Clemmie’s, are easy to track between the two time periods. Addie and Clemmie have very distinct voices within the story. One thing that fascinated me, I wish we saw Addie’s perspective as she manipulated Clemmie’s life in pretty much the same way that her life had been manipulated, but that happens by hearsay, the story is told from Jonathan’s perspective and not Addie’s. But the irony was delicious.

Still, this is a double second-chance-at-love story, which you do figure out. What doesn’t come easy is the method. I was expecting things to be more sinister on the one hand, and more complicated on the other. The actual story worked much better.

The 1920s have more life in the story than the 1999-2000 period that acts as the frame. The modern story is about the discovery of the family mystery, which was cool. The mystery also serves as Clemmie’s search for a real identity of her own, instead of the drudgery of pursuing a partnership that she couldn’t get except by pretending to be an asshat or a fool, and she was neither.

By finding Grandma Addie’s history, Clemmie discovered her authentic self. And true love.

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