Book Review: The Novel in the Viola

Book cover of The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons. Photo / Supplied

The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons
Sceptre, $39.99

Although I enjoyed Natasha Solomons' début novel Mr Rosenbaum's List there was a little too much whimsy for me in its gently humorous tone. Her second offering covers a similar era and themes but this time the feel is less cutsey and more Daphne Du Maurier. She even references the author in the very first line "When I close my eyes I see Tyneford house", which echoes the beginning of Rebecca.

Again, Solomons is writing of a Jewish refugee fleeing Hitler's Europe. Elise Landau is the cosseted child of Viennese intellectuals who is sent by her family to safety in England. With only a copy of Mrs Beeton's Household Management to guide her she must go into domestic service. Frightened and alone she finds herself in a large country house on the Dorset coast where she is to clean out fireplaces and polish silver. The great house Tyneford is rather Downton Abbey with a butler and housekeeper that rule the roost and a handsome young master, Kit, the golden boy everyone adores.

Kit and Elise invite scandal by falling madly in love. But this story is more than a maid-and-master wartime romance. Great change is coming to Tyneford and tragedy too, and to survive Elise must become a very different person.

The Novel In The Viola is an addictive read, capturing the period and its emotions beautifully. There's something fascinating about the whole stately home milieu; the haughty aristocrats wedded to convention, the stern servants below stairs who prop up their lives and the ill-fated romance of the era's final days. But it's Elise who is the real strength of this novel. She is a heroine with spirit, wit and dare. She wears her mother's pearls beneath her maid's uniform, refusing to know her place.

This is a lovely, bittersweet and moving story rather than a whimsical one. Its ending might not surprise but it ought to satisfy.