But who is fighting whom, and why, will remain a mystery, for this is Olde Europe, where they indulge in convoluted and meaningless battles and eat pork knuckle served in nettle sauce, and frankly, that is all we need to know.

Instead, and more interestingly, they are specimens of flawed but game humanity, baffled souls struggling in a Petri dish, oddly touching to watch.įrom a bedroom in the Castle Von Aux, where he has taken on the baroquely titled job of undermajordomo, the young Lucien Minor, AKA Lucy, observes the local war by telescope. DeWitt’s characters are never either truly good or fully bad. In Undermajordomo Minor, his rickety, occasionally shambolic but engaging new flight of fancy, he riffs on the folk tale, transporting the reader into a gothic Europe which, like its California-set predecessor, is not only free of morals and moralising but positively allergic to the very thought of them. In the much-loved Booker-shortlisted The Sisters Brothers, he memorably reinvented the western in a poignant comic drama of greed, grit and ruthlessness starring a pair of contract killers. Undermajordomo Minor is an adventure, a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behavior, but above all it is a love story and Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.The Canadian writer Patrick deWitt has nerve. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behavior is laid bare for our hero to observe. He also encounters the colorful people of the local village - thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty whose love he must compete for with the exceptionally handsome soldier, Adolphus.

While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle's master, Baron Von Aux. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury.

Undermajordomo minor review