Snobs - Julian Fellowes

Reading is an expensive habit. And when you read as fast and as much as I do, and are as broke as I am, plunking down at least 12 bucks a pop every few days will eventually catch up to you. Or at least your bank account. That’s why I made a trip to my local library the other day. I practically grew up in libraries. By the time I was 10 I had read every book in the kid’s section twice and almost half of young adult wall at my hometown library. Libraries are happy places for me. You get to wander between the stacks and then sit in a big cozy chair to leaf through your selections. It’s like a treasure hunt. And it’s all free! Nothing better than that.

On this particular trip, as I made my way through the fiction section, I was surprised to see a cluster of books by Julian Fellowes. (I can’t say his name without thinking of Tracy Morgan – cracks me up every time!) I hadn’t realized that the brilliant mind behind Downtown Abby has also written a novel. So I scooped up Snobs without even reading the dust jacket.

Snobs is a particularly juicy look at the lives and loves of aristocratic British society. Except that instead of petticoats and horse-drawn carriages, these fancy-shmancy Brits are living today. Middle-class Edith, who has been brought up by an ambitious mother to want nothing more than to land an upper-class husband, does just that then she meets Charles Uckfield, the Earl Broughton and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. But instead of a fairy tale happy ending, the story focuses on the disillusionment of getting what you always wanted.

Fellowes uses a first person narrator (who I just realized doesn’t seem to have an actual name) to take us through the ins and outs of this highly stratified world. He knows these people, how they think and act, and all the perks and pressures they deal with on a daily basis.  An actor by profession, the narrator grew up among the noble-born – he’s the perfect person to give us all the dirty details about how the other half lives, while still maintaining his street cred as just another commoner, just like us readers. One thing that bothered me about this, what bothers me about first person narrators in general, is that somehow they become omniscient and know all about what happens when they are not around. It’s a small picky point, but you can’t help but wonder how he knows so much about Edith and Charles’s wedding night.

Playing along the sidelines of Charles and Edith’s story are people from both worlds. Upper-class families with their customs, engrained traditions and social pressures. And lower and middle-class personalities dying to claw their way to the top – to a world they dream of as filled with glitter and privilege. It’s sad really, watching people with power and money wallow in the fear of losing it. Just as sad as watching those without it fester with jealousy and greed wanting nothing more than just a taste of the world they imagine.

We don’t really have a landed aristocracy here in the States. Sure there are a few established families, but for the most part, our nobility is in Hollywood. We look up to celebrities the way the Brits do their Earls and Barons. Our Royal Wedding was broadcast on E! and lasted 72 days. Maybe that’s why it’s hard for me to relate to anyone in this books. I’m obviously not one of the privileged few, but I also don’t want to be. If anything, Fellowes shows us that even if you “have it all”; if you’re miserable, you might as well have nothing.