Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick de Witt

The blurb on the back of this book describes it, among other things, as ‘nervy’ and ’beautifully strange’. And it is. The story is rather like a fairytale, with all the elements of fairytale such as beautiful maidens, mad barons, pickpockets, supernatural visitors and castles. But it’s not a fairytale. It’s a story about a young man, an antihero of sorts, pale and vapid and pretty much clueless, who sets out from his home village and a fairly unloving mother to make a living as a servant in a castle. He falls in love. And as with all love stories, there are ups and downs, competitors, love lost, love recovered etc etc etc. The story is told in the emotionless tone of a fairytale character too, so we are not privy to the depth of thought and suffering and joy that you might get with a more usual novel about a young man. There’s no embellishment around incidents such as the death of one of the character – you walk into the room with our hero and so and so has died. End of commentary. It’s as if you are in another sort of world as you read. But there is definitely a sense of wonder about the whole thing, as our hero Lucy travels through his experiences to find his place in the world.