A review by tessisreading2
Habits of the House by Fay Weldon

3.0

This is what "Downton Abbey" should have been. The book begins slowly, introducing us to the assortment of servants and family who populate the (rented) Belgrave House in London; each is an individual, and the upstairs/downstairs divide is clearly but sympathetically depicted. The Dilbernes are a nice, progressive family - Lord is in the House of Lords, a friend of the Prince of Wales, and still in love with his wife; Lady was an heiress yet also - gasp! - illegitimate; daughter Rosina is a suffragette; son Arthur is obsessed with motorcars. But at the same time they are selfish, spoiled, and thoughtlessly awful to their servants - they sing the praises of lady's maid Grace (a former foundling), but don't pay her much (if you pay them TOO much, the others get jealous), worry that she will leave (heavens, what a horrible idea), treat her as a non-person (it doesn't matter if a cat or a dog sees you naked, after all), sexually exploit her (as a teenager Grace was involved with Arthur; she has ambiguous uncomfortable feelings about the involvement and Arthur thinks about it with such defensive justification that you can't quite trust him), and otherwise exploit her (adding duties to her regular job without increasing her pay). Anyway, it develops that Lord Dilberne very unwisely sank all of the family's money into South African gold mines, the Boer War has caused the gold to stop coming in, and the family is desperately impoverished. Son Arthur must marry an heiress. Cue plot.

The book was apparently advertised to fans of Downton Abbey, and I can see where that wouldn't quite have worked: the Dilbernes aren't really very nice people, deep down, and in "Downton Abbey," that was the hook - the family were kind to their staff and took a paternalistic interest in them which, while wildly ahistorical, was gently soothing to witness. All the same, I loved it.