The Servants by M.M. Smith

July 2nd, 2008

The Servants
M.M. Smith
233 p.

HarperCollinsPublishers, 2008.
(first published by Earthling Publications, 2007.)

Back cover blurb:

Things are unreliable. Things break. Things fall apart.

Even at 11 years old, Mark knows this all too well.

By the time he moves out of London to the wintry Brighton seaside, the situation is already bad. His mother is ill, and Mark hates his new stepfather. There’s nothing to do and the new house feels nothing like home, filled with odd sounds and hidden rooms … and a strange old lady in the basement.

Shadows are soon gathering, as life goes from bad to worse. Mark knows he has to do soemthing, but he doesn’t know what. And the only people who might be able to help him … may not even exist.

This book was really expensive and I bought it without even being sure what it was about. Okay, so first I thought I wouldn’t buy it, but after picking up a less expensive book, I just turned around and picked out the book out of the bookcase again. What can I say? I am a very impulsive book buyer, as well as drawn to pretty things. And this was very pretty.

As I often do, I believed the story was set in the nineteenth century. When, on the first few pages, the boy talks about his skateboard, I started to feel a bit suspicious. Obviously it was not set in the nineteenth, but in the twentyfirst century. There were, however, bits of the nineteenth century in it. Through that, I was not at all disappointed. (which I often am, following these misbeliefs.)

And oh, it was such a pretty and homely book. Or, maybe homely gives the wrong impression. In many ways it was unsettling, but it had an atmosphere which felt very safe and at ease. So to speak. The story, about a boy whose mother has cancer, was obviously sad, but everything worked out and, somehow, I knew that would happen all along. It’s a hopeful book, and it is lovely.

Entry Filed under: Children, English, Fiction