The Upstart

As a man who has clawed his way to the top in late nineteenth-century England, Samuel Fairbrother sees the purchase of a mansion on the outskirts of Fellburn as a fitting display of wealth, but his clashes with the disdainful butler Maitland almost destroy Samuel's family. 30,000 first printing.

The families in Cookson's period novels shout a lot and are unhappy as only Cookson's families can be (The Obsession, p. 659, etc.) when they wrestle with the problems of class, backstreet affairs, and the leaking away of money through profligate sons. Here, in the late-19th-century environs of Newcastle, Samuel Fairbrother, a rough-hewn grandson of a cobbler and now a successful owner of shoe stores, looks ``beyond his station'' and buys a ``gentleman's residence'' in order to raise his eight children to better things. With the house comes the elegant butler Roger Maitland, who'll eventually teach them all a lesson about class and character. And yet Samuel makes an uneasy adjustment to his new circumstances, in spite of the elegant efforts of Maitland to smooth out some of those rough edges. Wife Alice, meanwhile, soon feeling neglected, is about to rebel, even to flirt with--of all people--the attractive Maitland; son Howard, liar and cheat, falls deep into gambling debt; the flighty Alicia has cast herself at a stable groom and is now pregnant; and Jessie is headed for a convent. But two sons are off to sea, one promising to take to studies, and then there's daughter Janet, a chip off the old tough block, Sam's anchor in domestic storms--and there are plenty: Sam takes a mistress, Alice leaves, and Howard the Horrid is up for murder. The last straw is the attraction between reliable Janet and none other than Maitland the butler, with passion stirring. Sam the ``upstart'' is enraged that Janet the ``lady'' would marry a ``servant.'' Again, Cookson characters are noisy and broad-brushed, in plots that are formulaic, but there's also that raw energy and those displays of that gutsy, yeoman slang of the last century, ``common as muck'' but gritty as an oatcake. A reliable Cookson production. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The son and grandson of cobblers, Samuel Fairbrother owns a series of boot factories. He buys a Newcastle mansion as a means of showing off his wealth and fortune. Totally out of his social depth, he relies on his butler Maitland to tell him how to dress, when to have a party, and whom to invite. Sam is a crude, possessive man who blusters loudly when he does not get his way. He knows he is considered an upstart. When Sam and his wife separate, he insists that his oldest child, Janet, trained as a librarian, stay with him. She and Maitland fall in love, but first one disaster and then another postpone their wedding. Cookson skillfully shows the class conflicts that result when a tradesman tries to climb beyond his station. Cookson, a perennial favorite (The Obsession, LJ 6/15/97), has written another enjoyable tale of love and conflict in late 19th-century England. Recommended for popular fiction collections.
-?Andrea Lee Shuey, Dallas P.L.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.