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Title: Intelligent and Funny
Review: What David Lodge does for the university set in so many of his novels, Julian Fellowes does here for the remnants of the British aristocracy. This hilarious portrait of one woman's ascent into the nobility, subsequent fall from grace, and realization that there's something to be said for a life of privilege reveals the quirks of the idle rich in a way most of us would otherwise never see them. Fellowes makes his characters--particularly the well-drawn mother-in-law--human and sympathetic even as they engage in the petty cruelty and downright snobbery suggested by the title.Better yet, Fellowes can out-and-out write, and every page or so you'll stop yourself to note a gem of a sentence that wraps astute observation in the cloth of literary genius. This is, surprisingly, one of the best books I've read in a long while.
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