A PERFECT HAND

Sometimes a Victorian-era caper, replete with crinolines and coiffures, carries a shockingly important purpose beneath its skirts.

If Jane Austen and Nora Ephron collaborated, they might produce something close to this new novel by Waldman, in which two 19th century English servants conspire to see their mistress and master wed. Alice Lockey is lady’s maid to Lady Jemima Alderwick. While the imperious Lady Jemima tends to whine about hairstyles and finds two dozen gowns “so few” for a week in London, Alice believes her own position the best to which a farmer’s daughter might aspire. When Alice meets Charlie Wells, valet to Jemima’s suitor Viscount Nigel Wynstowe, she dreams they might marry and live under the same roof, if only Jemima will accept the rather doughty nobleman’s hand. Since Jemima prefers the attentions of a small-time con artist named Thomas Smythe-Roberts, Alice and Charlie scheme to endear the Viscount and the Lady. Things, of course, go awry, necessitating trips between town and country. During one of Alice’s errands in London (its urgency due to her wish to spend time with Charlie), the couple meets Emmeline, an administrator for the Society for the Promotion of Employment for Women, with its unfortunate acronym of SPEW. After attending a few of the Society’s lectures and meetings, Alice realizes that she and Charlie have markedly different ideas about their future together: “She and Charlie would grow old, content in the lives they had built in their homey rooms in their pleasant village. A good life. A happy life. But not the life she wanted.” Waldman comes up with an ending so interesting and unusual that to say even one word more would be unjust.

Witty, frothy, and ultimately wise, this sendup of the marriage plot would make Mrs. Gaskell proud.