MRS HERIOT'S HOUSE

A surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a character that might well have emerged as unappealing, self-centered, anti.social -- but who, instead, comes to life as sharply individualistic, daring to be ""a queer one"", preferring the security her isolation and her almost eccentric house and surely eccentric household give her, to taking her ""rightful"" place once again in a society that quite surely bores her....Mrs. Heriot is a widow; she finds a house that fits her need -- spiritual and financial -- and takes it. And then she finds that a ""maid goes with the house"". This story of the growing obsession of the maid's hold on her -- their odd need of each other -- and the way in which their lives mesh makes an unusual and holding study in human relations. Not wholly convincing but quite charming -- a story against a contemporary setting in semi-rural Pennsylvania.