Reviewed for PW; I interviewed the author today via Skype for a short piece for the magazine. Completely charming!

My review could be called "Not Downton Abbey"....much funnier, less earnest, and more polemical (but not overly polemical).

Sterne, the English country house at the center of this remarkable dark comedy, is home to the Torringtons--mother Charlotte, a widow now married to Edward Swift; three children, Emerald, Clovis, and the much younger Smudge; plus an assortment of faithful staff. Set sometime in the early part of the 20th century, somewhere in the north of England (the ambiguity is telling), the novel takes place over the course of a single day, from the morning of April 30 to the dawn of the next day. The foreground action is Emerald's 21st birthday--a celebratory dinner is in the works--but a "dreadful accident" changes the course of what appears to be a comedy in the Wodehouse mode with a bit of Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle) thrown in. A derailed train forces Sterne to take in several stranded passengers, who arrive at the house in shock and bewilderment. The "uninvited guests" are decidedly lower class and deliberately indistinct, but for one notable exception, Charlie Traversham-Beechers, who seems to know a good deal about the family, particularly Charlotte. The characters are delightlfully eccentric, the wit is delightfully droll, and the prose is simply delightful ("the air was complicated with the smells of sharp new things"). But for all its charm, this is a serious book; it's no coincidence that the new day that dawns at the close of this lovely, interesting book is May Day. Jones's theme is less class warfare than the seemingly absolute divide between the classes (an idea which may resonate more with English readers than American ones).