Snobs: Amazon.de: Julian Fellowes: Englische Bücher

From Booklist

As the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Gosford Park, Fellowes proved himself to be an arch observer of the quirks and customs of the British upper crust. Fast-forwarding half a century, he turns his attention to more contemporary characters still mired in the same class affectations and divisions. Beautiful Edith Lavery, an unabashed middle-class social climber, hits the jackpot when she snags the heir to an earldom. Not only is Charles Broughton titled but his clan has actually managed to maintain and increase the fabulous family fortune. Alas, life on the ancestral estate is not all that it is cracked up to be, and Edith soon grows weary of her dominating mother-in-law and bored with her stolid husband. After an unfortunate yet titillating dalliance, everyone stiffens their lips in proper public-school fashion and carries on admirably. This delightful comedy of manners good-naturedly lampoons a class of people whose artificiality is so inbred it becomes positively genuine. Veddy British, what? Margaret Flanagan
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Pressestimmen

"Snobs, by Julian Fellowes, is an hilariously snobbish novel about hilariously snobbish people involved in a society scandal. Froth at its best. His writing is as stylish as his story. Mr. Fellowes knows his turf well."
- Dominick Dunne

"Julian Fellowes's witty, wise depiction of the lives and lunacies of upper-class English life is just my cup of tea...."
- Jane Stanton Hitchcock

"Snobs is everything you would hope for from the writer of "Gosford Park". A delicious thoroughbred delight, a guilty treat that is awake to every maddening and appallingly attractive nuance of English social life. The novel somehow contrives to be moral without being preachy or losing for a minute its gracefully shameless delight in the well bred and their satellites. A kind of Louis Auchincloss for our times, Julian Fellowes has written a book that is destined to grace all the bedside tables of all the better houses in the land."
- Stephen Fry

"This is the kind of book Edith Wharton would have written if she were around today."
- Arnold Scaasi

"Snobs is an insightful, funny satire of English upper-crust country life in the tradition of Mitford or Waugh....The best chick-lit book of the season was written by a man."
- The Globe and Mail

"Sparklingly rompish...As long as this world does still exist, Fellowes is a delectable guide to its absurdities."
- Sunday Times (London)

"Illustrated with some cherishably nasty, Gosford Park--style scenes of aristocratic
point-scoring, and far more illuminating than a copy of Correct Form...one of those books one imagines being sent up to Balmoral...where it will be proclaimed divinely funny and quite amazingly true to life."
- The Guardian

"Deliciously waspish satire...Snobs is terrific entertainment, deepened by the sad ache of truth."
- Literary Review

"Fellowes's attractive, faintly cynical voice has overtones of Trollope, Waugh, and Mitford."
- The Independent

"A delicious comedy of manners on the nuances of English social life, which raises laughter and an occasional wince of recognition."
- Daily Mail

"Provocative, titillating, and seductive...Julian Fellowes tells this anachronistic morality tale with such wit, verve, elegance, and schadenfreude that it never loses momentum."
- The Spectator

"Fellowes doesn't try to hide his love of the funny, sealed, above-stairs world of dukes, duchesses, marquesses, nusery maids, herbaceous borders, and breakfast kedgeree under its own silver lid, all of which is what makes Snobs such a good, fresh read."
- Telegraph

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A FROTHY, FUNNY LOOK AT THE ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY 14. Februar 2005

Von Gail Cooke

Format:Taschenbuch

It's a hoot. "Snobs" is a frothy, funny, in the cross-hairs look at life among the distant, devious, and sometimes demented British upper classes. Dare you to read a page or two and put it down. Impossible!

However, this rib-tickling romp is what we've come to expect from the Academy Award-winning author of Gosford Park. What else from the man whose son is named Peregrine and his dachshund Fudge? Fellowes well knows the pretentiousness of the privileged but describes it with such warmth and wit that readers, rather than feeling antipathy toward the titled, simply come to look upon these folks as a tad daft and highly amusing. There doesn't seem to be a malicious word in this author's vocabulary - only merriment.

A jovial, easy-going sort, the narrator is an actor who knows the right people, although he was not born to be one of them. He's about 30 years of ago with a bright outlook on life and a good friend, the young, beautiful, clear complexioned Edith Lavery. "She was a type, albeit a superior example of it: the English blonde with large eyes and nice manners."

As the story opens Edith is employed, rather unhappily so. Her future, she believes, rests in finding a wealthy husband. She's learned her lesson well from her mother, Stella, who was once a debutante but did not marry well. Stella yearns, longs, and dreams of the day when somehow she will gain entry into the upper echelons of London society. What will open these gilded doors for her? Daughter Edith.

As luck or fate would have it, Edith does find a wealthy husband. He's not only rich but he's Lord Charles Broughton. His ancestral home is Broughton Hall, a portion of which is now open to paying guests. Much to the distress of his overbearing mama Charles proposes to Edith, they marry, and he brings her to live in the hallowed Hall. Barely eight months into their marriage Edith sees Charles as perhaps more frog than Prince Charming. She finds his friends supercilious and small-minded, his mother a harridan, and her duties as the wife of a future Earl endlessly boring. He is rather dull, plodding, and lacking in imagination. But, he adores her and she now has every luxury of which she dreamed.

We read, "She was...sufficiently honourable about the Faustian pact she had made to wish to keep it." That was before she met Simon Russell, an ego driven actor who was"astonishingly good-looking, but in truth the trailer was better than the feature."

Simon believes a liaison with Edith will better his career considering all the publicity such an affair would engender, so he sets about winning her. She's hardly a challenge. Before long the two run off together, breaking Charles's heart and setting forked tongues wagging.

What Simon did not realize was that Edith's currency would be worthless once she left Charles, and what Edith did not realize was that Simon's theatre friends would be quite as stand-offish and exclusive as the upper class had been. The already married Simon who believes that "moral laws are designed for for lesser mortals" is blessed with almost total self-absorption, and goes his merry way. On the other hand, Edith, sharing a small flat with Simon, finds that Broughton Hall did have great advantages, after all. She is miserable once again.

What is she to do and how can she go about doing it?

"Snobs" is a smile provoking, stylish story - don't miss it.

- Gail Cooke

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Ein Geheimtipp 22. November 2004

Von Fuchs Joan

Format:Taschenbuch|Von Amazon best�tigter Kauf

Einfach fantastisch, was der Autor hier bietet! Nach einem eher chaotischen Start, bei dem man sich an den Stil doch ziemlich gewöhnen muss, dreht der Autor dann voll auf mit Witz und Tiefsinn zugleich! Erzählt wird die Geschichte von Edith, aus der Sicht eines Freundes in der Ich-Form, und ihr Aufstieg von der Normalsterblichen in die feine Gesellschaft Englands, und ebenso ihr Fall in die Fast-Vergessenheit. Eine sehr feinfühlige und detailierte Geschichte, mit viel philosophischem und politischem Tiefgang und tollen Einblicken in die Welt der Schauspieler und Aristokraten. Die Klassengesellschaft lebt weiter, auch wenn man das zu verstecken versucht. Ein wirklich tolles Buch.

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Noblesse oblige 9. Juli 2008

Von Gaudimax

So mancher würde alles dafür geben, zur hermetisch abgeschlossenen Upper Class zu gehören oder auch nur mit ihr zu verkehren. So auch Edith, Angehörige der Middle Class, von ihrer körperlichen Attraktivität abgesehen völlig talentlos und nur mit der Ambition ausgestattet, nach ganz oben zu kommen. Doch nachdem sie sich tatsächlich einen echten Earl geangelt hat, droht ihr naiver Jungmädchentraum vom Leben als umschwärmte Prinzessin im Skandal zu enden.
Julian Fellowes (der schon Gosford Park produziert hat), selbst Mitglied der englischen Aristokratie, erlaubt einen höchst unterhaltsamen und lehrreichen Blick in eine Welt mit ganz eigenen Regeln und Codes, die man seit Wodehouses Tagen eigentlich für Vergangenheit gehalten hätte. Keine große Literatur, aber durchaus ein Lesevergnügen.