
Lucien (Lucy) Minor is a teenager living somewhere in proto-industrial Europe. Spurned in love and in search of adventure, he takes a post as undermajordomo (that is, assistant to the majordomo, or chief steward) in the gloomy Castle Von Aux. (What happened to the previous undermajordomo, you ask? No one seems to want to talk about that.)
Undermajordomo Minor aspires to be a comedic riff on the classic gothic horror novel. On his first night in the castle, Lucy is warned to lock his doors while he sleeps, and it’s a long way into the novel before we have a glimpse of the shadowy Baron Von Aux, who leaves letters to be posted to his absent wife but otherwise doesn’t show his face. Meanwhile, Lucy falls stereotypically in love with the local village beauty, who is being predictably courted by the physically superior leader of a group of partisan soldiers.
Maybe “aspires” is too harsh: it IS a gothic comedy, just not, in my opinion, a very interesting or engaging one. The classic tropes are wheeled out: rats drained of blood, debauched nobility, maiden in distress, a sense of foreboding pervading the empty ballroom. These motifs are examined, mocked, and put away, but not to the furtherance of any particular point that I could make out. The hero is likewise not overly engaging. I liked that he was imperfect, but would have preferred his character to have some kind of content in addition to imperfection.
If the novel was actually uproarious, as other reviews seem to consider it, I could probably forgive it its aimlessness. Sadly, I wouldn’t put it higher than “mildly diverting”. The book I (re)read before this was David Copperfield, and Undermajordomo Minor did not compare favourably to the unfettered joys of Dickens (who has, it should be said, a not dissimilar, though infinitely superior, comedic style). Certainly I could have lived without having read it and not, at the conclusion of my life, feel that I had foregone some great and unique pleasure. An underwhelming reading experience.