Review: A Countess Below Stairs/The Secret Countess by Eva Ibbotson

Friends, there’s only one way a girl can possibly review A COUNTESS BELOW STAIRS (aka THE SECRET COUNTESS¹), Eva Ibbotson’s nonmagical historical fairy tale about an impoverished Russian countess who takes a job as a chambermaid and falls in requited love with the unattainable owner of the estate at which she works.

That’s right. We’re gonna gush.

The Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical Version (also the only version)

OMG YOU GUYS this book is the best thing ever no seriously it is my FAVOURITE I know the little description up there makes it sound like an average romance but it is not IT IS PERFECT it’s one of the eight books I’ve love straight from the first word² to the last because it is so so so beautiful the prose is staggering Eva Ibbotson has this GIFT to reach straight into any given emotion and make it manifest so you don’t just read it you FEEL it I cried my way through the whole damned thing³ with some extra-intense wretched sobbing at the end⁴ Anna is so wonderful like she could easily be too perfect but she’s not because you REALLY SEE why everyone loves her and you love her too and her relationship with Rupert is so understated they mean so much to one another and they connect so beautifully but it’s all between the lines⁵ and it’s like that with every single character Ibbotson excels at showing by telling you meet a person and suddenly you know everything about them but it’s not overkill you WANT to know these things you LOVE them except the villain Muriel you don’t love her she is a terrible horrible person who’s all ableist⁶ and anti-Semitic⁷ and totally into eugenics which everyone initially thinks is about breeding chickens because Hitler hasn’t happened yet⁸ but it’s not she’s trying to make a master race OMG I HATE HER SO MUCH and you will too she does wrong by the Honourable Olive and NOBODY DOES WRONG BY THE HONOURABLE OLIVE AND GETS AWAY WITH IT⁸ and also there are a great many Russians and I’m still so bummed I can’t go to Russia perhaps the Russians are unrealistic but whatevs I love them so I don’t care if people don’t actually react to their changes in circumstance with such aplomb⁹ sometimes I call Murchie Pupsik¹⁰ and the Honourable Olive gets to hold Pupsik it’s a total awwwwww moment and don’t you even get me started on that fucking ball I will start bawling right here right now so help me bawling over a ball how appropriate is that DAMN I can’t even say enough about this book so I’m not even gonna try just believe me on this okay I acknowledge it’s not perfect because of Sebastien and the maids¹¹ but everything else about it is spot-on and I give it seven stars out of five because IT IS MY FAVOURITE BOOK PLEASE READ IT¹².