When Ellen Steinberg, a wealthy American widow with Bohemian tendencies advertises for ‘a good plain cook’ to work in her country home, Kitty, keen to escape life with her sister,  applies for the job (lying about her cooking abilities) and is taken on. With this simple event, inspired by a real-life incident in the life of heiress Peggy Guggenheim, author Bethan Roberts sets the stage in her novel for a comedy of manners.  The gap between Ellen Steinberg’s expectations,  as she casually orders “a quiche – like the French eat, you know the sort of thing”, and the reality of Kitty’s limited culinary ability  offers a source for humour throughout the novel.

At once funnier and sadder, however,  is the tangled web of social misunderstandings and misplaced desires within the Steinberg household. Kitty has entered service in what is a self-consciously ‘artistic’ household consisting of Ellen, her lover (the Communist poet George Crane), Ellen’s eleven-year-old  daughter Geenie and George’s daughter Diana. It is symbolic of the revelations  to come that Ellen has ordered the interior walls of the house she moves into to be knocked down. Love and lust are very much to the fore in this world that Kitty enters as an innocent. Ellen Steinberg prides herself on being open about her desires and wants, regardless of the effect this has on those about her. Selfish yet discontented,  Ellen is the book’s most vivid  character, with the moment when she acknowledges to herself the part she played in her husband’s death lingering on in one’s mind. Her rampant sensuality,  from nude sunbathing to her love affairs,  is wittily depicted, with her encounter with a lustful hairdresser in the nearby town an enjoyably humorous episode.

Each one of the characters in the book is searching for a fulfilment that remains elusive; from Ellen’s ‘kept’ lover George Crane struggling to write any poetry at all to Kitty, initially intrigued by Arthur the gardener, yet finding herself increasingly fascinated by George. Roberts brings a sensuality to her depiction of these moments of attraction,  making this merry-go-round of desire very plausible. The two children in book, Geena and Diana,  are observers of this adult world, only partly understanding what is happening around them. The most poignant portrait within the novel is that of Geenie, Ellen’s unhappy, emotionally neglected daughter, forever trying to attract her mother’s attention.  One of the journeys that Kitty makes during the course of the novel is the move from irritation  with Geenie – a demanding, combative  presence in the household – to sympathy for the girl.  Although the book ends at a moment of tumult for the household, one senses that Kitty is all the stronger for what she has learned and understood.

Reviewed by Jenny Linford

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