Going into utter meltdown, she walks out of her London office, gets on a train, and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big, beautiful house, she’s mistaken for an interviewee and finds herself being offered a job as housekeeper. Her employers have no idea they’ve hired a lawyer–and Samantha has no idea how to work the oven. She can’t sew on a button, bake a potato, or get the #@%# ironing board to open. How she takes a deep breath and begins to cope–and finds love–is a story as delicious as the bread she learns to bake.
But will her old life ever catch up with her? And if it does…will she want it back?
Comment: This book had been in the pile for a long time. Finally, I've simply decided it was time to read it.
In this novel, Samantha is a very dedicated lawyer, doing all that she can and more, so that can she can make partner. She also comes from a family of overachievers and she feels this is what she has to do. However, one day, she finds out she made a mistake, and although she can't think of how she did such a thing, she leaves her job in a daze. Of course she is fired, but while walking aimlessly she finds herself at the door of a couple who is doing interviews for a housekeeper, something Samantha doesn't understand right away. In spite of this, she ends up being offered the job even though she has never done any house work in her life. Will Samantha be able to learn something new and start a new life at the same time?
The late Sophie Kinsella has written plenty of novels, all more or less linked with the chick lit or comedy labels. I have read several of her books and that is precisely the vibe I think of when I start a new one. This one is a single title which focuses on the demands of a stressful job and how that can affect someone. Samantha is a brilliant lawyer but she is overworked and she has so much to worry about that a mistake can seem life changing.
When this story begins, Samantha is an workaholic whose co workers and closer family members are the same. This is presented in a detailed way and culminates on the devastation, mostly emotional, of realizing that a mistake that would have been so easily avoided is the reason why her life now needs to change. However, Sam is so shocked over everything, that in a daze she gets on a train and then walks and somehow ends up at an unfamiliar place and finds herself in a weird job interview. Of course this was the fun way the author found to set up the actual plot, a similar tactic in may of her novels (meaning, bizarre situations somehow working out).
Now, Samantha is a housekeeper but she has no real skills and she tries to fake it, but she is caught by Nathaniel, the gardener. He helps her, introduces her to his mother and it seems that the story would go on to show how such a domestic life would be relaxing to Samantha, that the tasks she has to quickly learn are like mindless routine to rest her brain. At least, I thought so, but in the back of her mind, Sam keeps thinking about what happened to her and how could have she done such a mistake.
I think the "moral lessons" here are quite obvious and the supposed comedy of Sam's situation wasn't exaggerated, but I will say that the character development of Sam as protagonist, and of some of the secondary characters was more inferring than actual progress. Or, in other words, there was a lot more telling than showing, which makes me think of the narrative as a bit too simplistic. I also would have liked to see Sam reach personal conclusions in a more definite way.
At some point, she finds out her mistake might have been a plan by someone, to disguise something bigger. This drives Sam to clear her name, so the drama in the story now is, of course, on how this need clashes with the simplicity of the life she was getting used to, and how much in common she has with Nathaniel. If Sam needs to prove she didn't make a mistake, which is understandable, will she still want to be a housekeeper and have a relationship with Nathaniel, or will she go back to her corporate world? I think the author did a good enough job with these dilemmas.
However, as the story reaches its end, and Sam achieves her goal, a new situation is presented, related to her old job. The way the plot develops between this moment and the very end was a let down. I really would have preferred Sam to have been more decisive with her choices and for her to have behaved differently. Perhaps there was too much going on at this point and things weren't solved properly, but I feel it was a negative detail because it kind of diminished all the " lessons" Sam had learned and even the beauty of the relationships she had developed, no matter how silly, such as the one with her housekeeping bosses.
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