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A Novel
by Ayelet Waldman
A richly drawn, captivating, and endlessly amusing novel of love and subterfuge between a lady's maid and her clandestine lover, set in the country estates of nineteenth-century England.
Miss Alice Lockey, daughter of a tenant farmer, has by dint of hard work, innate intelligence, and a cunning ability to predict the moods of her betters, raised herself to the lofty status of lady's maid at Alderwick Park. Though her mother has advised Alice to work only until marriage, Alice has thus far resisted the temptations of matrimony among the neighboring widowers and pig farmers, more content to enjoy the fruits of her labor—or at least the portion of it her father will share after it is paid to him. Alice spends her days arranging Lady Jemima Alderwick's blond hair into the latest French styles, chignons and plaits, laundering her lady's surprisingly malodorous petticoats and drawers, and carefully sewing all manner of fripperies, ribbons, lace, and silk flowers, to her lady's bonnets and gowns.
But when a visiting servant, a valet named Charlie Wells, catches her eye, Alice begins to understand the constraints of her position. In a ploy to spend time with the object of her affection, Alice attempts to arrange a romance between Lady Jemima Alderwick and Charlie's employer, one Baronet Sir Nigel Wynstowe. If only they would fall in love—then Alice and Charlie might live together as man and wife! Challenged by Lady Jemima's love for another and Sir Wynstowe's eccentric personality, Alice must use all of her cunning to bring about this unlikely romantic union. Will this low-born servant successfully manipulate the hearts of these lords and ladies? Will Charlie and Alice ever improve their stations? Or, as the beginning of women's suffrage begins to percolate in the drawing rooms and salons of London, will Alice discover a different sort of path for herself?
A deliciously funny, gorgeously detailed, utter enthralling novel, A Perfect Hand is a glorious novel of class, gender, and England on the cusp of enormous change.
"Witty, frothy, and ultimately wise, this sendup of the marriage plot would make Mrs. Gaskell proud." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"There's much to enjoy in this tale of balancing love and ambition." —Publishers Weekly
"Jane Austen–esque .... Rollicking.... Waldman speaks in a graceful, authentic voice about Victorian England's lifestyles, horrors, and frivolities. She honors women's empowerment while relishing the tropes of the romance genre.... She has dealt readers a truly winning hand." —Library Journal
"A Perfect Hand is an absolute delight and a joy to read. This novel showcases Ayelet Waldman's many gifts—her humor, her storytelling prowess, her wisdom about human nature, and her passion for social justice. All wrapped up in an irresistible love story. I couldn't put it down." —J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Cliffs
"I tore through this clever, big-hearted upstairs-downstairs novel about ambition, desire, and women's place in the world, charmed and delighted on every page. With a voice that feels both borrowed from the 19th century and entirely her own, Ayelet Waldman gives us a servant's story full of wit, yearning, and moral bite. Inventive, sparkling, and slyly subversive." —Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles
This information about A Perfect Hand was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ayelet Waldman is the author of A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life, the novels Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Daughter's Keeper, as well as of the essay collection Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace and the Mommy-Track Mystery series. She is the editor of Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women's Prisons and of the forthcoming Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation. She was a Federal public defender and an adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley law school where she developed and taught a course on the legal implications of the War on Drugs. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Michael Chabon, and their four children.
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