Book Review: THE UNDOING OF VIOLET CLAYBOURNE

Title: The Undoing of Violet Claybourne

Author: Emily Critchley

Publisher: Zaffre

Pages: 349

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

 

I love stories about houses, and so when this story came up, I was excited to read and review it.

 

When the story begins, Gillian McCune, an old woman in 1999, looks back on her childhood, particularly on the fateful days she spent as a guest at Thornleigh Hall, and the part she played in the events that took place there.

 

Gillian ‘Gilly’ Larking is in her sixth year at Heathcomb school when the privileged Violet Claybourne is admitted there, and they find themselves roommates. Gilly, with no real family and no good friends, is swept off her feet into Violet’s world. The friendship grows quickly with both girls believing in tandem with their Classics lessons, Nos Contra Mundam (Us against the world).

Invited to the Claybourne home, Thornleigh Hall, for Christmas, Gilly becomes enamoured with their world. There she meets Violet’s older sisters, Emmeline and Laura, and her parents, Giles and Olivia Claybourne. Gilly longs to have Emmeline and Laura see her as one of their own, as an equal. At every step, she tries to set herself apart from Violet, and closer to Emmeline and Laura, who are classist and believe themselves superior even to their sister, Violet.

Before the Christmas break is over, Thornleigh Hall will be beset by tragedy, with one life lost and another destroyed. What part will Gilly play in this travesty of justice?

 

The book is set in 1938, so the shadow of World War I still looms large over the characters. Lord Claybourne and many of the members of the police force have served in the war, but Frank Marks, a gameskeeper who lives on the grounds of Thornleigh Hall, has been a conscientious objector. As the book progresses, the characters find themselves in the middle of World War II.

 

This is a time when a woman is called upon to make a good marriage, then be a good wife and mother. It is against this background that the Claybourne family hopes that 22-year-old Emmeline will be wooed by the nearly forty-year-old Viscount Cadwallander, who might help save Thornleigh Hall from almost certain ruin.

 

The bulk of the story takes place between Christmas and New Year. The construction of the period was done well.

 

The book also makes a mention of post-partum depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), both conditions for which the medical science of the time might not have had satisfactory answers. Undoing is how Violet refers to the odd rituals she does “to undo what might happen.” The Undoing is Violet’s OCD. It is also a reference to how her life is undone, and how she seeks to undo that wrong.

 

The chapters end on a note of finality and expectation, inviting us to turn the page. I kept thinking about the events of this book even when I wasn’t reading it, especially about how far the characters deserved the fates that had befallen them.

 

 

The author has done a fine job with the descriptions of Thornleigh Hall, the Randolph Hotel, and Heathcomb school.

 

I can’t remember when I last detested a bunch of fictional people. I despised nearly all the main characters here. In the case of the narrator, Gilly, I must add that this was the first time that I began by liking a protagonist and then went on to change my mind about her. The author does make an effort to redeem her in our eyes, in a later part of the book, but it didn’t work for me.

 

Only the smaller characters like Frank Marks, a groundskeeper who lives on the property, and Robin, the fatherless son of Mary, the maid, and, to an extent, Violet, left a positive impression on me.

 

There are scenes featuring elaborate and intense gaslighting that are well written.

I also loved the resonance in the book, the parallels between Gilly and Robin. The fact that they have each lost a parent.

 

Gilly’s first meal with the Claybournes reveals their habits and characters, the sense of superiority they nurture in themselves. In true upper-class fashion, Laura and Emmeline insist that the foxes enjoy the fox hunt. “You can see it on their faces,” they say, in justification of their own pleasure and lifestyle. I couldn’t help reflecting on the hypocrisy of one of the sisters who hates any show of emotion but thinks nothing of the flutter of disgust that crosses her own face.

 

The colonial mindset is evident when Violet says about school, “We only learn sums, and which bits on the map still belong to us.”

 

Gilly, with her tendency to steal and lie, has her own flaws, making her believable.

 

I felt a sense of sorrow for Violet, for the ‘undoing’ of her at the hands of those she trusted. I hoped the book would not end on a note of wrongdoing and injustice. 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)