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Summary
Summary
Winner of Canada's prestigious Governor General's Award, this richly rendered American debut captures the life of a lady's maid on her journey from the confines of Victorian England to the uncharted reaches of Egypt's Nile Valley.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Based on the real Lady Duff Gordon's journey to Egypt with her maid in the mid-19th century, Pullinger's novel brings a broiling desert landscape to life through the eyes of the working classes. Maid Sally Naldrett jumps at the opportunity to travel to the Middle East with her lady, but her fairy tale grows even more exquisite when she falls in love with the lady's interpreter and guide, Omar. The blithe domestic scene takes a turn for the worse when Sally becomes pregnant, much to Lady Duff Gordon's disappointment. As Egypt's lower classes rise up against the tyrannical khedive, Sally's position grows tenuous, forcing her to fend for herself and her half-English, half-Egyptian child in Cairo, a budding tourist town quickly shedding its history. Incorporating actual quotes from the real Lady Duff Gordon's letters, and endowing Sally with tremendous character, Pullinger successfully imagines an ordinary life in extraordinary circumstances. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
The Mistress of Nothing draws its inspiration from the life of Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, Victorian writer, traveller and highly unconventional intellectual, whose celebrated salons were attended by Tennyson, Thackeray and George Meredith. In 1862, at the age of 40, creeping tuberculosis led Duff Gordon to leave her beloved husband and children in England and travel to Egypt, where it was hoped that the hot, dry climate would speed her recovery. The Duff Gordons, though well connected, were not wealthy, and Lucie was able to travel with only one servant, her maid Sally Naldrett. Turning her back on the English community, she settled in Luxor, where she cut her hair, exchanged her corsets for native male dress, and learned to speak and write Arabic. Though she was not always able to pay her servants properly, Lucie allowed them equally uncommon levels of freedom. However, when the unmarried Sally presumed to break one of the 19th century's strictest taboos, Lucie exhibited none of her habitual broadmindedness. Furious and implacable, she demanded that Sally leave the household and return, penniless and without references, to England. Lucie's letters from Egypt, later published, sparkled with her wit, passion and considerable rage at the abuses of the ruling Ottoman dynasty, giving the lie to the cliche of the decorous and submissive Victorian wife. They also provide irresistible provender for the novelist, though Pullinger claims to have been acutely aware of the difficulties inherent in tackling such a project. The Mistress of Nothing , her fourth novel, has been more than 10 years in the writing, one of those years apparently yielding only a single page. According to Pullinger, her endeavours were hampered by an aversion to historical fiction generally; she worried in particular about the clumsy deployment of research and the dangers of pastiche. There is little cause for concern on either of these fronts. Pullinger quotes from Duff Gordon's letters on several occasions, but Lucie herself is not the centre of this tale. Instead the story is told from the point of view of Sally, who finds herself caught between her devotion to her mistress and her desire for a life of her own in a country that she has come to love. Sally is no intellectual and certainly no politician; Lucie's perspectives and preoccupations are not hers. As for overwhelming the reader with research, if anything the novel errs too much on the opposite side. The heat and exoticism of 19th-century Egypt are convincingly conjured, but the narrative is less successful in evoking a powerful sense of the conventions and expectations of its time, not only socially but morally and politically, so that the full impact of Sally's story fails to hit home. Not nearly enough is made of how truly extraordinary Duff Gordon's household in Luxor was by the standards of her day. Though she was required to perform certain duties, Sally travelled with her mistress almost as her companion, conversing with her, reading with her, even eating with her in the evenings. She was also granted a remarkable degree of independence, permitted to come and go very much as she pleased. And yet, though Sally admits that this is "unusual", the eccentricity of the arrangements seems to pass largely unobserved by Lucie's many visitors. Nor do we get much sense of the oppressive Victorian attitudes to women that Duff Gordon is so eager to escape. When in the end she falls back upon their strictures to impose exile on her servant, they seem to come out of nowhere. Finally, however, it is less the opacity of historical context that constrains this novel than Sally's elusiveness as a character. Throughout she oscillates between a docile subservience and a sense of entitlement; her apparent intelligence and curiosity sit awkwardly with her passivity, her quest for self-education with her unquestioning nature. We are told of long, intimate conversations with her Egyptian confidante, but are permitted to eavesdrop on too few. The reader is left uncertain whether Pullinger considers Sally the heroine of a great love story, the victim of aristocratic whim or the engineer of her own hubristic downfall. Certainly Sally's aggrieved outrage at her mistress's failures to set aside the fundamental expectations of the society in which both she and Lucie must make their lives strikes an uncomfortable note. In Egypt, aware that her life has changed unrecognisably, Sally asks: "Does this mean I am no longer the same person?" Knowing her as imperfectly as we do, it is a question we are simply not able to answer. Clare Clark's The Nature of Monsters is published by Penguin. Caption: article-pullinger.1 As for overwhelming the reader with research, if anything the novel errs too much on the opposite side. The heat and exoticism of 19th-century Egypt are convincingly conjured, but the narrative is less successful in evoking a powerful sense of the conventions and expectations of its time, not only socially but morally and politically, so that the full impact of [Sally Naldrett]'s story fails to hit home. Not nearly enough is made of how truly extraordinary Duff Gordon's household in Luxor was by the standards of her day. Though she was required to perform certain duties, Sally travelled with her mistress almost as her companion, conversing with her, reading with her, even eating with her in the evenings. She was also granted a remarkable degree of independence, permitted to come and go very much as she pleased. And yet, though Sally admits that this is "unusual", the eccentricity of the arrangements seems to pass largely unobserved by Lucie's many visitors. Nor do we get much sense of the oppressive Victorian attitudes to women that Duff Gordon is so eager to escape. When in the end she falls back upon their strictures to impose exile on her servant, they seem to come out of nowhere. - Clare Clark.
Library Journal Review
When Lady Duff Gordon, forced to choose between dying a slow consumptive death in England or escaping to a dry, restorative climate, decides on Egypt, her devoted maid, Sally Naldrett, has no difficulty joining her mistress in exile. A previous unsuccessful trip to South Africa gave Sally a love of travel. Both maid and mistress fall in love with Egypt and its people as they journey down the Nile to their home base in Luxor/Thebes. By the time they settle into their house with their guide and dragoman, Omar, they have begun learning the customs and the language and are welcomed warmly by the locals. Slowly they discard their Western ways while forging deep friendships with their neighbors and, in Sally's case, an affair with her fellow servant. As proof of Egypt's magic, the prim and proper maid who scrupulously avoided any reputation-destroying entanglements at home now finds herself happily pregnant with Omar's child. This, however is one sin her ordinarily liberal and generous mistress cannot forgive, and Sally finds herself cast out and "mistress of nothing." Verdict While the setting is lovingly and sensuously portrayed, the characters lack the depth and development that would engage the readers' interest; instead they remain somewhat unsympathetic and uninvolving. This book, which won Canada's Governor General's Literary Award, will appeal only to those interested in Egypt or the real-life Lucie Duff Gordon.-Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
