Featured Contributor Friday

Today we have a review from Alison, our newest staff member.  You will see her mainly at the Reference desk upstairs.  Stop in and say hi!

The American Heiress by Daisy Godwin

Pub Date: June 2011

Fiction (Adult)

480 pgs.

I picked up The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin for two reasons:

1)      It was touted as the perfect book to hold over any lovers of Masterpiece Theatre’s Downton Abbey until the next season airs in America

2)      The cover- the regal dress, a wistful backward glance, an exquisitely illuminated setting, and the elegant title all combined to make one undeniably gorgeous and intriguing book jacket.  I know they say not to judge a book by its cover, but what if it just calls to you? Is that so wrong??

The only thing that money cannot buy Cora Cash, New York’s wealthiest heiress of the gilded age, is a title. Or can it? When her mother whisks her daughter away to England in hopes of securing her such a title, little does she know that Cora may literally fall right into one.  One moment Cora is seated on her horse, and the next thing she knows, she is waking up in a Duke’s castle after a riding accident.  How fortuitous! Her mother didn’t even have to arrange her illness, as Lizzie Bennett’s mother did in Pride and Prejudice.  She goes from heiress to Duchess in no time at all.

As Cora leaves behind her fabulous life in New York, she struggles to understand the differences between her old life as an heiress, and her new one as a Duchess.  Goodwin accurately uses Cora and Duke Ivo to flesh out these issues, which are symbolic of the differences between the Old World and the New.  She also uses Cora’s maid, Bertha, to great effect to establish a truth that is still accurate today:  America will always be focused on race, while Britain cares only for class.

It seems as if Goodwin attempted to base her novel around Browning’s poem, “My Last Duchess.”  Several of the themes ring true- money and nature, control and art- and they are well done, if not quite in keeping with the poem.  Goodwin’s biggest triumph is her intricately woven detail of  the Gilded Age, and her ability to create complexity through the repetition of allusion: a string of pearls that we may have seen earlier, the longing present in one look but not another, or feelings associated with a given moment in a previous chapter.

While The American Heiress may fall short of Downton Abbey, Edith Wharton, and Jane Austen, it does have its fair share of snappy dialogue, intrigue, and romance.  It is a lovely choice for a summer read- it’s vacation, pool, and stay-up-way-too-late-to-finish-it worthy.  Thankfully, what was under that breathtaking cover did not disappoint!

-Allison