I'm not familiar with deWitt's earlier work, so can't make comparisons, but my general feeling about Undermajrdomo Minor is that it's strongly reminiscent of a Wes Anderson film with the same oddball characters, dry and strangely stilted dialogue and a plot that never makes a lot of sense. Some readers are going to love it, some will hate it, many will be tempted to say, "Buh? I don't get it."
A picaresque novel, it follows the adventures of Lucien "Lucy" Minor, a compulsive liar and coward, as he attempts to make his way in the world. He takes the job of Undermajordomo at the castle of Baron von Aux, a weird and forbidding place with strange rules such as, be in your room by ten at night, and always lock yourself in. Um, why? asks Lucy. And the answer is: because.
He soon finds out why when he meets the Baron, filthy and naked, eating a rat he's just killed barehanded, which pretty much ensures that Lucy will never forget to lock his door.
For all his faults, Lucy has a good deal of charm, and he makes friends fairly easily. To be honest, it's not difficult in the castle, or in the town which is surrounded by two armies that regularly battle on the outskirts. He makes friends with a pair of thieves, Memel and Mewe, and falls in love with Katja, Memel's daughter and Mewe's sister. It's his love for Katja which propels much of the last half of the novel, and sees him embarking on a new adventure by the end of the book.
I can't honestly say why I enjoyed the book, or even why I finished it. Every time I picked it up, I thought, "Do I really want to do this?" Obviously I did, in spite of what felt like a plot so thin you could see through it. But in the end it didn't matter. Like a Wes Anderson film, the parts proved to be far greater than their sum, and just as enticing, at least to me. The dialogue, hilariously stilted, (everyone speaks in the same voice) threw me out of the story repeatedly, and yet I enjoyed it. The characters, awful as they sometimes seemed, were still charming and funny. It's a dark, dryly funny story, violent, and weirdly sexual.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2017
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Top reviews from other countries
Claire McMahon
An odd book in some ways but extremely well written and cannot put it down!
Reviewed in Canada on October 17, 2015Peer Sylvester
Als ob Wes Anderson ein Buch schreiben würde...
Reviewed in Germany on October 1, 2015
kentlyon
A Daunting Tale of Loves Dream & Dispair
Reviewed in Australia on November 30, 2015