A Perfect Hand by Ayelet Waldman (Bad Mother) is a captivating historical drama, an appealing romance, and a story of political awakening, cleverly packaged as a novel of manners. Set in English country estates and the grimy city of London in the 19th century, this rollicking narrative ranges from frivolous upper-class parties and fancy dress to the literal and metaphorical dirty laundry that the service class must process.
Alice Lockey, the daughter of a tenant farmer, has worked her way up to the position of lady's maid to Lady Jemima, the silly, indulged elder daughter of a lord. She meets Charlie, a valet to a viscount, and they tumble into a courtship, but they wish for more. Quickly realizing that their employers' marriage is the only route to their own, they determine to set up Lady Jemima and the deeply eccentric Lord Wynstowe. This is a tall order, but the young lovers are highly motivated and well positioned for persuading.
Even as their schemes near fruition, however, Alice learns and yearns and grows. She encounters pamphlets by Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. Questions of class reflect directly on her life and Charlie's, and Alice wonders what the suffrage movement might do for even a servant girl. A Perfect Hand works subtly on several levels, exulting in the details of the Victorian setting, exclaiming over Alice and Charlie's sympathetic romance, and pressing the exceptional heroine toward her best and truest self. With a nod to Jane Austen but a firm focus on the servant class, this versatile novel will entertain and stay with readers long past its final pages. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia