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The Servants | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Marshall Smith
Publisher: Eos
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $5.30
You Save: $9.65 (65%)
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Rating:  90 reviews
Sales Rank: 219994
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 006149416X
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780061494161
ASIN: 006149416X
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
p For young Mark, the world has turned as bleak and gray as the Brighton winter. Separated from his real father and home in London, he's come to live with his mother and her new husband in an old house near the sea. He spends his days alone, trying to master the skateboard, while other boys his age are in school. He hates the unwanted stepfather who barged into Mark's life to rob him of joy. Worst of all, his once-vibrant mother has grown listless and weary, no longer interested in anything beyond her sitting room. /p p But on a damp and chilly evening, an accident carries Mark into the basement flat of the old woman who lives at the bottom of his stepfather's house. She offers tea, cakes, and sympathy . . . and the key to a secret, bygone world. Mark becomes caught up in the frenetic bustle of the human machinery that once ran a home, and drawn ever deeper into a lost realm of spirits and memory. Here below the suffocating truths, beneath the pain and unhappiness, he finds an escape, and quite possibly a way to change ieverything/i. /p p A richly evocative, poignantly beautiful modern-day ghost story, iThe Servant/is marks the triumphant return of Michael Marshall Smith#8212;the first novel in a decade from the multiple award-winning author of iSpares/i. /p
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| Customer Reviews: Read 85 more reviews...
 Excellent Book! December 1, 2008
M. Kulis (Stamford, Connecticut - United States)
This book starts out with a kid in England, his mom "sick" and his new step-dad annoying. It progresses beautifully through a story of a young man finding his way in an unnatural way. Very highly recommended. I swear the details and descriptions were so well-written that there were times I could smell the ocean and envision the scenery as if I was there! Must-Read!
 Uninteresting Ghost Story November 29, 2008
C. Baker (Washington, DC)
11 year old Mark's life has suddenly taken a turn for the worse. He is forced to move from London to a cold, dreary with his mother and hated new stepfather David. And clearly something is not quite right with Mark's mother as the usually vivacious woman is suddenly fatigued and uninterested in going out or doing things. Mark doesn't know what is going on so he lays the blame completely at David's feet, who he thinks is controlling his mother somehow and trying to shut Mark out of their lives. br / br /One day as Mark is moping around he meets the old lady that lives in the basement of their house. She's lived there for years and she shows him the old servants quarters. Mark is strangely attracted to it and one day enters the quarters and comes upon a strange scene of servants running around to take care of the house. The allure of this area of the house continues to draw him in and he continues to run into the ghosts. But something is awry in the crazy scene as ashes and smoke begin to clog the servants' quarters and they scurry about trying to set things in order. Mark ultimately begins to help in this endeavor and the allegory will become clear as the novel draws to a close. br / br /This novel is pretty slow paced as most of it involved Mark moping around and inwardly whining about his stepfather. The entire role of the "ghosts" in this novel becomes very clear, a little too quickly, so you can pretty much figure out the end of the story way before you get there. br / br /This novel, to me, was rather uninteresting and bland. It's not one I would recommend. br /
 "It said everything about the world had changed" November 27, 2008
Michael Leonard (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA)
Growing up in cosmopolitan London, eleven-year-old Mark would never have thought to find himself living in Brighton with his remote step-father David, and his rather delicate and solitary mother. A diffident boy, Mark has been lonely most of his life, his only real comfort his skate board, a recent present from his father, which he plays with along the long stretches of the asphalt promenade by the beach. Mark is taken back to discover that the cheerful summer chaos of the board walk has been replaced a few cold looking mothers, so he spends most of his afternoons virtually friendless with no one to talk to about his dreams and his disappointments. Even as he watches the other boys joke and toss each other around, Mark skates in silence, going home to the three story house on Brunswick Square that belongs to David but which does not feel anything like home. br / br /From the outset it's pretty obvious there's something terribly wrong with his mother who seems content to sit at home all day staring silently out at of the living room window at the vast Brighton seascape. Within weeks of David coming into their lives, Mark's mother had started to get ill. David casually informed Gerald from the start that his mother needs rest and quiet, and that for the time being she can't even consider stepping outside the front door to go for a walk or have dinner in one of the many restaurants that pepper the promenade. Left to his own devices, David is forced to explore his surroundings, similarly repelled by David's heavy-handed attitude towards him while also concerned about his mother's failing health. Then a fall through his bedroom window jumpstarts a series of events that force him to question what is real and what is not. It is in the corridor below the house where an old lady lives, crammed into a tiny flat that David finally meets his nemesis even as a slightly damp brown smell surrounds while everything about the lady appears to be dry and white and grey. br / br /The old lady seems to be a symbolic gate-keeper to darker secret of long-dead servants, inhabiting the gloomy recesses of the creaking house, the hallways and shelves empty, but thick with the dust and cobwebs from a generation ago. Perhaps it has all been a dream, that he had fallen asleep in the old lady's chair, then dreamed he'd woken, stolen the key from the drawer and gone to the back of the house. But surely dreams "do not leave dust on your hands or smudges on the shoulders of your jacket." As Mark steadily meets all of these servants, and these the players in a drama gradually unfold, he begins to realize the enormity of his position, the servants plight to clean up their rooms a powerful metaphor Marks own battles in his life so far. Up until now there's been the unspoken assumption that his mother and real dad were still married on some way, still joined, still remained tied to the fabric of the world. Now he realizes this belief has started to waver. The sad recognition is that deep inside of him, he wasn't always aware of what was going on. br / br /As Mark and his servant friends become ever-more trapped in the noisy chaos of the gathering storm, thrown away from each other by the cyclone of ash and blackness and fear. The swirl of smoke and ash starts to revolve faster and author Michael Marshall Smith swirls a unique and bitter-sweet tale out of the cinders of Mark's lonely existence. As the scenario plays out, Mark begins to move through parallel worlds of his own mundane existence and the strange life of the servants who seem to be trapped between past and present, between fantasy and truth. Surprisingly, it is David who eventually comes the kid's rescue, telling him the truth about his mother even as he faithfully urges Mark to grow-up in his mission to uncover the paths of understanding between them both. Just as the cold, the sleet, and the icy wind constantly buffets Brighton beach and its accompanying boardwalk, Mark finally grasps that he's taken too many things for granted for too long awhile. Times of course change and things do not remain the same, real life does not go on forever, just like London did. The reality is far more like Brighton: "Things changed and things stopped, and things eventually fall away into the sea." A coming-of-age story tied with a cleverly rendered ghost story, Smith writes a compelling tale that reeks of the most strangely symbolic spectral events as the servants cry out for help from Mark. Rich with moral ambiguity, this novel is all about the paths of understanding, and as it builds towards its climax, Mark journey is that he must come to a new understanding of the world and of the sad walkways of life. Mike Leonard 2008. br /
A Modern Ghost Story November 24, 2008
Mary (Washington, DC)
Michael Marshall Smith's "The Servants" is a modern ghost story, set in the bleakness of off-season Brighton in England. Beautifully written, and the main character, a child, is very accurately depicted. br / br /Smith truly captures the sense of gloom of Brighton when it's cold and grey. At the same time, it was an imaginative ghost story that conjured up incredible imagery. I kept thinking Tim Burton should make this into a film, it has that sort of off-kilter quirkiness to it. br / br /If you like realistic stories with a supernatural overtone (i.e., the films The Others, or The Orphanage) then The Servants is a terrific read. (Now, someone buy the movie rights!!!)
 "Behind the Attic Wall" only with a boy and no attic November 20, 2008
Michelf (Orange County, CA)
It's not really that much like Behind the Attic Wall when it comes down to it. But as I read "The Servants" it had the same sort of "ambiance" as that book. br / br /For reasons that I can't explain, I had difficulty sympathizing with the main character, Mark, but I did recognize him as a real person. br / br /I think that a young reader who's recently gone through a move or something like it would really enjoy this book.
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