While We Were Watching Downton Abbey by Wendy Wax

While We Were Watching Downton Abbey.  Wendy Wax. Penguin Group (USA). April 2013. 384 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 97804525263310.

A motley group live in the Alexander Building, watched over by the gentleman Edward, who sees to the needs of the building and arranges for a weekly showing of Downton Abbey, the British serial show that millions around the world have been avidly following and immensely enjoying.  This is where Samantha, Claire, Brooke and other minor characters live and where they bond through their Sunday evening gatherings!

Samantha and her siblings were poor when she met her rich husband.  She can’t cook and always orders in and she can’t control her sister and brother who are money-hungry parasites and a mother-in-law who bullies her and the rest of the family.  Jonathan maintains silence throughout all this, including the grand schemes of Samantha’s brother that have made Jonathan lose thousands of dollars.  One begins to sense a constant sense of intense fear looming beneath Samantha’s exterior, an unwillingness to risk speaking truth to her husband, brother or sister.  Beginning new friendships with Brooke and Claire begins to change it all, very slowly but oh so surely!

Claire is a writer who has written Highland romances that readers love.  But she has a massive case of writer’s block, even though she doesn’t acknowledge she has it and doesn’t seem willing to explore why this dry spell has developed.  She has this new life and doesn’t quite seem able to settle into it easily.  Then she begins to attend the Sunday gatherings around the TV series and eventually wakes up to a whole new world!

Brook is divorced from the man she worked to put through medical school.  Now he’s threatening her with being thrown out of the Alexander and at the same time he and his new girlfriend are going to buy a new place in the same building.  He’s a Dad when it’s convenient and not financially supportive of her children; she needs money and some new confidence on the interior.  Edward sees everything and finds a niche for Brook that is life-saving in many, many different ways!

Downton Abbey is about the ups and downs of the aristocracy and the “downstairs” help or servants of the household.  It’s about love, hate, loss of life and the birth of new life both literally and figuratively!  While there are no parallels to this story, it’s gritty and tender qualities seem to imbue these characters with the strength they need to shed old destructive patterns of life and explore new choices that could turn either way but are far, far more worthy of the their efforts than they knew in their past banal existences.

While We Were Watching Downton Abbey is a grand, well-paced contemporary read definitely deserving to be on the best seller list!!! Great writing!