Cluny Brown

This is one of my favourite novels proving the heroine, Cluny ( short for Clover ) Brown a wonderful example of a woman who has empowerment in her distinctive voice and her outgoing nature. Cluny is a plumber's neice who yearns to be a society woman...how this intelligent, fiesty young woman discovers her ideal miraculously exemplifies wonderful women's literature. Also, the relationship between Adam Belinski and Cluny is worth noting. A charming, competitive romance, with a hint of rivalry and contempt. A must read for a very strong role model.

Ages ago, I heard of an English movie, Cluny Brown, with, I think, Jean Simmons and Charles Boyer. (Made during the early '40s?) But when I finally tracked down the novel from which it was taken, all I could think of was the young Audrey Hepburn, the Hepburn of Sabrina. (Not the pallid Jennifer Love Hewitt of the recent tv-bio, but the real Audrey, as we all knew her.) Cluny Brown is a young working class woman in 1938 London who is becoming a trial to her plumber uncle, Arn (he and his late wife raised her when she was orphaned as a baby). Cluny, described as tall and plain, but with creamy skin and beautiful dark eyes, is beginning to attract too much attention from men---to Uncle Arn's surprise and dismay, because he (and the rest of the family) considers her extremely unattractive. She's sent into service, in the Devon countryside, at Carmel Friars, a lovely country manor. There she meets an assortment of characters, including a priggish chemist (drugstore owner) who fancies her, a Polish emigre writer, who doesn't seem to fancy her at all, the son and heir, who's involved with a blonde English beauty, an enthusiastic double-barreled young woman, Miss Duff-Gordon, who raises rabbits, and on and on. Cluny chafes at the lack of freedom and becomes part of everyone's life, popping up at key moments to comment on the action and providing a good deal of it herself. A charming look at England before WWII and at a refreshing character reminiscent of two Hepburn movie heroines, Sabrina as well as Holly Golightly. We all knew that Cluny (real name, Clover) was a diamond-in-the-rough, and was destined to become "someone." Lovely book.

Reading Cluny Brown has the same kind of satisfaction as a warm bed when it's cold outside. It is not particularly challenging, but it provides an awful lot of reading pleasure. Cluny Brown is a girl who just does not know her place, and all the adventures that follow come from that lucky not knowing. I read it first as an awkward preteen, and still enjoyed it as an (I hope) less awkward adult. I would recommend it for any age. It is, by the way, one of the rare books where I enjoyed the film just as much.