A review by kittykornerlibrarian
The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons

4.0

I liked it... the story starts in Vienna, and have I mentioned that a Viennese setting is always an appeal element to me? Elise Landau, a young Jewish woman who is the daughter of a novelist and an opera singer, leaves her native Austria in 1938 to escape the takeover of her country by the Third Reich. She travels on a domestic visa to become a housemaid at Tyneford, an isolated English country estate. Moving from a sophisticated European capital to the bucolic countryside, and becoming a hardworking servant instead of a spoiled woman of leisure are enormous adjustments for Elise. She worries about her sister, brother-in-law, and parents getting out of Austria in time. The plot unfolds in both predictable and unexpected ways. This is a quietly dramatic story with some situational humor and believable characters. I think it's going to be a good choice for book clubs.