Undermajordomo Minor
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Simon Prebble
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By:
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Patrick deWitt
About this listen
From the best-selling, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers comes a brilliant and boisterous novel that reimagines the folk tale.
A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, Undermajordomo Minor is Patrick deWitt's long-awaited follow-up to the internationally best-selling and critically acclaimed novel The Sisters Brothers.
Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux.
While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle's master, Baron Von Aux. He also encounters the colorful people of the local village - thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty whose love he must compete for with the exceptionally handsome soldier, Adolphus. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behavior is laid bare for our hero to observe.
Undermajordomo Minor is an adventure, a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behavior, but above all it is a love story, and Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.
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- A Murdoch Mystery, Book 1
- By: Maureen Jennings
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the naked body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. The young victim was pregnant when she died. Detective William Murdoch soon discovers that many of those connected with the girl's life have secrets to hide. Was her death on attempt to cover up a scandal in one of the city's influential families?
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If you like the show - don't buy
- By Sarah on 06-09-16
By: Maureen Jennings
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Born of Persuasion
- Price of Privilege, Book 1
- By: Jessica Dotta
- Narrated by: Amanda McKnight
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The year is 1838, and seventeen-year-old Julia Elliston's position has never been more fragile. Orphaned and unmarried in a time when women are legal property of their fathers, husbands, and guardians, she finds herself at the mercy of an anonymous guardian who plans to establish her as a servant in far-off Scotland. With two months to devise a better plan, Julia's first choice - to marry her childhood sweetheart - is denied. Then, a titled dowager offers to introduce Julia into society, opening a realm of possibilities.
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Debut Book in Series
- By Carrie Fancett Pagels on 10-31-13
By: Jessica Dotta
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Detective Gretel
- By: P.J. Brackston
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the sleepy Bavarian town of Gesternstadt, gossip was viewed by many as a local sport, a popular hobby, a harmless pastime that showed only the depth and enduring nature of the interest of one neighbour for another. In Gretel’s opinion, however, tittle-tattle sowed the seeds of malice among the fertile soil of jealousy, often watered by the tears of its victims. So it was that upon hearing from brother Hans of the whispers concerning a young woman, a married man and a thwarted lover, Gretel is compelled to rise from her beloved day bed to set things to rights.
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Great! Looking forward to more
- By Monica P. on 12-07-20
By: P.J. Brackston
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The Monstrumologist
- By: Rick Yancey
- Narrated by: Steven Boyer
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Warthrop is a scientist who tracks and studies real-life monsters. Assisted by his 12-year-old apprentice, Will Henry, Dr. Warthrop discovers a pod of Anthropophagi and launches a hunt to destroy the foul beasts.
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Reader Be Warned
- By Eddie on 01-25-15
By: Rick Yancey
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The Essex Serpent
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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When Cora Seaborne's brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness: her marriage was not a happy one. Wed at 19, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of society wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open space in the wake of the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex, accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive 11-year old son, Francis, and the boy's nanny, Martha.
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Unbearable Narrator
- By ACB on 06-08-17
By: Sarah Perry
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Glamorous Illusions
- Grand Tour Series, Book 1
- By: Lisa T. Bergren
- Narrated by: Jaime Draper
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Cora is about to discover who she truly is. It’s the summer of 1913, and Cora Kensington’s life on the family farm has taken a dark turn. Not only are the crops failing, but someone dear to Cora is failing as well. One fateful afternoon, a stranger comes to call, and Cora discovers a terrible secret about her past… a secret that will radically change her future. Cora is invited to take the “Grand Tour” of Europe, a trip intended to finish a person’s education and solidify an understanding of refinement and ancient culture.
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One of my favorites!
- By Diane Ellingsen on 06-19-17
By: Lisa T. Bergren
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Shaman's Crossing, Book One of the Soldier Son Trilogy
- By: Robin Hobb
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 24 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Hugo and Nebula Award finalist Robin Hobb crafts intricate fantasy tales featuring larger-than-life characters and exotic landscapes. Nevare Burvelle survives the King’s Cavalla Academy—where nepotism and corruption reign—to become a soldier in the Gernian king’s army. As he and his fellow soldiers are thrust onto the front lines of the king’s brutal territorial expansion campaign, they struggle against the Plainspeople—forest-dwellers who possess a powerful magic long dismissed by the Gernians.
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Sometimes Magic Isn't A Good Thing
- By Therese M. Woolley on 10-18-13
By: Robin Hobb
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Mortal Mischief
- By: Frank Tallis
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Vienna, 1902: A beautiful medium has been found shot dead, and Dr Max Liebermann, a young disciple of Sigmund Freud, is called upon to help his friend Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt investigate her death. The room containing the body has been locked from the inside, and a cryptic note suggests a malevolent supernatural power is at work. Using the new science of psychoanalysis, Liebermann probes the minds of the suspects in an attempt to unravel this bewildering crime.
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Ho-hum Victorian mystery
- By Nancy E Day on 09-17-12
By: Frank Tallis
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Shades of Milk and Honey
- By: Mary Robinette Kowal
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The fantasy novel you’ve always wished Jane Austen had written. When Jane realizes that one of Melody’s suitors is set on taking advantage of her sister for the sake of her dowry, she pushes her skills to the limit of what her body can withstand in order to set things right—and, in the process, accidentally wanders into a love story of her own.
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Great if you love speculative fiction and Austen
- By Womble on 05-07-12
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The Agency 1: A Spy in the House
- By: Y. S. Lee
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In Victorian England, orphan Mary Quinn lives on the edge. Sentenced as a thief at the age of 12, she’s rescued from the gallows by a woman posing as a prison warden. In her new home, Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls, Mary acquires a singular education, fine manners, and a surprising opportunity. The school is a cover for the Agency — an elite, top secret corps of female investigators with a reputation for results — and at 17, Mary’s about to join their ranks.
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yes, it's YA-but credible for genre for any age
- By connie on 02-25-11
By: Y. S. Lee
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House of Furies
- By: Madeleine Roux
- Narrated by: Billie Fulford-Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, 17-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boardinghouse. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize that the house's mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests. Far from a place of rest, the house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved.
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One of the characters is Satan..lots of the occult
- By Angela Briggs on 07-25-19
By: Madeleine Roux
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Revealed
- By: Kate Noble
- Narrated by: Alison Larkin
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Phillippa Benning is the unrivaled beauty of the Season. But when another lady challenges her for a marquis's attentions, Phillippa entices him to a secret rendezvous only to stumble upon The Blue Raven, England's most famous spy, lurking at the site of her planned tryst. The Blue Raven has uncovered an enemy plot directed at upcoming society functions, but he's unable to infiltrate London society.
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Really enjoyed this one — terrific listen — ignore the negative reviews
- By Pamela on 08-31-20
By: Kate Noble
What listeners say about Undermajordomo Minor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-12-16
meh
I wasn't a fan of any of the characters. The storyline was weak BUT it wasn't long.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Joe Kraus
- 06-25-18
A Fun Fairy Tale that Loses its Focus
I feel as if I might be missing the skeleton key to this one.
On the one hand, I really enjoyed its neo-fairy-tale atmosphere. In that light, it reminded me of The Hike and Sendlin Ascending, other books (more successful, I think) that evoke a sense of wonder from almost their opening sentences. Each, this included, captures a tone that makes you want to sit up and listen, a goodnight-story tone for adults.
On the other, I don’t quite see the big picture for this. I’ll do it badly if I try to paraphrase the Russian formalists on fairy tales, but they’re collective point (as I understand it) is that fairy talks function by giving us certain sets of narrative features and then varying them within an implicit larger pattern. That is, there are almost always similar pieces – a mostly innocent boy or girl on a quest, a mentor figure, an adversary, a forbidden place – and they get moved around in different ways to make a different point.
I’m not looking for Aesop-level morals, but I am hoping for a sense of why I was asked to listen to this particular story. Entertaining as this is at every turn, I found myself confused over how its different elements connected.
Early on, there’s a kind of religious sensibility. Lucy, for instance, entertains the possibility of a religious faith that his father rejects and that may or may not be what causes him to live while his father dies. (SPOILER: At the very end of this, we re-encounter the figure Lucy took to be Death and discover it’s merely a brain-damaged beggar…or is it? That point is unresolved in a way that calls us back to the neglected theme without letting us know whether to take that theme too seriously.)
There’s also a classic fairy tale trope around the young protagonist as liar, and Lucy tells a couple potentially incriminating lies along the way. In the end, though, he never seems to suffer for any of them. It may be that the novel is violating the expectation that liars will pay for their untruths, but even that possibility gets more or less washed away in the larger narrative. It’s something that happens but that never gets enough attention for us to come to any conclusion.
While this feels inventive throughout, it doesn’t feel structured in either the way I hope or the ways the Russian formalists describe. As one example, it takes until fairly late in the book for us to be introduced to “the very large hole” which comes to play a central role in the story. It isn’t hard to imagine that deWitt might have had Lucy stumble upon it as soon as he arrived in the area around the castle. For that matter, he might have had Lucy hear about the possibility of suicide in the hole when he was still on the train and denied that story for no apparent reason.
In a potential SPOILER, the entire novel ends as if it’s trailing off more than culminating in something. First, Lucy escapes from the hole, but to what? There’s an emptiness when he returns with almost everyone dead or gone. It isn’t clear to me why that matters; it feels more incidental than cumulative, almost like an excuse for him to leave rather than the real end of the story.
And then the final scene of him composing his own epitaph, while boasting beautiful prose, doesn’t quite seem to tie all the pieces together. There’s a dash of the religious quality, there’s something of the broken-heartedness we’re told to expect, and there’s a promise of more to come. Within those different pieces, though, it’s hard to tell what we’re supposed to privilege as readers.
I hear deWitt’s earlier one is better than this, and I’ll be open to it. After this, which certainly has its merits, my expectations are only middling.
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- Dinorah Spalding
- 09-24-23
Disappointing
Loved Sisters Brothers. Wanted to love this. I was mildly enjoying this then it abruptly ended.
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- chetyarbrough.blog
- 02-09-16
LUST AND LOVE
Human lust and love simmer in “Undermajordomo Minor”. From a male’s point of view, Patrick deWitt has written a fantasy about an ancient time of castles, counts, and countesses reflecting on lust and love through the ages. The story suggests men are liars, and women are enablers; with the sexes meeting in lust and, at least in one case, growing into love.
The main character is a man named Lucy. Listeners meet Lucy as an unloved child nearing death. Lucy is visited on what appears to be his deathbed by a mysterious stranger that asks him what he wants out of life. Lucy says he wants something different. The stranger nods his head and leaves his bedside. The next day Lucy feels better but his father rapidly deteriorates and dies. His mother believes her husband’s death is related to Lucy’s recovery. Never having shown much love to Lucy, she treats Lucy as a tenant more than a son.
Patrick deWitt has written something different in "Undermajordomo Minor". He shows himself to be a skilled teller of tales; an artist suggesting there is more to a supernatural story than entertainment.
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4 people found this helpful
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- m. ziph
- 07-03-18
So Good
this is the first thoroughly unpredictable story I've encountered in a long time, and the narration is really to notch. 10/10.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Beth Anne
- 11-12-15
sub par
I am going to be honest, i had completely unreachable expectations on this novel due to the pure awesomeness of The Sisters Brothers. i'm not sure it lived up to what i was hoping for, but it was good enough to enjoy.
deWitt is an extremely gifted and clever writer. i find his writing style really easy to read and thoroughly enjoyable. this story, or fable, i should say, is quite a yarn. telling of Lucy's adventures as the "Undermajordomo" of Castle Von Aux. There are strange going ons in this novel...that get even stranger as the story progresses...and i'm not quite sure i jived with the absolute strangeness of it. i'm also not quite sure i understand how this novel ends. it's a little boring, a little underwhelming. i was surprised that i didn't love this book...but the words are so well written i can't give it a negative review.
it's cute and fairy tail-ish and just ok.
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1 person found this helpful
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- R. G. Shalhoub
- 10-14-15
Great yarn and very well read
Superior reading makes this funny bit of magical realism all the more enjoyable. Would make a good intro to the world of audible books
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4 people found this helpful
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- Eileen Connors
- 09-11-21
Brilliant characterization
Vivid writing but not long on story. Not much happens and you're left wondering if you missed the point somehow.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 09-21-15
Sometimes a train is just a train
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a hole is just a hole. Sometimes a book is just meh.
If I were to choose one word for this novel it would be underwhelmed. If I were to choose two words for this novel the second would be cute. Cute works for puppies. It also works for babies. For me, however, cute doesn't work on its own for novels.
Look, I don't want to be too hard on Patrick deWitt. I really liked both 'Ablutions: Notes for a Novel' and 'The Sisters Brothers'. That is why I read the d@mn thing. And there were parts of it I liked. It just seemed a bit too trite, too uneven, boring, and again too cute. Even a candle in @ss (I won't delve deeper to ruin the surprise) in this book seems cute. The debauchery of castle elites just isn't what it used to be. The thrill is gone. The castles are closed. The holes hide no hermits.
So, if you've never read deWitt. Go read 'The Sister Brothers'. It is a better book and keeps the style, but drops the cute.
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18 people found this helpful
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- DMR
- 04-10-24
Great characters and dialogue
The narrator did an amazing job. The characters were interesting and the dialogue was fun but the story lost its appeal about 3/4 of the way through and never returned to its earlier excellence.
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