From Publishers Weekly
Wodehouse gets a modern twist in this brilliantly acerbic tale of snobbery and marital tomfoolery in 1990s London. Our nameless protagonist, a jovial, perceptive sort of 30-something fellow hanging affably about the fringes of society, introduces his middle-class but sleek and beautiful friend Edith Lavery to the earnest but dull Lord Charles Broughton. Much to the dismay of "civilized" society, Charles falls in love and proposes to the social-climbing but largely indifferent Edith. Even after she is married, Edith is snubbed and humiliated at every turn (in the slyest, politest possible way, of course), until she moves out in a huff with her married lover, Simon Russell, an actor/ego-on-legs who is eating up the publicity that comes with being seen with a countess and eager for this entrée into society (he doesn't realize Edith has been cast into the societal dung heap). To Edith's consternation, the glittering world of theater turns out to be just as small-minded and dull as that of society, with the added disadvantage of it not involving much money. Gossipy and dishy, this debut by the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Gosford Park is a merciless and hilarious sendup of snobbery and social jealousy, revealing the pettiness and self-absorption of both the envious and the envied. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
As the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Gosford Park, Fellowes proved himself to be an arch observer of the quirks and customs of the British upper crust. Fast-forwarding half a century, he turns his attention to more contemporary characters still mired in the same class affectations and divisions. Beautiful Edith Lavery, an unabashed middle-class social climber, hits the jackpot when she snags the heir to an earldom. Not only is Charles Broughton titled but his clan has actually managed to maintain and increase the fabulous family fortune. Alas, life on the ancestral estate is not all that it is cracked up to be, and Edith soon grows weary of her dominating mother-in-law and bored with her stolid husband. After an unfortunate yet titillating dalliance, everyone stiffens their lips in proper public-school fashion and carries on admirably. This delightful comedy of manners good-naturedly lampoons a class of people whose artificiality is so inbred it becomes positively genuine. Veddy British, what? Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Snobs, by Julian Fellowes, is an hilariously snobbish novel about hilariously snobbish people involved in a society scandal. Froth at its best. His writing is as stylish as his story. Mr. Fellowes knows his turf well."
- Dominick Dunne

"Julian Fellowes's witty, wise depiction of the lives and lunacies of upper-class English life is just my cup of tea...."
- Jane Stanton Hitchcock

"Snobs is everything you would hope for from the writer of "Gosford Park". A delicious thoroughbred delight, a guilty treat that is awake to every maddening and appallingly attractive nuance of English social life. The novel somehow contrives to be moral without being preachy or losing for a minute its gracefully shameless delight in the well bred and their satellites. A kind of Louis Auchincloss for our times, Julian Fellowes has written a book that is destined to grace all the bedside tables of all the better houses in the land."
- Stephen Fry

"This is the kind of book Edith Wharton would have written if she were around today."
- Arnold Scaasi

"Snobs is an insightful, funny satire of English upper-crust country life in the tradition of Mitford or Waugh....The best chick-lit book of the season was written by a man."
- The Globe and Mail

"Sparklingly rompish...As long as this world does still exist, Fellowes is a delectable guide to its absurdities."
- Sunday Times (London)

"Illustrated with some cherishably nasty, Gosford Park--style scenes of aristocratic
point-scoring, and far more illuminating than a copy of Correct Form...one of those books one imagines being sent up to Balmoral...where it will be proclaimed divinely funny and quite amazingly true to life."
- The Guardian

"Deliciously waspish satire...Snobs is terrific entertainment, deepened by the sad ache of truth."
- Literary Review

"Fellowes's attractive, faintly cynical voice has overtones of Trollope, Waugh, and Mitford."
- The Independent

"A delicious comedy of manners on the nuances of English social life, which raises laughter and an occasional wince of recognition."
- Daily Mail

"Provocative, titillating, and seductive...Julian Fellowes tells this anachronistic morality tale with such wit, verve, elegance, and schadenfreude that it never loses momentum."
- The Spectator

"Fellowes doesn't try to hide his love of the funny, sealed, above-stairs world of dukes, duchesses, marquesses, nusery maids, herbaceous borders, and breakfast kedgeree under its own silver lid, all of which is what makes Snobs such a good, fresh read."
- Telegraph



Book Description
"The English, of all classes as it happens, are addicted to exclusivity. Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them."

The best comedies of manners are often deceptively simple, seamlessly blending social critique with character and story. In his superbly observed first novel, Julian Fellowes, winner of an Academy Award for his original screenplay of Gosford Park, brings us an insider's look at a contemporary England that is still not as classless as is popularly supposed.

Edith Lavery, an English blonde with large eyes and nice manners, is the daughter of a moderately successful accountant and his social-climbing wife. While visiting his parents' stately home as a paying guest, Edith meets Charles, Earl of Broughton, and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, who runs the family estates in East Sussex and Norfolk. To the gossip columns he is one of the most eligible young aristocrats around.

When he proposes. Edith accepts. But is she really in love with Charles? Or with his title, his position, and all that goes with it?

One inescapable part of life at Broughton Hall is Charles's mother, the shrewd Lady Uckfield, known to her friends as "Googie" and described by the narrator---an actor who moves comfortably among the upper classes while chronicling their foibles---"as the most socially expert individual I have ever known at all well. She combined a watchmaker's eye for detail with a madam's knowledge of the world." Lady Uckfield is convinced that Edith is more interested in becoming a countess than in being a good wife to her son. And when a television company, complete with a gorgeous leading man, descends on Broughton Hall to film a period drama, "Googie's" worst fears seem fully justified.

In this wickedly astute portrait of the intersecting worlds of aristocrats and actors, Julian Fellowes establishes himself as an irresistible storyteller and a deliciously witty chronicler of modern manners.



About the Author
Julian Fellowes is a writer, actor, and film director who was educated at Ampleforth College, Cambridge University, and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. As an actor, his roles include Lord Kilwillie in the BBC Television series "Monarch of Glen" and the 2nd Duke of Richmond in "Aristocrats", as well as appearances in the films "Shadowlands", "Damage", and "Tomorrow Never Dies".

His debut as a screenwriter was "Gosford Park", directed by Robert Altman in 2001, which won awards for the best original screenplay from the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, the Writers Guild of America, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Since then he has written the screenplay for "Vanity Fair", starring Reese Witherspoon, and made his debut as a director with "Separate Lives". He has also written the book for a Cameron Mackintosh stage musical of "Mary Poppins". He and his wife, Emma, have a son, Peregrine, and a dachshund, Fudge.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
First-time novelist Julian Fellowes, who wrote the screenplay for Gosford Park, here shines his literary light on the quirky, exasperating, yet enchanting world of the English aristocracy and the subtle distinctions that set its denizens apart from the lesser mortals of the mere upper middle class.

Snobs is narrated by a young, vaguely struggling actor who was born into the world of stately manors and bumbling, idiosyncratic peers. At Ascot, he introduces his beautiful but more common friend Edith to Charles, current Earl Broughton and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. Charles falls in love, and while Edith does not, she cannot quite render herself impervious to the attractions of becoming a countess and leaving her job as a clerk. So, they marry. Inexorably, Edith discovers that the charms of big houses and myriad social privileges don't always bring happiness. And when a company of actors -- led by the handsome but vacuous Simon -- arrives to shoot some footage at Broughton Hall, Edith grabs at the chance to live a more exciting life.

Fellowes evokes the spirit of Evelyn Waugh and other Bright Young Things in this clever, relentlessly funny send-up of the delicately stratified milieu of the English nobility -- a carefully cloistered and oddly captivating world. (Spring 2005 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Snobs is narrated by a journeyman actor who moves comfortably among the upper classes, while chronicling their foibles. And what a tale he has to tell." "Edith Lavery, the attractive only child of a moderately successful accountant and his social-climbing wife, earns a living answering the telephone in a fashionable Chelsea estate agent. While visiting his parents' house as a member of the public, she meets Charles Broughton, Earl Broughton and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, who runs the family estates in East Sussex and Norfolk. To the gossip-columns he is one of the most eligible young aristocrats around." "When he proposes Edith accepts. But is she really in love with Charles? Or with his title, his position and all that she thinks goes with it?" Partaking in events and never shy of commenting is Charles Broughton's mother, the shrewd Lady Uckfield, known to her friends as 'Googie'. Edith, she decides, is a young woman on the make. And when a television company descends on Broughton Hall to make a period drama. 'Googie's' worst fears are fully justified.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jonathan Ames - The New York Times

When you read a book, you're lost in time. All the more reason to read Snobs. It will distract you pleasantly. It's like a visit to an English country estate: breezy, beautiful and charming.

The New Yorker

Fellowes, a late bloomer who wrote the script for “Gosford Park,” again portrays the British upper class in his début novel. One Edith Lavery marries up, snagging the Earl of Broughton, a man who lives for his country estates and thanks his wife after each of their brief sexual encounters. Edith soon takes up with a handsome actor and runs for cover from her mother-in-law, the formidable Googie. The polite firefights that ensue are very readable, but their presentation is somewhat muddled. Fellowes, who, the dust jacket reveals, has a son named Peregrine and a dachshund named Fudge, may identify too closely with this social stratum. Although he convincingly portrays the habits of the entitled, they escape the skewering that the title leads us to expect. The result is a watered-down satire that eventually becomes an apologia for Edwardian England, where everyone knew his place and no one was tacky.

Publishers Weekly

Wodehouse gets a modern twist in this brilliantly acerbic tale of snobbery and marital tomfoolery in 1990s London. Our nameless protagonist, a jovial, perceptive sort of 30-something fellow hanging affably about the fringes of society, introduces his middle-class but sleek and beautiful friend Edith Lavery to the earnest but dull Lord Charles Broughton. Much to the dismay of "civilized" society, Charles falls in love and proposes to the social-climbing but largely indifferent Edith. Even after she is married, Edith is snubbed and humiliated at every turn (in the slyest, politest possible way, of course), until she moves out in a huff with her married lover, Simon Russell, an actor/ego-on-legs who is eating up the publicity that comes with being seen with a countess and eager for this entr e into society (he doesn't realize Edith has been cast into the societal dung heap). To Edith's consternation, the glittering world of theater turns out to be just as small-minded and dull as that of society, with the added disadvantage of it not involving much money. Gossipy and dishy, this debut by the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Gosford Park is a merciless and hilarious sendup of snobbery and social jealousy, revealing the pettiness and self-absorption of both the envious and the envied. Agent, Cathy King at ICM (U.K.). (Feb. 10) Forecast: Fellowes's satire of the English class system, a bestseller in the U.K., translates well for American readers. Anglophiles in particular will be in Brit-hit heaven. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Fellowes, who won the 2001 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Gosford Park, gives readers another glimpse into life among the upper classes in this delightfully satirical tale of the blond and beautiful Edith Lavery. Desperate and on the brink of turning 30, she chooses a husband for his money and status and almost immediately regrets her decision, as Charles turns out to be decent and honorable but totally boring (in and out of bed). The narrator, an actor friend of the social-climbing bride, describes Edith's growing frustration with married life and her ill-advised decision to run off with a sexier man, only to discover that her old life held many charms-not the least of which was oodles of money and parties at Ascot. What's a girl to do? The satire is biting but not distasteful, and Fellowes offers up a host of interesting characters-especially Googie, Edith's aristocratic mother-in-law, who would make a great subject for a novel-plus an insider's view of England's class system. Highly recommended wherever British fiction is popular. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/04.]-Nancy Pearl, formerly with Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews