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Ai Piani Bassi (1968)

by Margaret Powell(Favorite Author)

3.53 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

8806214888 (ISBN13: 9788806214883)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Einaudi

review 1: I thought this memoir would be a guilty pleasure, but no, not entirely. The author has a strong voice, sharp and sometimes bawdy. She's critical of the privileged people she serves and doesn't romanticize life "below stairs." I do think that this reprint of the 1960s era book deserves an introduction. (And a less "pretty" cover. By her own description Margaret Powell was a big, strong girl doing filthy, difficult work.) I'm afraid she's being exploited yet again -- this time by people taking advantage of Downton Abbey's current popularity.
review 2: "Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir That Inspired "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Downton Abbey"," by Margaret Powell is at the top of my list as both an inspiring memoir and an in-depth historical a... moreccount of a by-gone era. Published in 1968, the path she wrote about starting with her childhood in Hove,England, through her years in domestic service, then afterwards as a wife and mother of three boys is dramatic, heartbreaking and oddly uplifting. Relatively poor most of her life, the book is balanced by her recollections of her shame at having to take charity as a child then later as an adult, with demonstrations of her cooking prowess. This comparison prevents her story from becoming maudlin and unrelenting. While I couldn't help comparing it to her other memoir "Servant's Hall" I still felt this time she was more confessional and honest. The "inferiority complex" she claims she gained from her years as a servant also seems to be therapeutically exposed and handled in this book. Going beyond the role of kitchen maid and cook, despite her determination to leave them behind, the most illuminating part of her story is when she realizes that those jobs actually motivated her to have a better life. less

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