by Sophie Kinsella

“There’s no such thing as ruining your life. Life’s a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.”

After reading them quite a while ago, I’m listening to all of Sophie Kinsella’s books on Audible. They have been even better than I remember thanks to the great narrators. They have wrung every little bit of comedy, wit, heart, and romance out of every one. And The Undomestic Goddess was no exception. When I first started to listen to it, I was a little put off because Rosalyn Landor, the first-person narrator, seemed too old and serious for a SK heroine. They are usually a little goofy and hapless. But as it turned out, as I got into the story, she was perfect.

As the book starts Samantha Sweeting is anything but a flakey but nice airhead. She is a brilliant corporate banking and contract lawyer, “one of the country’s top legal talents”. She is on track to achieve her lifelong dream: to be the youngest partner at the most prestigious firm in London. Until she does something she never does: she makes a mistake. And it’s a doozy, losing her firm £50,000,000. Thrown into disarray and disbelief, she leaves the office building in a trance and finds herself in the middle of the English countryside knocking on the door of a beautiful estate to ask for information as to where she is exactly. They mistake her for an applicant for their cook and housekeeper position, and Samantha, thanks to her ability to think on her feet (and lie), gets the job even though she has never cooked or done anything remotely domestic in her life. Earlier, when interrupted at her office by her cleaner asking where she keeps her vacuum cleaner bags, she wonders why one would want to put a vacuum cleaner in a bag. Where is she taking it? (she puts “order a new vacuum” on her to-do list since she has no idea and figures a new vacuum would come with a supply of bags. Problem solved! ) But she can fake it at the Geigers for a day or two. She only needs a place to stay until she figures out her next step forward.

But one thing leads to another and her break from the pressure-cooker existence at her firm does its good work. Despite stumbling around in the dark as far as her duties are concerned, she starts to enjoy her time and freedom.

“[When] you’re a lawyer at Carter Spink, you don’t sit around. Not when every six minutes of your time is worth money. If I let six minutes of time tick away, I’ve lost the firm £50. Twelve minutes, £100. Eighteen minutes, £150. And the truth is, you get used to measuring your life in little chunks. And you get used to working. All the time.”

Her disastrous adventures doing the laundry, cooking, and cleaning are hilarious, and still more hilarious is how she bluffs her way through her ignorance of all things domestic and worms her way into the hearts of her employers and visa versa. They think she is the best housekeeper they have ever had! Thanks to the cooking and cleaning lessons of the gardener Nathaniel’s warm and wise mother, she actually starts to enjoy the work and becomes pretty good at it. She doesn’t have a genius I.Q for nothing, though she has to take great pains to hide it.

As the days go on, she and Nathaniel, who also owns 3 pubs and hates lawyers, fall in love and Samantha starts to become part of the community.

…I’ve learned a different way to live. I do my day’s work, and I finish—and that’s it. I’m free. I don’t need to take paperwork home. I don’t need to have my BlackBerry switched on twenty-four/seven. I can go to the pub, I can make weekend plans, I can go and sit in the garden for half an hour with my feet up—and it doesn’t matter. I don’t have that constant pressure anymore. I’m not stressed out. And it suits me. It’s like … The Waltons.

But one day she sees something on the internet which causes her to realize that she is possibly innocent of the mistake she was accused of, but was framed. The last part of the book concerns her, at first, almost hopeless efforts to clear her name. The triumphant yet troubling aftermath causes her to come to a fork in the road as to her career and future life.

I can’t emphasize strongly enough how much Rosalyn Landor’s interpretation added welcome layers to this book. The tension between Samantha’s mature serious tones while being driven into consternation and bemusement by her own incompetence and her employers’ antics are priceless. We are privy to her frequent and panic-stricken inner loss of poise while never losing her calm, competent, and collected exterior in front of the Geigers. The voices she gives to the snobby but good-hearted Trish and Eddie capture them perfectly. In fact, every character is a gem. Sophie Kinsella is always funny but this one seemed to have more than its fair share of emotional and poignant moments.

I’ve read that Sophie Kinsella is very ill but currently in stable condition. I am so grateful for the many hours of joy and delight she has given me and will continue to give me even if she never writes another new book.