‘Undermajordomo Minor’ is fun, surreal read that you can’t put down

I started “Undermajordomo Minor” by Patrick deWitt with the intention of reading for an hour or so before bed. Four hours later, I found myself forcing my eyelids open, not wanting to stop.

I hadn’t had that feeling since high school, when the last Harry Potter book came out and I felt like I needed to read it in one sitting.

DeWitt uses quirky descriptions, snappy dialogue and deadpan humor to create an absurd/surreal world similar to a Wes Anderson film. The novel feels like a modern folk tale. It’s a truly wonderful, fast-paced work crafted by a skilled writer.

Lucien (Lucy) Minor, a young man from Bury, leaves his small town to take up the position of undermajordomo (a majordomo is the chief steward of a household) at the Castle Von Aux. On his way to his new life, Lucy meets and befriends two thieves who live in the village surrounding the castle.

The oldest, Memel, is the father of the beautiful Klara, Lucy’s love interest. The village assumes she’ll marry a handsome soldier by the name of Adolphus, creating a complex love triangle that constantly weighs on Lucy’s mind.

From the first description of the castle, there’s an eerie, almost Gothic sense that everything isn’t right. The castle had “a broad, crenellated outer curtain wall and two conical towers. It was built at the sloping base of a mountain range, standing gray-black against the snow — a striking setting, but there was something chilling about it also. Lucy thought it was somehow too sheer, too beautiful.”

Inside the castle, Lucy meets the majordomo, Mr. Olderglough, who’s irrationally devoted to his “misbehaving” master, the Baron Von Aux. Lucy learns that the Baroness Von Aux has left the castle, the staff has been reduced to a meager three people, counting Lucy, and that his position once belonged to Mr. Broom, whose disappearance remains a mystery to Lucy.

At night, Lucy is ordered to keep his door locked, and he learns why when someone tries to enter late one night.

“When the knob reached the limit of its rotation, the door swelled in its jamb; but being bolted, it couldn’t be opened, and the knob turned backward, just as cautiously as before, to its point of origin.”

The novel invokes a plethora of intense emotions that reveals the reader’s investment in the plot and characters. On one page you’ll feel scared and two pages later, that feeling seamlessly changes to happiness or depression or hysterical laughter. DeWitt leads you through a wonderful journey with memorable characters in an unconventional world.

The only fault with “Undermajordomo Minor” stems from my selfishness as a reader: I wish it never ended.

This story was originally published November 7, 2015 at 3:00 AM with the headline "‘Undermajordomo Minor’ is fun, surreal read that you can’t put down."