The Observations

Synopsis of The Observations

«The Observations» is the historical novel by Jane Harris, published by Faber & Faber in paperback, in English.

Scotland, 1863. Bessy Buckley, a young woman fleeing her past, enters service as a maid in a country house. Her mistress, Arabella, gives her increasingly strange tasks, and Bessy soon discovers that nothing is as it seems. Amid secrets, love and friendship, it tells a story full of humour and emotion in Victorian Scotland.

Jane Harris's debut novel, published in 2006 and shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007.

With a cynical, tender and witty heroine, it is aimed at readers of historical and gothic fiction set in the Victorian era.