Every
child imagines a world all to themselves, hidden from parents and a long way
from anything resembling reality — essentially, a place to which they can
escape. British author Michael Marshall Smith bases his new novel “The Servants,”
which hits bookshelves today, on this premise. The novel begins with intricate
character development and an absorbing plotline, but alas, it falls apart as
character inconsistencies and unanswered questions dominate the end of the
novel.

Smith,
the winner of two science fiction novel awards for “Only Forward,” interweaves
the story of an 11-year-old boy Mark with a grandmother-aged woman who is never
named but instead referred to as “the old lady.” Mark lives with his ailing
mother and new stepfather, David, in Brighton, England. Mark aspires to return
to live the life he had before his stepfather invaded his family and to spend
more time with his mother alone.

With
David on aggressive guard duty over Mark’s mother at all times, Mark feels pushed
aside and forgotten. “Mark understood then what his position had become. David
now stood between him and his mother. He always would. … There was nothing Mark
could do about that,” Smith writes.

After
bickering with his stepfather one day, Mark storms out of the house and meets
an old lady who lives in the basement of David’s home. She shows him a series
of abandoned rooms behind the small lodging she maintains, which she explains
were once servants’ quarters.

“Servants
were supposed to keep out of sight. As if everything happened by magic,” Smith foreshadows.

Still,
Smith masterfully captures the thoughts and perceptions of both the elderly
woman and the youthful Mark.

“No
one imagines that the person wrapped inside that pale, dry tissue paper might
have sweated and yelled and ran, in their day, that they might know secrets yet
to be discovered in younger lives,” Smith narrates as he introduces the old
lady.

Smith
also brings to life the mindset of an 11-year-old child when he describes the
thoughts of Mark, though the boy’s perspective becomes inconsistent.

“[Brighton]
had evidently been ‘racy’ once, a term [Mark] didn’t understand but which
seemed to involve dancing, men and women who weren’t really married to each
other, or sometimes both.”

Eventually,
Mark finds out that his stepfather doesn’t know that the servants’ quarters
exist below their house, and Mark is filled with satisfaction.

“[Mark]
felt a little better than he had before. So David didn’t know everything there
was to know, huh.”

Smith
reinforces Mark’s adolescence again and again with such passages, then abruptly
gives Mark the insight and line of reasoning of someone twice his age for one
chapter near the end of the novel as he argues with his stepfather. Explaining
in more detail would spoil the ending, but it is safe to say that though Smith
readily evokes a fifth grader’s mindset, his inconsistency makes Mark’s
character less believable.

The
next time Mark enters the servants’ dwelling — this time without the old lady —
the place is inexplicably bustling with maids and butlers from another era.
Beside himself with terror, Mark scampers away and quickly convinces himself it
must have been a dream. Upon multiple more visits to the mysterious room, Mark
continues to encounter these people.

“Now
it had happened again, and he knew what had just happened could not
be a dream. Dreams did not leave dust on your hands, or smudges on the
shoulders of your jacket,” Smith writes.

Although
the idea of a hidden world is engaging, Smith does not allow enough events to transpire
in the servants’ lodging. “The Servants” grows dry as Mark repeatedly enters the
servants’ world and leaves again lacking new information. Mark never questions
why the servants seem to have escaped from the past, why they appear only when
he is alone or why the condition of the world below seems to directly associate
with his home upstairs, and Smith never answers these questions. The end of the
novel is puzzling, somehow bringing to mind more uncertainties than it puts to
rest and creating plot holes. Although “The Servants” bodes well initially,
lingering questions and uninteresting adventures ultimately disappoint.

2
1/2 stars out of 5