Barford Abbey

The great-grandmother of Downton Abbey, Barford Abbey is among the first of a new genre of 'abbey fictions.' Using the abbey as a site and a question mark, Susannah Minifie weaves a story of new and broken relationships, of change and fear of change, and of heredity and inheritance. Here the abbey becomes a symbol not simply tied to the gothic but a setting for social dramas that prefigures the realist novels of the nineteenth century. In two compact volumes, the novel achieves innovations in narrative manner and style. Barford Abbey may seem to offer the consolations of melodrama and the comforts of marriage, but the balance of the novel reminds us that parts of life can sometimes be left out, and that life's losses cannot genuinely be recovered.