House of Trelawney by Hannah Rothschild
The enormous, sprawling Trelawney Castle in Cornwall, with its towers, follies, rooms for every day of the year, four miles of corridors, and 500,000 acres, served as the earls of Trelawney’s majestic and imposing “three-dimensional calling card” for more than seven hundred years. Due to the lack of desire and financial know-how of the twenty-four earls, two world wars, the Wall Street meltdown, and inheritance taxes, it is completely destroyed by 2008. Yet Kitto, the heir to everything, manages to maintain everything along with his wife Jane, their three children, their dog, Kitto’s elderly parents, and his aunt Tuffy Scott, an entomologist who specializes in flea research.
House of Trelawney by Hannah Rothschild
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The plot is primarily focused on four women: Jane, Kitto’s sister Blaze, who left Trelawney and found financial success in London, the stunningly attractive, seductive, and long-exiled Anastasia, and her daughter Ayesha. The long-separated Blaze and Jane must work together to take care of their new visitor and save the Trelawney house when Anastasia writes a letter informing them that her nineteen-year-old daughter, Ayesha, will be staying. Blaze and Jane will soon learn that the family’s home is actually only a very minor portion of what keeps them together.
For seven hundred years, the family has owned Trelawney House. They could never imagine living anywhere else. Unfortunately, like many of our grand country homes, extensions to the original structure have rendered it uninhabitable by a typical family, and reductions in the family fortune have made it necessary to locate a sizable sum of money in order to make it habitable. Kitto, the heir to the family fortune, believes he can do this by dabbling in finance, while his sister Blaze, a great financier, has been exiled from the home since she turned 18 in accordance with family custom.
The oldest child of Baron Jacob Rothschild is Hannah Rothschild. She received her education at Oxford and held the positions of head of trustees for the National Gallery and trustee for the Tate Gallery. Her understanding of art is evident in the personalities of Tony Scott and Jane. This book enhances Rothschild’s already-established reputation as a comedic author. But it’s also a story about the hazards of clinging to the past, the risks associated with financial markets, the worth of love, families, and friends, and the need to maintain perspective in life.
