num_pages: 415
description: Scotland, 1863. In an attempt to escape her not-so-innocent past in Glasgow, Bessy Buckley - the wide-eyed Irish heroine of The Observations - takes a job as a maid in a big house outside Edinburgh working for the beautiful Arabella. Bessy is intrigued by her new employer, but puzzled by her increasingly strange requests and her insistence that Bessy keep a journal of her most intimate thoughts. And it seems that Arabella has a few secrets of her own - including her near-obsessive affection for Nora, a former maid who died in mysterious circumstances.
language: English
title: The Observations
titlecomplete: The Observations
genres: Fiction, Historical, Gothic, Mystery, Scotland, Adult, Adult Fiction, 19th Century, Historical Fiction, Victorian
ratings_count: 7148
places: Scotland
awards: awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Shortlist
publisher: Faber and Faber