num_pages: 406
description: The Observations is a hugely assured and darkly funny debut set in nineteenth-century Scotland. Bessy Buckley, the novel's heroine, is a cynical, wide-eyed, and tender fifteen-year-old Irish girl who takes a job as a maid in a once-grand country house outside Edinburgh, where all is not as it seems. Asked by her employer, the beautiful Arabella, to keep a journal of her most intimate thoughts, Bessy soon makes a troubling discovery and realizes that she has fled her difficult past only to arrive in an even more disturbing present.
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: Penguin Books