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The Infamous Gilberts
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Overview
"A thrilling debut that absolutely delivers" (Town & Country) in which the lines between eccentricity and madness, cruelty and love become hilariously, heartbreakingly blurred. The keys to the mighty Gothic mansion of Thornwalk are about to be handed over to a luxury hotelier. They will spend millions in the restoration, but in doing so, what will be erased? The reader is invited on a tour of this crumbling estate, guided by an enigmatic narrator. Each room holds a secret, from the bolt on the blue room door to a silver spoon in a wooden box. Wrapped around these seemingly insignificant objects are the stories of the five fatherless children who lived here. Taking us from the eve of World War II to the early 2000s, Angela Tomaski paints a "droll" (The New Yorker) and indelible portrait of a once-grand family brought to its knees. What begins as a bucolic snapshot of five children playing cricket on the lawn soon unravels as the world becomes a place they no longer recognize. The Infamous Gilberts is the darkly funny tale of an unusual family, lovingly portrayed. "This dark little novel should be Wes Anderson's next movie...Tomaski puts a quirky spin on Gothic storytelling...with rare control and evident relish." --The New York Times Book Review
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781668094648
- ISBN-10: 1668094649
- Publisher: Scribner Book Company
- Publish Date: January 2026
- Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.79 x 1.08 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.82 pounds
- Page Count: 288
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Readers who have wondered what a Jane Austen novel would look like if it had considerably more psychological ugliness should check out The Infamous Gilberts, an ingenious family drama by Angela Tomaski. What starts out as a relatively tame story about a rural English family over the course of the 20th century develops complexities that, while sometimes hideous, are fascinating to observe. Tomaski structures the novel as a 2002 tour through the erstwhile Gilbert family residence, Thornwalk, a majestic “jewellery box of caged lights and stifled songs.” Our guide is a man named Maximus, who knew the family for much of his life. We begin with the library, the night nursery and the old sawmill, then progress into a survey of seven decades in the lives of the Gilberts, a prominent family of merchants whose downfall was juicy fodder for gossips. It all started when the family patriarch died during World War I, leaving his wife alone with their five children. Tomaski’s linear narrative recounts each sibling’s fate. There’s Lydia, the eldest, who, as a teen, falls in love with her tutor. Her Aunt Beatrice cautions that he’s an “idiot” with “rancid breath,” so Lydia instead enters a sad marriage to the stuffy Mr. Coldwell, a man 20 years her senior. The other siblings have equally vexing problems. Annabel takes various sedatives her whole life for an unnamed illness and ends up a gray-haired woman wandering around the property. Jeremy is a humanitarian whose worldwide volunteer efforts aren’t always appreciated. Rosalind marries “the terrible Mr. Simms,” who proves quite terrible, indeed. And then there’s Hugo, who writes plays as a child, takes over the family business and returns from World War II a frighteningly changed man. Tomaski drags out the ending, but The Infamous Gilberts is an entertainingly devious piece with enough wicked surprises to captivate any audience open to its pleasures.
Readers who have wondered what a Jane Austen novel would look like if it had considerably more psychological ugliness should check out The Infamous Gilberts, an ingenious family drama by Angela Tomaski. What starts out as a relatively tame story about a rural English family over the course of the 20th century develops complexities that, while sometimes hideous, are fascinating to observe. Tomaski structures the novel as a 2002 tour through the erstwhile Gilbert family residence, Thornwalk, a majestic “jewellery box of caged lights and stifled songs.” Our guide is a man named Maximus, who knew the family for much of his life. We begin with the library, the night nursery and the old sawmill, then progress into a survey of seven decades in the lives of the Gilberts, a prominent family of merchants whose downfall was juicy fodder for gossips. It all started when the family patriarch died during World War I, leaving his wife alone with their five children. Tomaski’s linear narrative recounts each sibling’s fate. There’s Lydia, the eldest, who, as a teen, falls in love with her tutor. Her Aunt Beatrice cautions that he’s an “idiot” with “rancid breath,” so Lydia instead enters a sad marriage to the stuffy Mr. Coldwell, a man 20 years her senior. The other siblings have equally vexing problems. Annabel takes various sedatives her whole life for an unnamed illness and ends up a gray-haired woman wandering around the property. Jeremy is a humanitarian whose worldwide volunteer efforts aren’t always appreciated. Rosalind marries “the terrible Mr. Simms,” who proves quite terrible, indeed. And then there’s Hugo, who writes plays as a child, takes over the family business and returns from World War II a frighteningly changed man. Tomaski drags out the ending, but The Infamous Gilberts is an entertainingly devious piece with enough wicked surprises to captivate any audience open to its pleasures.