Lena’s Reviews > No. 23 Burlington Square > Status Update

So just as a general background, Agnes Humphries is a wonderful and kind hearted tenant that is renting out all of the rooms in her family home amongst many people. This was the home where she grew up and took care of her father when he became sick with dementia and ultimately maintained the home after his passing. She has a niece named Clara, who is a very rich society, girl, and basically parties very heavily. Another tenant’s name is Gilbert who is known to do some type of photography, and he’s very pale. Another tenant name is Alexander Gorski, and he is a very famous elderly pianist to unfortunately has developed severe arthritis which prevents him from playing music and from being able to function normally. In the basement lives the Smith family, which are a young couple Jemima and Nick, and their three daughters.

I will keep these descriptions brief, but in part one it covers the reality that happened when Agnes‘s niece Clara came to take up the room that became available when one of the tenants passed away. She has a hard party lifestyle and is dating a guy named Jack who proposes marriage to her. Her family was very excited about this because he comes from a wealthy family, but she did not want to marry him. While she started off selfish, she slowly became more and more helpful around the house, taking inspiration from her aunt Agnes, who again is a very nice and warm lady. She becomes friendly with Mr. Gorski and basically takes advice from him. What ultimately ends up happening is that she discovers that she is a lesbian and is in love with Jemima Smith, the young mother that lives in the basement of the Humphrey home. She profess her love to her, but Jemima says that she’s unable to act on her feelings as well because she has obligations to her husband and family. Clara then discovers that her life purpose is to open up dance clubs like the ones that she regularly attends. And she wanted to go somewhere where her lifestyle as a gay woman would be more accepted, so she moves to Germany and opens up a club called the cats meow. Many months after opening the club Jemima follows her there, and basically says that her and her husband Nick got divorced because he was not an honest, good man, and she told him that she was gay, and he basically granted her a divorce in order to prevent any tarnishing of their reputation. She ends up moving to Germany with Clara and her babies, and they end up living happily ever after. Clara came out to her aunt Miss Humphrey’s and she was very kind and supportive about it and supported this move.

Part two describes the plot line if Stephen, an alleged banker and church going man, gets the available room. So in summary, Steven is pretending to be a banker when in reality, he has no real job and basically goes to bars and scams people out of their money and jewelry by gambling with them, knowing that they’re inebriated. It turns out that he owed a lot of money to loan sharks because he doesn’t have any sort of job. He made up the story where basically he was abandoned after birth and came from nothing and had to build a life for himself. He becomes very close to Mr. Gorski, and they end up becoming friends. They end up discovering that Mr. Gorski had a child from a previous relationship that he never got to know due to the circumstances of his life. And they end up discovering that Stephen is Mr. Gorski‘s lost son. They both are extremely happy after this discovery, and Mr. Gorsky decides that him and Steven are gonna go back to Poland to go back to his Homeland. Unfortunately, as mentioned before it turns out that Steven is a huge scammer. He actually is the son of a very wealthy family from the area where they’re from, and he basically found out about Mr. Gorski’s abandoned son because he met the former roommate in a bar and he came clean to him when he was drunk. He then wormed his way into getting a room in number 23 on Burlington Street, and wormed his way into getting close with Mr. Gorski. That storyline or part of the book ends with them moving to Poland together. Mr. Gorski had cleared all the debts of who he thought was his son.

Part three is the most endearing part. It’s the case where a alleged young widow named Mercy recently moved to London and is having a very hard time, she’s a very nice girl and comes from a farming family and she got a room within Burlington number 23. She ends up falling in love with Gilbert. But it turns out that her husband had an actually died. They had been childhood sweethearts, and he went off to the war and basically got an injury that affected his genitalia, and because of that he became a very angry and upset man, and they never were able to consummate the marriage. Because her husband Rowland, as well as her family were so awful to her. She decided to escape from them and move to London to start her life all over again. She took inspiration from Agatha Christie, who just disappeared from her life for two weeks. Basically her husband Roland ends up finding her, but because of the strength that she had developed things to the relationships that she had formed with all of the people in Burlington number 23 she had the confidence to say that she wanted to leave him. They end up getting a divorce on her and Gilbert end up getting married together.

Part four of the book was very sweet. So one of the themes that strung in throughout this book is that Agnes never got to live the life. She wanted necessarily because she was always taking care of her family when her mother got sick when she was young, and then again as she got older when her father got sick. However, when she was very young, she fell in love with this man who I believe his name is Jack. Basically, he ended up getting a job in India and proposed her hand in marriage, but because she wanted to stay and take care of her father she let him go. He ended up finding someone to be his wife in India and ended up breaking it off with Agnes. They did send letters back-and-forth for years before he got engaged to somebody else though. The epilogue of the book is describing the fact that Agnes had made the decision to go with Steven as the tenant for her available room. She was going to ask Gilbert to go deliver the piece of mail inviting Stephen into the Home, but ends up running into Jack after she decides to take the piece of mail herself. They end up catching up and basically realize that they’re still both in love with each other. At that point, Jack’s wife has unfortunately passed away and he moved back to England to spend time with his children. The ending of that part is essentially both of them going off to T and Agnes deciding that she was in fact, not gonna proceed with Steven, but was going to actually offer the room to mercy.

The very end of the book is flash forward, 20 years or so and unfortunately, we find out that Agnes has passed away and her funeral had happened. Jemima, Clara, and mercy had all stayed really good friends. In this particular plot line it still turns out that Jemima and Clara get together because they love each other. Mercy ends up marrying Gilbert and they have two kids together. They also decided that they wanna make an offer on Agnes‘s home because it is so warm to them. It also turns out that after rekindling their love, Agnes and Jack had gotten married and had spent two more decades together. Unfortunately, however, Jack had had a stroke towards the end of his life, so Agnes had to care for him in the same way that she previously cared for the father. Clara and Jemima ended up moving from Poland after the invasion from Germany and they went to France, where they opened up another club. The end of the story is very happy with warm recollections of how wonderful a woman Agnes was and all of the wonderful memories they had at 23 Burlington Square.

This was literally such a cute book. It was such a unique formatting and not like anything I’ve ever experienced. At first, I thought it would’ve been interesting. That instead of parallel realities to just have one part follow the other directly after one roommate you know moved out the other one would move in. But I think the author did it in the best way that they could’ve and I really appreciated it. It was a very different read and not what I’m accustomed to, but I’m so happy that I did because it really didn’t warm my heart.