The Infamous Gilberts

Set in 2002 at Thornwalk House, an estate in Somerset, England, the novel is narrated by Max (short for Maximus), a companion and caretaker of Hugo Gilbert in Hugo's later years. With the house about to be converted into a hotel, Max leads the reader room by room through the estate, using objects and keepsakes to tell the story of five siblings: Lydia, Hugo, Annabel, Jeremy, and Rosalind. Max possesses the only remaining key, given to him by Annabel before her death, and he is determined to tell the family's full story before the developers erase every trace of the Gilberts.

The Gilbert children descend from a once-prominent merchant family whose fortune has collapsed. Their father died when they were young, their mother, Margaret Gilbert, is passive and overwhelmed, and their domineering Aunt Beatrice, their father's sister, periodically imposes her will. Growing up largely unsupervised, the children stage plays in the library where Hugo always takes the lead and Annabel, the quiet middle child, is assigned no lines.

Annabel's marginalization begins early. Around age five, she sits motionless as a fire spreads across the library rug until Hugo rescues her. Aunt Beatrice declares Annabel defective and instructs the family to dose her with sedatives, including phenobarbital, forced on her via a tarnished spoon while she glares at them.

Lydia, the eldest, is the first to collide with Aunt Beatrice's control. At fifteen, she falls in love with their tutor, Mr. Higgins. Aunt Beatrice destroys the romance, has Lydia scrubbed with caustic soap, and years later arranges her marriage to Cooper Coldwell, a mercenary older man who demands a dowry. Lydia tries to convince herself that being loved is better than loving.

A storm brings the neighboring Asquill siblings, Emma and Wilfred, into the Gilberts' lives when Hugo, about fifteen, rescues Emma after a tree crashes onto their home. Rosalind, the youngest, grows infatuated with the gentle Wilfred and spirals when he fails to return her attention. Jeremy, the pragmatic second son, tells the family they are talking nonsense.

Jeremy is defined by restless intelligence. He builds a hidden attic storeroom filled with fossils and animal skeletons, develops a friendship with Emma through nature walks, and grows suspicious that the family's stories about their father's death conceal the truth. When the dysfunction deepens, he retreats permanently to his attic. At thirteen, Rosalind steals their father's address book and runs away to find a film industry contact. She is returned home, but the pattern of impulsive flight is set.

Annabel finds refuge at the sawmill on the hillside, where she develops a tender, platonic intimacy with Simon Greenway, the estate gardener, resting her head on his chest and twisting wisps of hay into a family of dolls. She also develops an infatuation with Randall, Aunt Beatrice's charismatic chauffeur.

The novel's most devastating sequence unfolds when Annabel eavesdrops through a vent and hears Aunt Beatrice persuade Mrs. Gilbert to have Annabel removed, comparing the act to drowning deformed kittens. Mrs. Gilbert weakly protests but relents. Randall catches Annabel in the courtyard and restrains her as she is driven away. She is gone for three months. The novel strongly implies she is forcibly sterilized. She returns unable to speak of what happened and burns all her hay dolls except the smallest. She later overhears Randall telling Lizzie, the maid, that he had no idea what would be done and vowing to make it up to Annabel, but he never comes to her. For the rest of her life, she waits on the steps to his quarters, clutching the remaining doll. Simon proposes marriage; she refuses. He eventually leaves, and she stands in the courtyard in the rain, waiting for him to return.

With World War II, Hugo and Wilfred enlist together. Jeremy is rejected for weak lungs and nearly dies after collapsing in a trench he dug on the front lawn. Wilfred is killed. Hugo returns with a shrapnel wound and a profound psychological change, shutting himself in the library before announcing he will take over the failing family business.

Hugo marries Emma around 1950. A brief calm follows, but Hugo drinks heavily and grows paranoid. In 1953, their baby dies from an infection Mrs. Gilbert likely carried home from sick villagers. Hugo accuses his mother of murder and banishes her to the Chaplain's Cottage in the woods. Annabel goes to live with her mother there.

Hugo's control over Emma escalates to locking her inside the house. She escapes through a window she has unscrewed but is caught returning from a visit to the cottage. Hugo drags her into Lydia's old bedroom and bolts the door. Annabel diverts Percy Kirby, a young farmer, toward the house, where Percy sees a handkerchief Emma has tucked into a cracked window as a signal and enters to free her. Hugo attacks Percy with a fire axe, severing his hand. Hugo is arrested but transferred to a psychiatric unit on grounds of diminished capacity. Emma leaves Thornwalk permanently, placing her wedding ring on the arm of Hugo's chair in Max's cottage.

Rosalind's life follows its own destructive arc. She becomes a minor film actress under the name Rosie Sparke, endures failed marriages, and after divorcing her second husband, Nicholas Middleton, attacks him and his new wife with a fruit knife. Found criminally insane, she is sent to a psychiatric hospital. In 1977 she escapes and walks 110 miles to Thornwalk, running down the corridor in a sheet and crying, "Look, Annabel, look. I'm a bird again. I'm a bird!" (234). She dies in 1986 at sixty-eight, asking for Wilfred at the end.

Mrs. Gilbert, living with Lydia and Coldwell in London, is systematically exploited for Aunt Beatrice's inheritance, then placed in a nursing home where she dies in 1972. Lydia herself ends up in a care home after her sons sell her house. An activity coordinator named Annie finds a book of Higgins's poems dedicated to Lydia. Lydia dies at eighty-two, with Annie as the only person to cry at the service.

In 1966, Jeremy sends Hugo a letter revealing that their father did not die in the war but on a passenger ship, likely visiting his mistress. Hugo crushes the letter and stamps his father's model ship to splinters. Jeremy's last postcard arrives from Cairo in 1968; rumors place him as a recluse in the Alps, keeping bees and goats.

Annabel returns to Thornwalk and cares for Hugo for years, cooking badly and wandering the house with a duster she rarely uses. Hugo attempts small ventures, including strawberry jam and hand-painted wallpaper, all of which fail. Annabel writes a manuscript telling the family's story with an invented happy ending in which the siblings reunite; a publisher rejects it, and she places it under her bed.

Annabel develops an autoimmune disorder and is hospitalized in 1989. She presses a key into Max's hand and whispers, "Your turn now" (241). Max moves in and spends Hugo's remaining years with him, cooking, gardening, and playing records. Hugo grows increasingly fragile, unable to bear suffering in any form. He asks what will become of Thornwalk, grieving for his siblings' belongings and Annabel's squashed blackcurrant stain on the rug. Max swears to tell the whole story. Hugo dies in the narrow bedroom with Max on a camp bed beside him. Max places a tombstone in the chapel graveyard reading, "HERE LIES HUGO GILBERT, BELOVED OF MAXIMUS" (273), locks the door, and returns to the village.