House of Gold

When Natasha Solomons’ House of Gold opens, the Goldbaum banking family has a branch in every European country, and the rules for young Goldbaums are simple. Sons will make more money and connections for the family, while daughters will marry to cement alliances and have healthy children to continue the family. In this way, wealth and connections will continue to insulate the Goldbaums from any setbacks.

Naturally, Austrian Greta Goldbaum is sent to England to marry British Albert Goldbaum. The marriage isn’t off to a great start, with Albert skipping all the Austrian pre-wedding festivities, and Greta questioning her Goldbaum duties, right up to an attempt to call off the wedding. This has the potential to become an unsympathetic poor-little-rich-girl, but instead we see Greta as someone whose life has already been planned out, and all she’ll do is follow the path set out for her. It’s just assumed that the young Goldbaum will attend the right parties, dance well, eat fine dinners, marry a distant cousin, have a Goldbaum heir, and then host the right dinners herself. For her brother and cousins, the Goldbaum privilege is similar, keeping them from desired studies and mistresses, even while it provides so much.

In England, Greta’s German mother-in-law encourages her to grow a garden, saying that was her own solace in a foreign country with an unknown Goldbaum husband. I really liked this part, because I love my little container garden and love browsing seed catalogs (I’m looking at you, Baker Creek) planning a bigger garden someday.  Also, this conversation establishes the theme of plants, flowers and gardens throughout the novel. I really enjoyed the way wild plants and gardening were used to set the scene (or the emotional scene) throughout this book.

This is almost a manners novel, with the focus on the customs and attitudes of the Goldbaum family, but our heroine Greta is determined not to be in a manners novel. Whenever the Goldbaums suggest that she act appropriately for their family, Greta does the opposite. “What was that, Mom? Try to destroy my marriage? Run around the grounds naked? Take up with exactly who I’m told to avoid? ON IT!” I didn’t feel like she particularly wanted or enjoyed these things as much as she just didn’t want to follow rules anymore.

When World War I begins, Goldbaum cousins find themselves are different sides. Greta’s German accent is viewed with suspicion, her husband is at war. The Goldbaum privilege is shifting, if not ending entirely, and Greta, Albert, and all their generation will be tested.