Book Log 19/2016 - Anne Gracie: The Perfect Rake - Merridew Sisters #1

The first of two historical romances read back-to-back. The first is set in the Regency period.  Merridew sisters are trapped with an autocratic and violently abusive grandfather at his country home after the death of their parents. Beatings go on for almost ten years, getting worse and worse until Prudence Merridew, just a few weeks short of her twenty first birthday can take it no more. On her twenty first birthday she gets custody of the younger girls, but unless she marries there's no money and they will be destitute. So Pru's plan is to launch the girls on the London season and find them suitable husbands. (They are all great beauties apart from her and all of age to marry apart from the ten year old.) When there's a particularly nasty incident at home which leaves the youngest girl badly beaten and grandfather laid up with a broken leg, they make their break.

Staying with an indulgent, but somewhat straight-laced great uncle Pru is launched on society, but Great Uncle won't allow the other girls to come out until Pru is safely betrothed. He reasons that since they are way more beautiful than she is, she won't stand a chance once they're on the marriage market. This doesn't suit Pru who wants all the girls out there at the same time. The first one to secure a husband ensures safety for all. So she invents a betrothal to a duke known to be reclusive and never in town - except he is and he's looking for a bride.

Things get complicated and somewhat silly when Pru goes to confess her lie to the duke and mistakes his rakish friend, Gideon Carradice, for his lordship. Gideon is a rake with a dense of humour and - if everything everyone says about Pru is accurate - defective eyesight, for he sees the plain Pru as beautiful from the beginning and ignores her pretty sisters completely. Things are doubly complicated because Pru, four and a half years earlier, entered into a secret betrothal with Philip who then promptly went off to India to seek his fortune and has been absent ever since, his letters becoming ever more rare.

Okay, that's the set up. There are issues. At times this is frothy and absurd, at other times very dark secrets are revealed. In some ways the book doesn't really know what it wants to be. The girls don't seem to have suffered any lasting mental trauma or trust issues from their harsh upbringing. Grandfather is a cardboard villain and we only really see one side of him. Pru and Gideon fall for each other (without admitting it) too quickly without any real reason. Gideon turns from his rakish ways in an instant, converted by the power of love. Despite all that and the convoluted twists and turns as Pru tries to extricate herself from her lies while digging an ever deepening hole, this is a fun, light read. Of course it all turns our right in the end, mainly due to the fact that Pru was labouring under a couple of misapprehensions the whole time. I can see why some reviewers compare this with Georgette Heyer, though the authorial touch is somewhat heavier. In the end it is what it is and you just have to go with it. An enjoyable read.

Book Log 20/2016 - Georgette Heyer: The Masqueraders

I read this back to back with Anne Gracie's The Perfect Rake, thinking to make a comparison, but picked one of the few Heyers that is not Regency, but rather is Georgian, set just after the 1745 Jacobite rising, a time of hooped skirts and powdered wigs when former Jacobite supporters were being sent to the gallows by the cart-load.

In the wake of the rebellion brother and sister, Robin and Pru, are in England heavily disguised. The slight Robin is in skirts as 'Kate' and his sister, tall and big-boned, has become 'Peter'. They have arranged to meet their father in London. He's mostly referred to as 'the old gentleman' since he changes his name more often than his socks. Aiding and abetting their deception is the stalwart servant, John and complicit is their hostess, Therese.

On the way to London they intercept an elopement gone wrong, rescuing Letty Grayson from her drunken would-be suitor, Mr. Markham, when she realises he's not quite as gallant as she thought he was.

The cross-dressing siblings are a pair of scam artists, though good-hearted ones, who have been dragged around Europe in the wake of their opportunist rogue of a father, taking on new identities, male and female, as the situation required. It was their father who involved them in the Jacobite cause, but now his mercurial character has taken him on a completely new track, but he hasn't bothered explaining it to them, just given them instructions which they are supposed to follow to the letter. Complications arise when Robin begins to fall for the rescued Letty, an heiress, and Pru takes a fancy to Sir Anthony Fanshawe, a friend of the Graysons and a solid mountain of a man, considered to be a little slow and dull witted, but who sees far more than everyone realises.

No more of the story for fear of spoilers. That's just the set-up. I found this one of the most difficult Heyers to get into. The opening chapter is dense to the point of confusing as the siblings are first of all presented as the gender they appear to be, calling each other by both real names and assumed ones and often addressing each other as 'child' (doubly confusing). It takes a few chapters to sort out who's who and why, and the rest is revealed at a leisurely pace. Speech is somewhat cod-Georgian and stilted at times. It takes perhaps the first third of the book to get comfortable with the style. It irritated me at first, but by the time I was halfway through I found I was enjoying it - almost to my surprise. There are some extremely witty moments hidden inside it, notably the siblings' cynicism about their father's carrying on.

When the old gentleman turns up his character explains Pru and Robin perfectly. Walter Mitty hardly begins to cover it. He's got unshaken belief in the magnificence of his own grand plans and rides roughshod over anyone who stands in his way, using everyone else as pawn in his great game. He's the sort of character who needs double-wide doors to get his head through.  I think he's meant to be charming and funny, but if I'd been Robin and Pru I would have abandoned him years before. If Heyer meant us to like him, I'm afraid she missed the mark with me. Whimsical is one thing, but insufferably pompous is another. Good job I liked Robin and Pru. Sir Anthony Fanshaw also get brownie points for being an unflappable hero despite not getting much page-time. The unsung hero is John, the servant, who is also more than he seems.

Of course, it's all right in the end - this is Heyer but all things considered, not my favourite. Apparently this is one of her earlier novels (1928) and it shows.

Movie of the Week: Eddie the Eagle

I don't remember too much about Eddie Edwards, Eddie the Eagle, in the Calgary Winter Olympics of 1988 except that for a short time he was a phenomenon, loved for coming last, for just being there and competing, the only British ski-jumper in the Olympics. The film lived up to the trailer's promise. It's a piece with tremendously good heart. Taron Egerton plays the misfit Eddie joyously as he overcomes all obstacles just to compete. His life's ambition to be an olympian, finally realised with the (fictional) help of alcohol-fuelled former ski-jumper Peary, generously played by Hugh Jackman. This unlikely 'odd couple' succeed in coming last, but that's not the point. The point is that Eddie, despite all odds, competes because he's willing to take the knocks and get up every time he falls down. It's the underdog story that was a sensation (briefly). The Olympic committee later changed the rules to make sure that no independents of Eddie's like would ever again be able to compete in the Olympics. Sad that.