Book Review - Georgette Heyer's The Convenient Marriage
Published by: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: 1934
Format: Paperback, 307 Pages
Rating: ★
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The Earl of Rule has decided that he will marry. What's more he has decided to align himself with the prestigious Winwood family who have fallen on hard times due to their fatal love of gambling. The problem is that he has chosen to marry the eldest daughter Lizzie and Lizzie is desperately in love with another, Edward Heron. What's worse, Edward is a penniless soldier so Lizzie's mother will never allow her to follow her heart when their fortunes could be saved. Lizzie therefore breaks with Edward breaking her heart in the process. But her younger sister Horatia has an idea. Very improperly she approaches Lord Rule with a compromise. He should marry her instead. The reasons being that her sister Lizzie is in love with another, her sister Charlotte would never marry him, and seeing as he just wants to align himself with their family he can have her and she will let him live his life however he wants. The adorably stammering Horatia's bargain intrigues Lord Rule so he agrees to marry her, a girl barely out of the schoolroom. This sends shock waves through the ton. His sister doesn't know what Rule is about, his cousin and presumptive heir Drelincourt is very put out, and as for Rule's mistress Lady Massey, she sees her hopes and dreams shattered and takes comfort in the arms of Rule's rival Lord Lethbridge. And while Horatia's family is shocked by her behavior, her brother Pelham, returning from the continent, welcomes Rule into the family as all his debts are swept away by his generous brother-in-law. But if Rule thought he'd have an easy time with his new bride he's in for a surprise. She seems to have inherited the family's fatal flaw and now that she has access to money she is gambling it away like nobody's business. Not to mention how much she's spending on clothes and fripperies and carriages. What's wrong with spending a fortune on diamond encrusted shoes? Yes, they pinch a little, but they look fabulous. Lord Rule is very sanguine about his new wife's spendthrift ways, after all she amuses him to no end, that is until she decides to befriend Lord Lethbridge. This is a step too far. A step she takes to be daring. But could this end their marriage or bring them closer together? Only when the farce is concluded will the victor be declared.
The fatal flaw of The Convenient Marriage is that the setup just doesn't deliver. Horatia seems rather put together with making this sacrifice for her family, so it's rather shocking to discover she is nothing but a flighty flibbertigibbet with the family's fatal flaw. You start out thinking, hey, this is someone I could root for, she's clever and is going to reform a rake. She is the classic too stupid to live heroine so by the end you are actually wishing for her to be thrown over by her husband and ruined by Lethbridge. Though Lethbridge himself was an ass. In fact every single character in this book is annoying. Except perhaps Pelham's friend Pommeroy, but he is amusing because he's an idiot and says the most shockingly stupid things. And all these characters and their farcical situations just can't make you care one little bit. They're staging fake attacks by highwaymen as what they see as a logical attempt to get back incriminating evidence. What!?! I mean, seriously, why am I supposed to find this interesting. I literally could barely finish this book. What's odd is that Georgette Heyer does go in for the farcical and can succeed, Devil's Cub being an example of something being so far over the top it somehow works. But there at least you could root for Sophie, here, literally there is no one to root for. Even Lord Rule is a rather removed rake. He is like this disinterested observer to his own life. If he can't even be bothered to take an interest why should we? What's more, with Lord Lethbridge and Lady Massey it seemed as if Heyer was going to bring a little Les Liaisons Dangereuses action to the scene, she was actually setting it up, and then, what, got bored? Because that doesn't even deliver. The Massey goes off to Bath and Lethbridge kind of just folds. Nothing follows through, it's all just a chatoic mess of characters I don't care for. I honestly didn't even know what to write for this review. The book is a nonentity. The Convenient Marriage can just got slink off to wherever it came from and never darker my door again. Because it did darken it. When I'm reading a book I don't like I get grumpy. And boy did this book make me grumpy. Not to the level of wanting to watch it burn, but close.
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