strange and random happenstance

My Dad has issues with the first episode of TV shows. He doesn't like to spend the time getting to know the lay of the land. He wants the story to just start immediately without bothering to learn character names or relationships or any details that might be relevant. No matter how many times I explain that this worldbuilding is important for the audience to form a relationship with the characters which will pay off in later episodes he almost always will declare by episode two that "this episode is so much better." Sigh. It's a cross I will forever bear. On the other hand, his weird predilection for being thrown into a story with no context means that Queenie should have been the show for him. It wasn't. I don't know who this show is for. I tuned in because of the commentary on how calling Queenie the black Bridget Jones was doing the show a disservice. And it is, because one bunny suit and Sally Phillips does not make this Bridget Jones. In fact I would willingly watch the abysmal Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason several times versus watch this show again. This show is just so depressing. Queenie wallows in bad life decisions as a result of not dealing with trauma. A trauma whose reveal is drawn out so long that you think it has to be really bad, sexual abuse, physical abuse, something earth-shattering. Well, let me save you the trouble of having to watch this piece of shit. Her mother left her alone so that her partner wouldn't hurt Queenie. Now, yes, you can have severe abandonment issues which lead to relationship problems later in life, but compared with what was happening with her mother and what could have happened to her, Queenie comes across as an entitled bitch who might just be the most self-centered character I've ever seen in a television show. A show that every aspect of it is a mess. First, there's just the confusion that is this show. You don't know who anyone is and therefore you don't care. The texts and memes and messages that flash up on the screen are too quickly removed to be read and are in such color and font choices that they can't be read even if you cared to. Everything is just whirling confusion. The visuals of this series are just a mess. But I guess they compliment the mess that is my second point, the characters are a mess and I hate them all. Queenie is not likable. She's not relatable. At eight episodes this felt like it was a hundred, half of them wallowing in shit and then half of them trying to get out of that shit. Oh, and how does she get out of that shit? By being a hypocrite and taking money from her mother who she won't talk to. And as for her job that she royally fucks up by having sex with a married coworker on the bathroom floor, what is it? What does Queenie actually do other than make bad life choices? I have no idea what her job is. And worse, I don't care. This show was about a miserable person who makes horrible decisions and then gets rewarded for admitting she needs therapy? Just no. All the no. These actors deserved better. Oh, and Cabbage Patch Kids weren't out in 1979.  

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Abuse, And the Emmy Goes To, Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, British, Cabbage Patch Doll, Candice Carty-Williams, Cheating, Corgis, Dionne Brown, Miserable, Queenie, Sally Phillips, Sex, Therapy

Matrix by Lauren Groff
Published by: Riverhead Books
Publication Date: September 7th, 2021
Format: Kindle, 272 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Marie's life isn't exactly blessed. A child of rape she is the half-sister of Henry II of England. When Eleanor of Aquitaine marries Henry it is made very clear that Marie will no longer be welcome in the French court. So she follows Eleanor to England with only her servant Cecile as company. Marie's attraction to Eleanor combined with having no marriage prospects set her fate in motion. Who would marry a gangly, unattractive, illegitimate seventeen year old with a liking for the ladies anyway? Torn away from Eleanor and Cecile she is once more moved along. This time to an abbey. She is young and the nuns are old and sick. Her first instinct is to escape. To get back to Eleanor any way she can. If she can just win Eleanor's favor everything will be well. She starts to write a series of lais. In these poems she pours out her heart. And yet Eleanor never responds. Disillusioned Marie gradually accepts her fate and then embraces it. She starts with nutrition. If the nuns can eat well they can live well. She takes stock of the skills her nuns have and some become farmers, some become healers, each to their own ability they start to shine. Marie enforces the sanctity of the abbey's lands and taxes squatters. While Eleanor installed Marie as prioress of the abbey it's by Marie's own skills that she rises to abbess. She creates a haven for her nuns. They are safe, content, and well cared for. They even have a very active sex life. The fact that in the beginning Marie didn't view herself as strongly religious doesn't matter as time goes on. Because fate has chosen her and she is touched by divine visions. These visions help to protect the community she has built. She builds herself a world apart. The patriarchy of the outside world doesn't like the wealth she is hoarding and plot against her. Some of the nuns even question her power. But when power is used to protect is it such a bad thing? Her people, her world, thrives. But what will happen when she is no longer protector? How will history view her? As salvation or Satan?

Matrix is one of those books that almost defies any reviewers attempts to review it. Lauren Groff is obviously a talented writer yet at the same time what exactly did she write here? What on Earth did I just read? I think I liked it didn't I? Wait are the nuns having "healing" sex again? Boiled down to it's basics we have a group of sexually active nuns who create a female utopia led by a visionary leader that pisses off the patriarchy. And then the leader dies. I'm trying to remember if she "saw" her death coming because that would have been kind of ironic. I know she "felt" it but "saw" it would have been more on point. My issue with Matrix was more in how it was written. Groff spent time with Benedictine nuns at the Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Being among the educated woman caring for each other she thought it kind of a utopia. Which carried through into the book. But as you see with her immersing herself in the Benedictine lifestyle she is very method. I mean she assumed that all readers would get that the title comes from the Latin for mother... I was not one of those readers. In fact until I started writing this review I had no idea how the title connected to the narrative so at least now I know that. So it's not a stretch to say that Groff really does her research. And yet the kind of faux Middle Ages first person patois she writes the story in is off-putting. I thought and still think that it was an attempt to be "of the time." She wanted us so in Marie's world, so in her head, that she created her own dialect. Which, when you're dropping modern vernacular like "rube" into the conversation takes your readers out of the narrative. I mean it would be over six hundred years until the word "rube" came about. Me being me, this then resulted in a discussion with my book club as to whether she really meant to write like she was in the Middle Ages or just in a way that would be unique. Given her whole background and her education and her going to hang out at an abbey for awhile, I think my argument holds together. She wanted her writing to feel "of the time" like Chaucer a few hundred years later. She just wasn't as thorough as she thought. She in fact might be a bit of a rube.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Abbess, Abbey, Court, Eleanor of Aquitaine, For the Love of Book Clubs, Henry II, Lauren Groff, Lesbians, Matrix, Middle Ages, Nuns, Patois, Prioress, Regina Laudis Abbey, Religion, Sex, Vernacular, Visions

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
Published by: Tordotcom
Publication Date: November 2nd, 2021
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Robin Blyth's life changes in an instant because of a bureaucratic error. Despite being of the landed gentry the baronet has to take a job because of his recently deceased impecunious parents. He has an estate to oversee, a sister to shepherd through the world, and all of it needs money. Therefore he takes a job in the civil service. And that's where the error happens. He is mistakenly appointed to the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints. The mistake is that Robin, unlike his predecessor who mysteriously disappeared, doesn't know that magic exists. Therefore it is left up to his new colleague, Edwin Courcey, the liaison to the Chief Minister of the Magical Assembly, to "unbushell" him. Edwin figures it's the safest course for the time being to let Robin see a bit of this secret world, after the administrative error is corrected Edwin will administer Robin Lethe-mint and Robin won't remember a thing. But there's a time limit to Lethe-mint and the longer it is not administered the more likely it won't work. On his way home from his eye opening first day of work Robin is attacked. The thugs are magicians and curse Robin agreeing to remove the curse only if he hands over a powerful magical object that his predecessor has hidden. Seeing as Robin didn't even know of magic twenty-four hours previously it's unlikely he would know where the magical object is secreted, so he turns to Edwin. They scour the office but find nothing. What's more the curse is violently attacking Robin. He has severe attacks of pain accompanied by visions of the future. And it's spreading. This is serious. Which makes Edwin take a course of action he usually avoids. He goes home to his family estate. There the family has a massive library that might contain a clue as to how to help Robin. But there there is also family. A family that treats him as their whipping boy. While the little bit of magic Edwin has performed for Robin is amazing in his eyes, Edwin knows the truth. He barely has any magic. A fact his family likes to remind him of. And he's walking into the belly of the beast for a stranger. But their battle against curses, thugs, and family brings them closer than either of them could have thought of in their most detailed fantasies.

Touted as "Red White and Royal Blue meets Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell...featuring an Edwardian England full of magic, contracts, and conspiracies"A Marvellous Light was my most anticipated read in November of 2021. After reading it I have to say it's blasphemy that they invoked Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to try to sell this dreck that everyone else seems to love. I just don't get it. What is so great about this book? Yes we get copious amounts of gay sex, but that needs to be balanced by the narrative, for example actually bothering to define the magical system in the world this book is set in instead of having people say it's similar to The Magicians. No. Bad Freya. You need to have your own unique magical system that is well defined. I repeat, WELL DEFINED! I should not know more about Robin's cock than I do about how the magical system works! A BALANCED NARRATIVE. That shouldn't be too much to ask for in this day and age now should it? Apparently it is as everyone just loves this book. OK, how about I attack the writing style, would that help? Well, it would help me, because I'm still pissed this book didn't deliver. The writing style is not polished, confusing, and at times so elliptical that I would have to re-read whole sections to try to get the gist of what the author was attempting to say. Also while the book is seen through both Robin and Edwin's eyes sometimes the transition from one to the other is fumbled and it's really confusing for awhile until you realize whose POV you're reading. In other words, this book is in dire need of an editor. I find it hard to believe that Tor actually published a book that is more fanfic than it is literary endeavor and really pushed out the boat to promote it too. And I want to make it clear, it's not the explicit gay sex that is what I object to, it's that the book needs to have an explicit magical system to balance it and overall it just needs to be better written. I don't even buy Robin and Edwin as a couple. They are two gay men who a thrown together in a life and death situation who learn each other's secret and therefore decide to have lots of steamy sex. And I'm not buying the whole "opposites attract" theory either. In the normal course of things neither would have considered the other as a romantic partner, and what they've been through doesn't make them bound together, it just makes them need an outlet. And that's not really romantic at all.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Marvellous Light, Baronet, Curse, Editor, Edwin Courcery, Fanfiction, Freya Marske, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Magic, Pride, Red White and Royal Blue, Robin Blyth, Sex, The Magicians, Worldbuilding

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: March 30th, 2010
Format: Paperback, 397 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Lady Calpurnia Hartwell was bound for spinster seating from her very first season. Sure she had the dowry. But that only attracted a certain type of gentlemen. And besides saddling her with an absurdly Shakespearean name her parents also made her believe in love matches. Oh, to be loved. Like her sister is. It's been a decade since Callie's first season an her sister has made a love match before the season is even underway. Callie should be happy. Instead she is sad and soon to be drunk. She's been on the shelf for so long even her brother is encouraging her to not be such a stickler for the rules of society. Therefore Callie does what comes naturally to her, she makes a list. Lists are sensible. Lists are good. Lists are what women on the shelf make when they've reached the end of their rope. She lists nine things that would shock polite society. Sure, some of them might easily ruin her, but isn't it time to live a little? Isn't it time to shoot a gun, attend a duel, dance every dance, and be passionately kissed. She decides that she will tackle the kiss first. Only her inebriated mind could make her believe this is a good idea. At a ball during her first season she fell irrevocably in love with the Marquess of Ralston, Gabriel St. John. He spent a few minutes talking to her before moving on to an assignation in a hedge maze. Those few minutes were enough for her to fall in love with a man who was already making a name for himself as a rake. Seeing him and his paramour for the first time in life Callie was jealous of another person. Therefore if she's to experience her first kiss she wants it to be him. It doesn't matter if it will ruin her for all others because she is sure there will never be any others. She is rather scandalized when she is taken to his bedroom. But she has come this far, she will not turn back. When Ralston realizes that it is not his current mistress but Lady Calpurnia Hartwell who has entered his room he decides to take the upper hand. He will give her the kiss she desires but she in turn must help his sister, an illegitimate Italian, come out in society. Callie's approval will give Juliana legitimacy. Callie agrees. But that kiss changes everything. For both of them.

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake is based on the clever conceit that Callie has written a list of nine things that she wishes to do were propriety not an issue. The conceit is clever because the list acts as an outline. Callie's HEA cannot happen until everything is completed, including a duel. So it's a nice way to pace out the narrative. Plus they don't happen in a specific order so it's a little like roulette, which rule will she break next? Though the problem with Callie's list is that literally every time she draws a line through an item she's drugged by Ralston's kisses. I mean, this is a romance so you expect the sexy time, but does the sexy time have to be so repetitive? Each item means that the sexy time has arrived, and each time it's basically the same with them going a little further until Callie is well and thoroughly compromised. The drugging kisses, the laving of some part of her anatomy with word usage that reminds me more of a cat, the nipple play, all of which seems meant to prove that Ralston is really into satisfying his partner, which means he can't be entirely a reprobate right? I'm just saying that they needed a little variety in their sex life... At least they were both very enthusiastic I guess. But the sexy time for me isn't what this book is about, it's about Callie coming into her own. Like Callie I feel like I have spent so much of my life being "their" version of me that I sometimes don't know who I really am. And by "their" I mean the whole world at large, for Callie it's the ton, for me it's largely family. And don't get me started on when people talk to you with "why are you so..." Maybe I wasn't that way until you thrust your expectations onto me? Maybe I should make a list? What also hit unexpectedly hard was Callie talking about being put on the shelf. How she was so high up there and so alone. It wasn't just the fact lack of coupledom that made this hit the mark but Covid. We have all collectively been on the shelf for two years. We aren't going to public houses or fencing clubs of heaths for duels, we're home on a high shelf hiding out from the rest of the world. I think when this pandemic is over we all need to take a leaf out of Callie's book and make ourselves a list and find out who we really are. Rake an added bonus.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Compromised, Covid, Duel, Expectations, HEA, Lady Calpurnia Hartwell, Love By Numbers, Marquess of Ralston, Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, Regency England, Regency Romance, Sarah MacLean, Sex, Ton

When I went looking for shows to fill in the gaps of my Masterpiece Theatre knowledge accessibility was the prime directive. Could I actually find it to watch. So many of the shows aren't on streaming and many of those that were released on DVD are now out of print, so I've been relying heavily on eBay, a habit my wallet doesn't like. And I won't deny that the nineteenth season had an obvious choice in Traffik, because it's one of the most famous series from Masterpiece Theatre and it went on to be adapted into the Oscar winning film by Steven Soderbergh. But then I saw that The Dressmaker was on Amazon. I literally knew nothing about it going in other than it has a small yet stellar cast in Dame Joan Plowright, Billie Whitelaw, Pete Postlewaite, and a painfully young Jane Horrocks. The story itself is rather simple, Jane Horrocks plays Rita, a young girl raised by her aunts who finally gets asked to her first party, a bit of a do for the American GIs who have come to Liverpool. There she meets Wesley, who, as their relationship progresses, wants to move faster than Rita is comfortable with. He plays cruelly with her heart, not showing up for dates, refusing to call her. The most romantic thing he ever said to her is that she looked like a drowned rat. Eventually he's brought round to meet the aunts and he takes a real shine to Margo played by Billie Whitelaw. She instantly knows that this boy is after one thing and one thing only and is nowhere good enough for their Rita. Sadly for Rita, her heart is going to be broken. Now the handling of World War II is a bit like if the writers from Riverdale decided to take a stab at it, with laughable brawls between the Yanks and the Brits, but thankfully this is the backdrop, not the bones of The Dressmaker. The bones are the family unit; Aunts Nellie and Margo, Rita and her dad Jack. The way they bicker and carry on, it's comedic gold. This alone would have made it a good little movie, but the ending, oh, the ending takes it to a whole other level. I don't want to spoil it, I so don't, but I will say, the triumph on Joan Plowright's face as she stands atop the staircase would be worthy of Damehood if she wasn't one already! 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Amazon, Billie Whitelaw, Damehood, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, GIs, Jane Horrocks, Joan Plowright, Liverpool, Masterpiece Theatre, Pete Postlewaite, Riverdale, Sex, Steven Soderbergh, The Dressmaker, Traffik, WWII

OK, I admit it, I was hesitant at first to watch Sanditon. Why you ask? Well, that answer is twofold. Firstly, I hadn't read Jane Austen's partial manuscript in years and wanted to brush up on that and other of her unfinished writing. Secondly, well, the reviews from other Janeites was bad. I usually don't listen to the Janeites, I've often disagreed with these fanatics, and in fact been treated rather harshly by them, so I don't know why I was listening to them being shocked by sex in Austen, but there it is. Yet here's the thing I say to them; "Oh NO, sex in Austen! It's not like Willoughby knocked up a fifteen year old, oh wait..." So there. Game, set, and match. Andrew Davies for the win! It's not that I'm all for sexing up Austen, I'm for the reasonable depiction of the time period, and people had sex! This adaptation was like Austen mixed with Gaskell and Dickens but with the filming sensibilities of Gentleman Jack. Sanditon was fun and diverting, and so what if it was about a town instead of just one family, this just gave it more of a Cranford vibe. There was more flow of narrative, characters weaving in and out of each other's lives at this seaside town trying to make it versus set pieces. I felt like there was real struggle and strife. In fact I thought to myself, it had a bit of the real world horrors mixed with the frenzied fun of Austen's juvenalia. Sanditon is what the roundly praised by very much disliked by me adaptation of Austen's Love and Friendship was supposed to be. Also, while some characters, in particular our male lead, are supposed to evoke parallels to other Austen characters, ahem Darcy, it was the other more complex characters I really appreciated. In fact Esther Denham is now my new favorite Austen heroine. She's dirt poor, manipulated and manipulating, yet somehow you root for her and her redemptive arc gave me the HEA you'd expect for the leads, except they were expecting a second season and didn't get one. Yet. Rumors are that the success of Bridgerton and the loyal fanbase might just have succeeded. So oddly we have yet another unfinished (for now) Sanditon that somehow still manages to be satisfying.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andrew Davies, Bridgerton, Charles Dickens, Cranford, Darcy, Elizabeth Gaskell, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Gentleman Jack, Jane Austen, Janeites, Juvenalia, Love and Friendship, Sanditon, Sex, Willoughby

OK, I admit it, I was hesitant at first to watch Sanditon. Why you ask? Well, that answer is twofold. Firstly, I hadn't read Jane Austen's partial manuscript in years and wanted to brush up on that and other of her unfinished writing. Secondly, well, the reviews from other Janeites was bad. I usually don't listen to the Janeites, I've often disagreed with these fanatics, and in fact been treated rather harshly by them, so I don't know why I was listening to them being shocked by sex in Austen, but there it is. Yet here's the thing I say to them; "Oh NO, sex in Austen! It's not like Willoughby knocked up a fifteen year old, oh wait..." So there. Game, set, and match. Andrew Davies for the win! It's not that I'm all for sexing up Austen, I'm for the reasonable depiction of the time period, and people had sex! This adaptation was like Austen mixed with Gaskell and Dickens but with the filming sensibilities of Gentleman Jack. Sanditon was fun and diverting, and so what if it was about a town instead of just one family, this just gave it more of a Cranford vibe. There was more flow of narrative, characters weaving in and out of each other's lives at this seaside town trying to make it versus set pieces. I felt like there was real struggle and strife. In fact I thought to myself, it had a bit of the real world horrors mixed with the frenzied fun of Austen's juvenalia. Sanditon is what the roundly praised by very much disliked by me adaptation of Austen's Love and Friendship was supposed to be. Also, while some characters, in particular our male lead, are supposed to evoke parallels to other Austen characters, ahem Darcy, it was the other more complex characters I really appreciated. In fact Esther Denham is now my new favorite Austen heroine. She's dirt poor, manipulated and manipulating, yet somehow you root for her and her redemptive arc gave me the HEA you'd expect for the leads, except they were expecting a second season and didn't get one. So oddly we have yet another unfinished Sanditon that somehow still manages to be satisfying.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Andrew Davies, Charles Dickens, Cranford, Darcy, Elizabeth Gaskell, Esther Denham, Gentleman Jack, HEA, Jane Austen, Janeites, Juvenalia, Love and Friendship, Sanditon, Sex, Willoughby

Life in Squares
Starring: Phoebe Fox, Eve Best, Christian Brassington, Eleanor Bron, James Clay, Lydia Leonard, Catherine McCormack, James Norton, Rupert Penry-Jones, Ed Birch, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Jack Davenport, Sam Hoare, Andrew Havill, Elliot Cowan, Edmund Kingsley, James Northcote, Deborah Findlay, Anton Lesser, Al Weaver, Guy Henry, Jenny Howe, Charlie Appleyard, Maximilian Scull, Finn Jones, Louis Fisher, Edmund Digby-Jones, Rosie Ede, Lucy Boynton, Simon Thomas, and Emily Bruni
Release Date: July 27th, 2015 - August 10th, 2015
Rating: ★★
To Watch

Siblings Vanessa, Virginia, and Adrian Stephen have been liberated from societal, conventional, and parental expectations with the death of their father. Though Virginia's mental health remains delicate a hovering Aunt is no match to their desire to freely express themselves and break free of the assigned rolls expected of them. If they use only one spoon for the entire household, so be it! Dishes take up so much time that could be used productively in the pursuit of art! In an effort to give the girls a glimpse of the greater artistic community Adrian invites over his college friends for salons. At first Vanessa and Virginia feel that they are still constrained, being the hostesses of these evenings, but slowly they become equals to the Cambridge and Oxford educated boys. Thus the Bloomsbury Group came to exist, but their relationships would often be fraught. The love triangles were endless and endlessly discussed. Virginia was forever concerned with losing her sister to marriage, the state to which their hovering Aunt approved above all others! The art critic Clive Bell seemed the most likely candidate to whisk Vanessa away. And after the heartbreaking death of their brother to typhoid Virginia lost her sister to Bell and her sisters newfound love of copulation which soon brought about her first child, Julian. But five years later Virginia would marry Leonard Woolf, though wouldn't take as much joy in copulation as her sister and sadly would have a bad breakdown resulting in a suicide attempt. She was able to come back from this and her first book was published in 1915. With war on the horizon a significant portion of the Bloomsbury Group decamped from Bloomsbury. Vanessa, Duncan Grant, and Duncan's lover David Garnett moved to the Sussex countryside where Vanessa and Duncan could paint while Duncan and David worked the land instead of serving in the army. But this move to the countryside would complicate everything, as Vanessa realized that the homosexual Duncan was the love of her life and she decided that they would have a child together, which they did. Years pass in which no one talks about all their trysts and on the eve of another world war everything starts to break apart. 

Dorothy Parker famously quipped that the Bloomsbury Group "lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles." The squares and the circles of this adaptation are pitch perfect. The atmosphere, the rooms with every visible surface decorated, the feeling of a lived in artistic space is spot on, so much so that I've started to look at my door jambs and think that they are lacking something in being painted a flat white. I wanted to walk through those rooms and just absorb the creativity. Unfortunately this miniseries is all about the triangles. And I have a feeling that watching the background as I did wasn't the intended purpose in making this promiscuous miniseries. Comprising of three episodes the first two episodes are all about graphic copulation while the third is the Group clumsily dealing with the fallout of said copulation. Now I'm not one to be a prude, I just feel that graphic sex needs to be in aid of something, in particular, the story being told. Here it just seemed to be shorthand for their freedom, both intellectually and sexually. Yet there was a line that struck me as odd, Vanessa receives a letter from Virginia who is on her honeymoon saying she doesn't think sex is all it's cracked up to be and Vanessa blithely replies that the Duckworths messed Virginia up. This sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole learning about Virigina's sexual abuse at the hands of her stepbrothers, the Duckworths. I'm sorry, what!?! There's a real issue here that should be dealt with instead it's glossed over or made bawdy, more copulation please! This was the turning point for me. And this doesn't even cover Vanessa's daughter marrying her father's ex-lover! If something so important could be shoved aside as nothing then how could I enjoy anything I was seeing? This disconnect was made "easier" by the switching of the cast between the second and third episodes. In the first two episodes we see glimpses of their future selves played by different actors, and these glimpses were fine and were meant to cushion the blow of switching to the older actors. The problem was I was invested in the younger actors and their relationships, the older actors, once on their own, had no chemistry. None! Nothing at all, it was horrid. And as for Eve Best as the older Vanessa, do they do Razzies for television?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bloomsbury Group, Cambridge, Dorothy Parker, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf, Life in Squares, Love Triangle, Miniseries, Oxford, Razzie, Roaring Back to Reading, Sex, Sexual Abuse, Vanessa Bell, Virgina Woolf, WWI, WWII

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Published by: Alfred A. Knopf
Publication Date: October 10th, 2000
Format: Hardcover, 518 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

The final war with the Authority has come. The sides have been drawn. Ignorance and control or knowledge and freedom. That which was known as God was really just taking credit for creating that which was in existence long before him. Now his second in command is power hungry and wants absolute control over all worlds. A modern inquisition, which Lord Asriel will fight until his dying breath. Yet it's the breath of his daughter that is needed. She needs to live. She needs to fulfill the prophecy that she will put an end to death and become the new Eve. This might prove rather tricky as the Magisterium has sent a priest to kill her and her own mother is currently holding her captive in a drug-induced sleep in a Himalayan cave. It is up to Will, Lyra's staunch friend, to pull himself together after seeing the father he spent his life searching for killed in front of him by a witch and then have a pair of angels appear to direct the bearer of the subtle knife to Lord Asriel. But Will is up to the challenge and along the way to Lyra meets one of her old allies, the armoured bear, Iorek Byrnison, who has fled the arctic as the opening between worlds Lord Asriel has created has destroyed his icy fortress of Svalbard. They find Lyra in the nick of time, taking her out from under the hands of the Magisterium and Lord Asriel. While Lyra was drugged she dreamt of her friend Roger in the land of the dead and upon waking knows what she and Will must do. If his knife can open a window into any world, surly that includes the land of the dead. They will journey there with two new companions, the Gallivespian, the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia who ride upon dragonfly steeds, and speak to Roger. Will might even get a chance to talk to his father. After that? Well, who knows how their journey will effect the war... but effect it it will, especially once they are reunited with their friend Mary.

Well, the "end" is here. I say "end" in quotes because as we know now it's not really the end but back in 2000 it was that. The big battle, the Authority toppled, the end and the beginning all in one. Pullman could have concentrated on the war, made an unsubstantial confection of explosions worthy of the big screen sometime in the summer months with angels fighting angels but instead he decided to focus on his characters. Lyra and Will take center stage, as well as new favorites, and instead of a grinding depiction of war we're given something bigger. A journey of self discovery and redemption and hope while the war just happens to be going on off to the side. Am I the only one to say "thank god" only to realize that Lord Asriel would totally disapprove that I, as a thinking person, am giving thanks to an organization that thrives on ignorance and he made a holy war to topple? While The Golden Compass is Lyra's story and The Subtle Knife is Will's story, The Amber Spyglass is about their journey towards not just growing up, but the knowledge of what it is to love. They are the Adam and Eve of this story and as such they must taste the fruit of knowledge offered up by Mary and basically reboot the world. The problem in this though is the vagueness that Pullman uses when describing their love. I can't tell if it's because he's trying to write around it because this was intended for a younger audience, but is their love more than love? Are they sneaking off into the savanna for some hanky panky? He's embracing the ellipses, more than once I might add, and after this long of a journey with these characters I NEED to know if just the knowledge of love was enough to bring about the second fall or if Lyra and Will actually had sex.

As for those we know had sex... let's look to Lyra's parents, Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, I'm sorry, she's too scary to ever to refer to her casually by her first name. SO much of this series is dealing with parental issues. A lot of that is to do with the fact that as we grow up we have our parents to look to as to what we will become and this either is something we embrace or something we buck. But there's no getting around the fact that Lyra's parents are horrible parents and this is the crux of the series. Lyra is drawn into their world and their war. She is at times a pawn but usually THE major player in all of it. But her parents aren't static, they change over time until they make the ultimate sacrifice for Lyra and one is believable and the other isn't plausible in the least. Lord Asriel's journey and his faith in Lyra make sense. He saw her grow up, pretending to be her uncle, and he is willing to die to protect Lyra because he knows that his daughter will end the war he has wagged. His sacrifice at the end makes sense. He dies taking down the angel in power while also giving Lyra time to escape and fulfill her destiny. But Mrs. Coulter. I just don't get her. When she shows up in Oxford and swoops Lyra away to be a part of her world it's almost like Lyra is a doll she's picked up to dress and play with. Yes, she does save her from intercision at Bolvanger, and she saves her again from the church to hide her away in a dank cave in the Himalayas, but why? She claims it's because her grinchian heart has grown three sizes because of her daughter, but I don't buy it. They say every mother has this overriding instinct to protect their child and lavish it with love, but that's not true. Just look at the world around us, just look at this story. I don't buy that Mrs. Coulter would sacrifice herself for Lyra. For her own purposes, yes, but for her daughter? No way.

Yet I don't have as many issues with Mrs. Coulter as I have with the Mulefa. Those loving elephant faced, diamond skeletoned people whom Mary spends all her narrative with freak me out. But to be fair, it's not in their nature, it's in their wheels. Father Gomez the killer priest was so right when he said that their use of wheels was evil, and yes, I know I'm agreeing with an evil assassin, but seriously, wheels! Yes, I know, technically it's ingenious evolution, but the truth is me and wheeled creatures have a dark history, one which makes me hate them all. Are there things that you saw as a child that just ingrained themselves so deeply in you that they make up a substantial part of your nightmares and neuroses? Not the standard teeth falling out nightmare that so many of us suffer, but a hate of zombies from seeing a certain movie too young. Or a fear of elevators because of what the hell was in outer space when Charlie and Willy Wonka stepped out of the glass elevator (and yes, I cop to this one). Well, when I was very young I stumbled on the comic adaptation of Return to Oz. If you haven't seen Return to Oz, well, firstly you should, but secondly, it's a really dark re-imagining of Oz and the second and third books in the series by L. Frank Baum. There's shock treatment and a lady with removable heads. So while the shock treatment just gave me interesting knowledge, and the lady with removable heads made me slightly freaked, there was one part of the movie that terrified me: The Wheelers. Forget flying monkeys, these minions of the witch Mombi are "people" with wheels for hands and hatred in their hearts and they will hunt you down. Therefore I can not condone these Mulefa, they are in essence that world's Wheelers! BEWARE THE WHEELERS!

OK, no more Wheeler talk, it's near Halloween, this movie is bound to be airing and the nightmares will return. Let's discuss a pet peeve of mine; quotes at the start of chapters, or even at the start of a book. I know for a lot of authors that they have a special meaning, that perhaps this certain line that they have included inspired them or sheds meaning on their writing or captures the essence of whatever is to come like some cryptic clue, but can I just ask all you writers out there to stop. If it's a clue or whatever it's annoying because after reading the chapter you have to go back and re-read it and see if you got it and if you didn't you just end up feeling really stupid. But most of the time, it just comes off as pretentious: "Yes, I have a Shakespeare quote because I've read all Shakespeare and know more than you, ha ha." "What, this obscure poet, you've never heard of them? How can you even live with yourself?" "Don't you just feel that this line wouldn't get it's meaning fully across without the weird spelling of the words and all that is implied by it's antiquity." So IF you're one of these authors, just know, THIS is what's going through my head and makes me hate you just a little bit. Or, if I'm honest, quite a lot occasionally. Here though, besides making me hate Pullman a little, because yes, I can see these quotes at the beginning of each chapter do reflect the world he's created and inspired him so I can't completely hate them though I reserve the full right to hate the tiny ass font they were set in, I can hate them for a logical reason... These quotes are all from authors from our world. Yeah, I agree, quotes from another world would be weird, but then again it might work. Why might it work? Because it wouldn't be grounding The Amber Spyglass so completely in Will's world. Like 10 pages in the whole book take place in that world yet each and every quote comes from there? Bad move Pullman. Bad move. You are tearing down the worlds you built and I don't even know if you realize it.

Though for all my nitpicking what I think Pullman got SO right is the new definition of the Kingdom of Heaven. Lyra and Will are told that each world has to build their own Heaven, which means that it's about cherishing and caring for the world and it's people because you're building the Kingdom with each act, with each thing you put back into the world. Which makes Will and Lyra's final separation into their own worlds make sense. Yes, it may pain them, but they are each such extraordinary people that think of what they can accomplish and build in each of their worlds? Their journey and their sacrifice create a new start, a new chance to fix the problems they see all around that have been caused by three hundred years of damage from the subtle knife and millennia of damage from the Authority. It's not just the humanitarian nature of this that so resonates with me, it's that when I think of heaven I don't think of some weird ethereal place I think of the world around me. Hence, if there is a heaven it would be here on earth. The best thing we could be given is a chance to live again, which is why reincarnation makes sense to me. Though within this I still have to question where Mary stands. She's an ex-nun who doesn't believe in God anymore and hence has turned to physics. Yet while the events around her show that "God" was really just taking credit for something he didn't do and that now his second in command is going power crazy, I think some part of Mary should have gone, "Oh wow, there really was a God and angels and etc etc." Yet she's still firmly entrenched in her new beliefs and despite there being correlations she just doesn't see that both things can be true. But then again she was friends with people who had wheels!!!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Different Kind of P and P, God, Heaven, His Dark Materials, L. Frank Baum, Lyra Belacqua, Parents, Philip Pullman, Quotes, Return to Oz, Sex, The Amber Spyglass, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, War, Wheelers

Northanger Abbey
Based on the book by Jane Austen
Release Date: March 25th, 2007
Starring: Geraldine James, Julia Dearden, Gerry O'Brien, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Desmond Barrit, Felicity Jones, J.J. Feild, Bernadette McKenna, William Beck, Shauna Taylor, Sophie Vavasseur, Carey Mulligan, Hugh O'Conor, Mark Dymond, Catherine Walker, and Liam Cunningham
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Catherine Moreland didn't have the upbringing or character to be a heroine. Despite how many horrid Gothic novels she's read none of her daydreams of masked bandits and vampires was ever going to come true. But just because she wasn't destined to be a heroine didn't mean her life would be without adventure. To that end the Allens, dear family friends, invite her to go to Bath with them. Balls! Gowns! Shopping! Society! And who knows, maybe a dashing stranger would ask her to dance? Henry Tilney is more goofy than dashing, but in one dance he makes a deep impression on Catherine. Her later friendship with Isabella Thorpe and the attentions of Isabella's brother John Thrope can not sway her affections for Henry Tilney. When she is invited by Henry's father under a purposeful misunderstanding to return with them to their home of Northanger Abbey nothing could make Catherine happier than perhaps if Isabella would stop flirting with Henry's older brother while engaged to her own brother James Moreland! Yet Catherine's daydreams of what an Abbey means in Gothic literature might get her into trouble. Yes, there might be dark secrets and vampirism at the Abbey, but not of the kind Mrs. Radcliffe writes about. Could Catherine's imagination get in the way of finding true love? Or is her desire to be a heroine going to pay off with a happily ever after?

In the spring of 2007 I was beyond thrilled at the prospect of ITV's Austen season. New adaptations of Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey? I could not wait! Each one had something to recommend it. Persuasion had Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer playing Sir Walter Elliot, Mansfield Park starred Billie Piper in her first post-Doctor Who role, and Northanger Abbey was adapted by Andrew Davies. Andrew Davies! Who understands what adapting a book is about, spirit versus direct transcription! Though he has said you can basically cut and paste Austen's books from prose to screenplay. I viewed this televisual event as a chance to reacquaint myself with the lesser read of Austen's novels, as I viewed these three at the time. What I found interesting is that my opinion and these three books radically changed on that reading. Though what surprised me the most was how much I adored Northanger Abbey. I had actually never re-read Northanger Abbey after that first read ten years previously because I was too naive to get the parody aspect at the time and therefore ranked it as Austen's worst novel. Older, and hopefully wiser, I thought Austen had never been funnier. And as for Henry Tilney? He instantly became my favorite Austen hero. Why? Because he is a fully rounded character, not some ideal. He has a sense of humor, he loves to read, and well, he's not perfect and somehow that makes him perfect.

When it came to the adaptation of Northanger Abbey my ever increasing love of Henry Tilney wasn't in the least hurt by the masterful portrayal of the role by J.J. Feild. In fact, I'm sure that my reconsideration was in no small part helped by J.J. There's only so much a book can do until you can affix a visual to a character, which is why I often dream cast books as I read them. I couldn't have done better than J.J. for Henry Tilney. Prior to his becoming Henry Tilney he'd made a minor impression on me. As Frederick Garland in the Sally Lockhart mysteries he made the most of a role that PBS almost obliterated with their editing. And when he starred in The Secret Life of Mrs. Beeton he'd made enough of a favorable impression that I just couldn't believe he'd give his wife a venereal disease! And I would have totally taken him back with that hangdog expression almost more sheepish than Hugh Grant's patented look. But it was Northanger Abbey that made him forever one of my favorite male actors. The humor? The arch looks? He's perfection. He nails the comedy but he can combine it with pathos and stern censor yet all coming from the heart. He became my heartthrob. I've watched everything he's been in since, yes, even Captain America. I even tried my hardest to like TURN with his little rat tail, but even he couldn't elevate that show. But while I'll always point to Northanger Abbey as the true beginning of my crush, the zenith is Austenland.

Though I do wonder if the little Gothic fantasies of Catherine might supersede the perfection of Austenland. These are not only hilarious, I think they are the key to the dramatization of Northanger Abbey. It's not just that seeing Catherine actually dressed up as the heroine she wishes herself to be pursued by villains is perfection, it's that these overacted vignettes show perfectly her overactive imagination and how she is later able to suspect Henry's father of murder. What's more they perfectly capture the tone Austen was aiming for in her parodying of Gothic literature. Northanger Abbey was written from a place of mocking love, you can see Austen herself has read and devoured these novels from Mrs. Radcliffe and Lewis, how else could she know them so well to then poke fun of them? Yet as I myself proved on my first reading, I was naive to what she was parodying and therefore was unable to understand the brilliance of the book. There dramatization of Catherine's daydreams coupled with excerpts from the actual books referenced by Austen gives the viewer a quick grounding in the genre and then moves onward to parodying that genre. Therefore Davies has made Northanger Abbey able to stand on it's own. Context while nice isn't necessary if this is your first exposure to Austen. If only this adaptation had existed when I first read Northanger Abbey I would have come around to loving it so much soon!

The only thing I really question about this adaptation is did Isabella really have sex with Captain Fredrick Tilney, Henry's older brother, in order to secure an engagement to him? In the edition of Northanger Abbey I recently re-read the introduction was penned by Andrew Davies and he says that Isabella's seduction and therefore her fall from polite society is supported in the text. But is it? In his adaptation of Sense and Sensibility Andrew Davies had Colonel Brandon and Willoughby duel. I of course thought this was creative license along the lines of a certain wet shirt. But if you read Sense and Sensibility knowing that a duel occurs, sure enough, it's not an exaggeration, it is supported by the text. There is a line where Colonel Brandon tells Elinor that he dueled Willoughby when recounting his sad history with Eliza. So knowing that Andrew Davies was right on the duel I was expecting to find him right on the seduction... but I at least didn't see that in the book. Catherine is away from Bath so we as readers are away from the action. So we see Isabella flirting with Captain Tilney and then Catherine gets a letter from Isabella asking for Catherine to help repair the breach with her brother and former fiance James Moreland. While Isabella's desire to return to James might seem out of character I don't think we can infer that she was trying to get back her old beau in a hurry because she was despoiled and possibly pregnant. After all the conditions under which their marriage was to take place figured in a two year engagement. So if I'm missing some key in the text I want to know! Otherwise I think it's all Davies and his desire to add a little more explicit sex to Austen.

But I will allow this license with regard to Isabella because seriously, I hate the whole Thorpe family. A bunch of low class no accounts who weasel their way in and manipulate. What I won't forgive is the clunky narration. At the beginning and the end of the movie Geraldine James has a little voice over. The beginning is actually the first lines of the book and the conclusion is a little of the end of the book and a little artistic license on Andrew Davies part. What I take issue with is that it just doesn't work. It sticks out and makes the whole movie not a cohesive whole. Look to the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma where at the end the narrator was revealed to be Mrs. Elton in a wonderfully fun turn of events and as also a way to incorporate the narrative device into the overall story. Here it just falls flat. Yes, I do agree that there needs to be some framing device but it needed grounding. According to IMDb Geraldine James is actually Jane Austen. Um, I didn't get this at all and I'm pretty sure it didn't say that in the credits. Also, if she was supposed to be Austen, she was 57 when this film was made... more than a tad too old to be Jane. They could have gone the root of Emma and had another character narrating it, but on further reflection wouldn't it have been wonderful for Mrs. Tilney to be the narrator? Looking down on the girl who was going to grow up and make her son happy. In order to get the point across the portrait of Mrs. Tilney could have been of Geraldine James and if you caught it you caught it and if you didn't, no matter. It would have been a cute little nod and a wink and would have made me very happy indeed. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Andrew Davies, Austenland, Bicentenary Ball, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Emma, Felicity Jones, Geraldine James, Gothic Literature, Gwyneth Paltrow, J.J. Feild, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Sex

Don't Look Now
Based on the short story by Daphne Du Maurier
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania, Sharon Williams, Nicholas Salter, Leopoldo Trieste, Massimo Serato, Renato Scarpa, Bruno Cattaneo, David Tree, Ann Rye, and Adelina Poerio
Release Date: October 16th, 1973
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

John and Laura Baxter are trying to pick up the pieces of their life after their young daughter Christine's death by accidental drowning in their backyard. Now in Venice John is working to restore a church while his wife is mired in her grief. Taking off time from work John takes Laura out to lunch where she helps two elderly sisters in the bathroom of the restaurant. One of the sisters is blind and claims to not only be psychic but to see Christine. This revelation has a profound effect on Laura. She collapses at the restaurant but later, back at their hotel, John and her passionately reconnect. Laura makes plans to meet the sisters again and try to contact Christine in a seance. Christine has one message, her father must leave Venice. He is in danger. The threat is unclear and John thinks it's a trick the sisters are playing on him and his wife and is angry. What does he have to fear in Venice?

Maybe the threat isn't in Venice? There's a late night phone call from their son's boarding school saying he has been in an accident. Laura rushes to England but when she is supposed to be homeward bound John sees her with the sisters making a stately procession down one of the canals. Convinced that the sisters tricked his wife into staying behind when their son needs her he frantically searches Venice for the three of them, actually going to the police in the end. But the police have their hands full with a recent spate of murders. In fact they find John's story so unlikely that they think he might just be involved in the murders somehow. When John finally finds Laura she is in England. But how? And more importantly, all this is detracting from the warning. John is still in Venice... is this wise?

Don't Look Now is the only adaptation of her work that Daphne Du Maurier ever blessed with her seal of approval. Frankly it's quite easy to see why she liked this most of all the various adaptations of her work. Don't Look Now remains true to the spirit of her short story. Instead of drastically changing locals or time frames or having Mrs. Danvers self immolate Nicholas Roeg took what Du Maurier had written and used it as a framework and built on it. Everything that happens seems like a natural progression of the short story from the page to the screen. What's more, many of the faults of the story, smug narration, a lack of foreshadowing, are eliminated by the simple expedient of the visual medium of film being able to show us instead of tell us. What I felt worked best was that Roeg carried various thematic imagery through the film but tied it back more firmly to the loss of Christine.

In Du Maurier's short story Christine's death is the driving force of the story but at the same time an afterthought. Her death from meningitis distances the reader. It's rare this could happen to them. But by having Christine drown in an accident it's more relatable. This could happen to anyone. Plus Venice being a city on water the threat of drowning is constantly present. With water and mirrors there is this reflective quality used throughout the film not just being a constant reminder of Christine's death but how it reflects back on her parents and on us. In fact I was reminded again and again of the Michael Caine classic, Dressed to Kill. Don't Look Now has that same feeling of relevancy and horror despite being made over forty years ago.

Seeing Christine's more relatable death isn't the only way Roeg makes the trauma more real. In Du Maurier's story John and Laura are in Venice on holiday, which, to an extent, makes them feel a little uncaring to the reader. Let's just forget about our dead daughter and our grieving son at boarding school and take a little trip shall we? Yeah, not the most sympathetic of characters. In the film John is in Venice for work. By them being in Venice for work and not play makes their suffering more alive. They aren't just trying to brush it under the carpet, they aren't just trying to make do and mend, they are still trapped in the sorrow but are attempting to keep moving forward. John is burying himself in work so that he won't constantly be in pain.

Their pain is a constant presence throughout the film and this connects you to John and Laura. Anyone with an once of empathy has to feel something for them. The scene that really struck me as getting to the heart of their relationship and therefore their story was a rather graphic sex scene, bizarre armpit licking and all. The reason this scene works is it shows two humans groping toward each other, trying to connect; yet at the same time it shows the distance that has grown up between them. They are physically together but mentally apart. This scene, which is a little uncomfortable to watch, is heartbreaking. To be together and apart simultaneously, it shows us, without anything but action, what grief and despair really are.

Roeg is also able to show the seedy side of Venice. This isn't a holiday for John and his wife, they are there off season. Venice is cold and wet and full of pigeons. In the story it's almost tourist perfect, with the murders shoved as far in the background as possible until that salient plot point can't be avoided. Hence when "the end" comes you missed all the clues because Du Maurier used them so sparingly, perhaps wanting that shock to the system at the very end. Roeg uses the murders ubiquitously, but in the background. Always there, always waiting, adding a level of danger, suffusing it throughout the film but never drawing too much attention to it. I loved how one of the sisters described Venice as being "a city in aspic inhabited by the dead." There's poetry and morbidity and danger all in that one phrase. Here there are alleys and shadows and mystery. Running and rushing and the feeling of danger. We aren't just stuck in John's head, we are running along beside him.

Yet the pay dirt of the film is the inclusion of the church. This is introduced by the simple expedient of John being a church restorer. Though why it's brilliant is because it gives the story balance. We have the supernatural ever present with the sisters and their premonitions. The supernatural was built in from the get go. Yet skepticism doesn't quite balance belief in the supernatural. Skepticism can't destroy evil, only good can, and that would be embodied by the church. This addition also helps to place the film strongly amongst it's peers. Good versus evil and the church were part of the zeitgeist of the early seventies. Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen, the classics of the occult horror genre all had this dichotomy. To include it in Don't Look Now? Where it logically fit? It would have been stupid not to and Roeg was cunning in his adaptation. He knew just what to add and just how to do it. No wonder Du Maurier gave it two thumbs up.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Daphne Du Maurier, Don't Look Now, Donald Sutherland, Drowning, Du Maurier December Deux, Grief, Murder, Nicholas Roeg, Psychic, Rosemary's Baby, Seances, Sex, The Exorcist, The Omen, Venice, Warning

I will freely admit I am a book pusher. I am also a movie, TV, and miniseries pusher as well. But first and foremost I am a book pusher. I think most everyone I know has heard me extol about the pleasures of Lauren's books, if not received one or more of them as a gift. I have one friend in particular whose tastes eerily align with mine. We share some secret bond where often she says something and I look at her with this dumbfounded expression because I was just about to say the same thing. Needless to say I recommended The Secret History of the Pink Carnation to her. I might have even bought her it knowing that she would feel the same way I did. Sadly we now live far apart, stupid New York, and stupid relatives that screwed me over last summer which meant I didn't get to go to New York last August to see her. But recently she visited Wisconsin for the wedding of one of our friends. When she dropped by my house in my office I had a pile of Lauren's books on my desk to aid in my Dream Casting for "Pink for All Seasons" and she picked up The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla and looked at me enquiringly, to which I sadly answered, no, I don't have the final volume yet. Because, what other question could there be? Simpatico. We two are one.

Another love we share is for that of miniseries by Andrew Davies. Why am I bringing this up? Because of Fanny Hill. Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is the very erotic novel by John Cleland written in 1748. In 2007, right after I had discovered the "pleasures" of The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, the BBC came out with a miniseries of Fanny Hill adapted by Andrew Davies. She and I both watched it and sent copious emails back and forth as to it's merits, in between talking about the new show Torchwood. She is just like me in that she must read the source material of adaptations, so of course she read Fanny Hill. As she said at the time "I liked the miniseries better than the book. Andrew Davies makes everything better." I couldn't agree more. Another thing we have in common is we blush easily. My friend Matt has for years taken advantage of this with her by trying to make her uncomfortable by repeating the word "moist" over and over again. It's her trigger word. When I recommended The Secret History of the Pink Carnation I said, there's two sexy scenes. Now, compared to the riotous and graphic descriptions of John Cleland, Lauren's writing is very tame. My friend didn't blush once reading Cleland, but because of my warning she wrote me to say that she was commuting into work from the upper west side and her face was aflame the entire way because she felt naughty reading the book in full view of strangers. Lauren Willig, inadvertently embarrassing her readers since 2007!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: An August Adieu, Andrew Davies, Fanny Hill, John Cleland, Lauren Willig, Moist, New York, Pink for All Seasons, Sex, Subway, The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Marrying the Captain by Carla Kelly
Published by: Harlequin Historical
Publication Date: December 1st, 2008
Format: Kindle, 288 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

"One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn’t belong…. 

A Regency romance in a list of 1920s and 30s novels? It may look out of place, but there’s a reason, I promise. Bizarrely enough, this Carla Kelly novel is where The Other Daughter began. Way back in spring 2013, as I was great with child and finishing up revisions on That Summer and vaguely contemplating beginning The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla, I took a break by reading a novel my friend Vicki had just sent me. It wasn’t meant to have anything to do with my own work. It was just for fun. But the book happened to be about the illegitimate daughter of a viscount, living in poverty with her grandmother, who discovered, rather belatedly, that she had sisters.

I couldn’t stop my mind churning over it. How would it feel to learn, out of the blue, that you were the daughter of a viscount? How would that affect your idea of who you were? What would it be to be, by blood, the highest of the high, but, by birth, the lowest of the low? And how would it feel to suddenly learn that you had siblings? What if the viscount wasn’t evil? What if it wasn’t the Regency, but the 1920s? What if….

The next day, I sent an email to my editor, telling her I knew what I was going to write next. And here we are!" - Lauren Willig

Nana and her grandmother are just scrapping by running an inn in Portsmouth. Not located directly on the water, they rarely have guests and it's even more rare that they have full stomachs. Nana could have had a comfortable life, she was educated at a private academy in Bath by her father. But little did she know that this education of his by-blow was so that he could sell her off to the highest bidder when she was of age. He doesn't know why she would choose a life of penury instead of being a well placed mistress. But Lord Ratliffe is still curious about his illegitimate Nana. Perhaps she just might be desperate enough now that it's been a few years to agree to his original terms and as an added bonus help with his debts. To judge the lay of the land he asks one of the Captains in the Royal Navy who reports to him, Captain Oliver Worthy, to stay at Nana's inn while he's in Portsmouth waiting for his ship to be overhauled. He agrees and Captain Worthy's arrival heralds a new dawn and new prosperity for the inn. It also signals a change in Captain Worthy, the one man vowed never to marry least he brings sorrow to someone he loves. It is a harsh life at sea, and during a time of war it is even more dangerous. He falls hard for Nana and she for him. But will their love be thwarted by Napoleon, by Lord Ratliffe, or by the vicissitudes of fate? Only time will tell.    

I'm not a straight up romance girl. This has happened, more likely then not, by being around two women my entire life, my mother and paternal grandmother, who loved mysteries and if they veered even a little into romance they would deride the book till the end of days. NEVER get my mother started on J.D. Robb, aka Nora Roberts. Therefore I've never delved into romance, I've skated around the edges with historical fiction, but this was my first foray into a book published by that behemoth of the romance genre, Harlequin. And it is not what I expected. At All. It wasn't bodice ripping and corsets being flung to the floor. I mean, yes, it had sex, but nothing that racy. It was escapism in the extreme with everything being seen through this rose tinted haze where even poverty wasn't that onerous. Marrying the Captain was all about wish fulfillment and fantasy and this was just something I couldn't take. This unreality that jarred me so much went beyond saccharine. Everyone was just so dang good and earnest and unrealistic that there was no way I was buying any of it. I am not the kind of person who can read a book that is so completely fantastical, even fantasy has to have that harsh underlying of reality to make a connection with me. Really, a unicorn wandering the streets of Plymouth would have been more realistic then half of what happens in this book. By the end of the book my teeth hurt from this sugarcoated story and unless someone tells me this book is an aberration in the romance genre I don't think I'll be picking up a Harlequin book in the near or distant future.

Oddly enough, despite my dislike of the ludicrous plot, that wasn't what annoyed me the most. Let's talk about names. Names are important. Very important. To a fairy a name could be your or their undoing. To a reader, a bad name can be the game changer between a good book and a laughable book. This, this isn't a good book, which I think I've already established. Therefore we are left with a laughable book. Why is it so laughable? Well, perhaps because the heroine's name is Nana. Um, yeah. So, you're writing a romance book and you think, what's a good name? Nana should NEVER be on this list. NEVER. And it REALLY shouldn't be used when that heroine lives with her grandmother. Because, really, it sounds like there's two grandmother's in the house, or inn in this case. Plus, Nana screamed out in passion? Laughable. Maybe Kelly was trying to be atypical, but if this was the case, it's not working. Or maybe she was trying to go for a name that conveyed the heroine's personality, Nana is short for nursery maid, and Nana nurses Oliver back to health... OK, I'm stretching credulity, I can't even buy that and I just wrote it. I think Kelly is the Australian version of "nana" to use this name in her book. So you don't have to look it up, that means crazy. Plus, Nana's full name, Nana Massey... don't impugn the name of the greatest Miss Marple ever played by Anna Massey! Just don't.

To continue with the naming of characters I want to talk about seeing my last name in print. My last name is Lefebvre. Rarely do I see it used in books spelled the EXACT same way as I spell it. Needless to say, I know a lot about the history of my last name and it's very obvious that Kelly does not. In fact, I'd say she's completely ignorant about the name Lefebvre and that she did absolutely no research whatsoever and yes, this is me calling her out! Just because she wanted to make a link to the less important French general Lefebvre-Desnouettes doesn't mean she can then do no research on the name Lefebvre! In fact, I think it means she must do research, or at least the basics. The first big ugh moment was when the painter Henri Lefebvre told Nana how to say his name. "Le...feb...vre...Ah, yes. You purse your lips as though you were going to kiss some lucky gentleman." NO! No no and no! Firstly, the "B" is ALWAYS SILENT! ALWAYS! Even said with a French accent it is silent. Either it is Americanized and said "le...fave" or it's said as it is in it's country of origin, which is "le...fev...rah." Do you see a freakin' "B"? Because I sure as hell do not. And when you say it this way are you pursing your lips? NO! I dare anyone who reads this to try to say "Fave" or "Rah" while seductively pursing your lips. It can't be done. Especially on the "Rah" which is more a war cry then anything else. If I had liked or bought into anything previous to this incident in the book I would have been alienated instantly by the authors ignorance, which actually goes even further if you can imagine it. She states that Lefebvre must be a very uncommon name in France and therefore Henri and the French general must be related. While yes, most Lefebvres are related, the name Lefebvre is basically Smith. Would you call Smith an uncommon name? Nope.

Now I just want to rant about something in this rather ranty review that has always bothered me and is a plot point in this book, and that's women's hair. Why is long hair in woman so important? In The Gift of the Magi the cutting off of her long luscious tresses is something akin to a crime and is seen as the final marker of how desperate she is. Even Jo in Little Women has her hair wept over. Seriously, it's just hair people! IT GROWS BACK! It doesn't contain a magical life force! In fact, I like my hair short. Long hair is annoying and oh so very very heavy. When my hair is long it literally weighs around six pounds. Six pounds pulling on my head. Why would anyone want this? Is this more male bullshit that they like long hair? Because then it's just another standard of beauty that I just can't get behind. You know who needed my hair more then me? That kid with Cancer who I donated my hair to. Plus it's hot in summer and gets in the way if you want less altruistic reasons. Also, I want to make a bigger point beyond women being defined by their hair and that historically short hair was coming into vogue at the time this book is set. Therefore Nana's short hair wouldn't have been all that tragic. In fact it would have been chic. Instead we get everyone talking about it's loss and that very creepy scene where Oliver goes to the wigmakers and fondles her cut locks. Women shouldn't be defined by hair and they definitely should avoid men who fondle their hair when it's no longer attached to their scalp. This isn't romantic, this is pathological. This is serial killer in the making. This is creepy.

Finally, let's talk about sex. Sex is quite common in books nowadays. So it makes it easier to judge a good sex scene from a bad one. Nana and Oliver's wedding night should be romantic, tender, sweet, it should, going with the rest of this book's saccharine sweetness, instead it's perfunctory and all about male fulfillment. I'm sorry, say what? There's only one deduction that can be taken away from this and that if this book is female wish fulfilment incarnate then all women want to do is satisfy their men and their needs don't matter. Um, again, a resounding no. Is this book secretly written by a man? Because the sex scene sure doesn't come across as written by a woman with a woman's needs. One of the reasons for years I think I shied away from Harlequin books was this idea that all it would be is sex. For me books need many layers and sex is just one of them. But apparently I had nothing to be worried about. If this is the standard of love making, well, I can get racier stuff in fiction... and far more satisfying if that's what you're looking for. Marrying the Captain though is just one big tangled mess of dissatisfaction. Disgruntled reader and reviewer here, please send quality reading material STAT!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Hair, Harlequin, Jazzy July, Lauren Willig, Lefebvre, Little Women, Marrying the Captain, Nana, Napoleon, Regency, Sex, Ships, That Summer, The Gift of the Magi, The Other Daughter