Recent reading
Apr. 12th, 2022 05:45 pmClementina by A. E. W. Mason (1901). This is an adventure novel dramatisation of the historical episode in which Princess Clementina Sobieska, on her way from her home in Poland to marry King James III/VIII in Italy, was kidnapped by the King's enemies and subsequently rescued by the Irish officer Charles Wogan. A bit of a different sort of Jacobite historical novel! As ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
luzula has said, the book is roughly half swashbuckling action and half agonising unfortunately-directed love, and I enjoyed both aspects of it very much. Mason is clearly an accomplished adventure novel writer; his style, very fast-paced and lively and frequently funny, makes for an enjoyable ride during the part of the book in which Wogan is constantly pursued and ambushed by various disguised enemies in a series of inns, and lots of good swashbuckling swordfights. Later on the book concentrates more on basically all the main characters falling unfortunately in love with the wrong people, and I really liked this bit too—there's a lot of agonised struggle and noble renunciation and all that (I think this is my favourite kind of het romance—it's not interesting if it's supposed to happen...!), and Mason manages to bring a good deal of life to the scenario of eighteenth-century royal arranged marriage being complicated by feelings while Honour and Duty stand in the way. I also loved Clementina herself as a character, spirited, bold and noble—reading this book, I felt like I could really see where Charles Edward got it from. :D
A Burglary; Or, Unconscious Influence by E. A. Dillwyn (1883). A while ago I was comparing E. A. Dillwyn to E. W. Hornung—both from Victorian industrial backgrounds, both writing exciting and entertaining novels that deal with issues of crime and punishment in society—and I hadn't even read this book, in which Dillwyn, fifteen years before The Amateur Cracksman, tackles the subject of the gentleman thief! The story centres around a burglary at the Welsh country house of Llwyn-yr-Allt: the rich heiress Lady Ethel Carton, visiting the Rhys family at their house, is robbed of her jewels in the night by a mysterious disguised burglar. The rest of the book follows the characters after the burglary: the tomboyish Imogen Rhys (whom we first meet out catching moths, fishing and causing general havoc in the countryside with her brother) adjusts to coming out in Society and generally being a young lady; Lady Ethel deals with the challenges of life as an heiress whom everyone wants to court for her money rather than for herself; the characters move to London and get involved in various minor adventures; and, eventually, the true identity of the burglar is revealed... Well, I enjoyed the 'gentleman burglar' plot a great deal—Dillwyn is more straightforward in her treatment of the morality of the subject than Hornung would be, but there is still quite a bit of interesting ambivalence there, and the general tone of the book combines moral lessons with an air of amorality in a similar intriguing way to the other books of hers that I've read. Unfortunately, the book has a massive flaw: the excellent Imogen starts off by declaring that she'll surely never want to get married—and actually argues at some length against the prevailing view that marriage is women's only use and purpose in life—and later on she attracts the attention of a suitably non-criminal young gentleman and, well, I think we all know how this is going to end. I honestly had thought Dillwyn was better than that. :( On the other hand, Imogen also has a more or less explicit crush on Lady Ethel, which is presented as clearly equivalent to the book's heterosexual romances in the discussions of the power of 'unconscious influence'—to give grudgingly what credit is due, I liked that. Dillwyn also chooses not to present the ending as decisively triumphing over Imogen's earlier points about women's purpose in life—by avoiding the subject entirely—which she could easily have done; perhaps there's a point there? I don't know. I'm going to go and ebook Winifred Holtby instead.
Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie) (1944). For book club, and this was a good choice! I'd read lots of Agatha Christie books before but never anything she published under her non-crime pseudonym, and I was expecting something really rather different. In fact, the style and themes here are not different at all; it reads just like the more psychological and disturbing of Christie's murder mysteries and thrillers, and it was an interesting experience seeing that style—tense, unsettled, disturbing—in a story that doesn't actually have any murder in it. The book follows Joan Scudamore, a respectable middle-class Englishwoman travelling home after visiting her married daughter in Iraq; on the journey she's delayed in the middle of the desert, and, stuck with nothing to do, she starts thinking back over her life and the great success she's made of her marriage, relationships with her children and life in general... or has she??? It's a great bit of limited POV and playing with the gap between the character's understanding and the reader's: the past Joan, rather impressively, consistently and wilfully misinterprets just about everything she does and everything about how other people respond to her, and the presentation of present-day Joan's gradual journey to understanding is very enjoyable. The atmosphere of the desert, which brings about this change in her, reminded me of—of all things—Small Gods by Terry Pratchett: the desert as uncompromisingly stark and clear, forcing the traveller to confront their true self, with no space for pretence and nowhere to hide. A good one!
luzula has said, the book is roughly half swashbuckling action and half agonising unfortunately-directed love, and I enjoyed both aspects of it very much. Mason is clearly an accomplished adventure novel writer; his style, very fast-paced and lively and frequently funny, makes for an enjoyable ride during the part of the book in which Wogan is constantly pursued and ambushed by various disguised enemies in a series of inns, and lots of good swashbuckling swordfights. Later on the book concentrates more on basically all the main characters falling unfortunately in love with the wrong people, and I really liked this bit too—there's a lot of agonised struggle and noble renunciation and all that (I think this is my favourite kind of het romance—it's not interesting if it's supposed to happen...!), and Mason manages to bring a good deal of life to the scenario of eighteenth-century royal arranged marriage being complicated by feelings while Honour and Duty stand in the way. I also loved Clementina herself as a character, spirited, bold and noble—reading this book, I felt like I could really see where Charles Edward got it from. :DA Burglary; Or, Unconscious Influence by E. A. Dillwyn (1883). A while ago I was comparing E. A. Dillwyn to E. W. Hornung—both from Victorian industrial backgrounds, both writing exciting and entertaining novels that deal with issues of crime and punishment in society—and I hadn't even read this book, in which Dillwyn, fifteen years before The Amateur Cracksman, tackles the subject of the gentleman thief! The story centres around a burglary at the Welsh country house of Llwyn-yr-Allt: the rich heiress Lady Ethel Carton, visiting the Rhys family at their house, is robbed of her jewels in the night by a mysterious disguised burglar. The rest of the book follows the characters after the burglary: the tomboyish Imogen Rhys (whom we first meet out catching moths, fishing and causing general havoc in the countryside with her brother) adjusts to coming out in Society and generally being a young lady; Lady Ethel deals with the challenges of life as an heiress whom everyone wants to court for her money rather than for herself; the characters move to London and get involved in various minor adventures; and, eventually, the true identity of the burglar is revealed... Well, I enjoyed the 'gentleman burglar' plot a great deal—Dillwyn is more straightforward in her treatment of the morality of the subject than Hornung would be, but there is still quite a bit of interesting ambivalence there, and the general tone of the book combines moral lessons with an air of amorality in a similar intriguing way to the other books of hers that I've read. Unfortunately, the book has a massive flaw: the excellent Imogen starts off by declaring that she'll surely never want to get married—and actually argues at some length against the prevailing view that marriage is women's only use and purpose in life—and later on she attracts the attention of a suitably non-criminal young gentleman and, well, I think we all know how this is going to end. I honestly had thought Dillwyn was better than that. :( On the other hand, Imogen also has a more or less explicit crush on Lady Ethel, which is presented as clearly equivalent to the book's heterosexual romances in the discussions of the power of 'unconscious influence'—to give grudgingly what credit is due, I liked that. Dillwyn also chooses not to present the ending as decisively triumphing over Imogen's earlier points about women's purpose in life—by avoiding the subject entirely—which she could easily have done; perhaps there's a point there? I don't know. I'm going to go and ebook Winifred Holtby instead.
Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie) (1944). For book club, and this was a good choice! I'd read lots of Agatha Christie books before but never anything she published under her non-crime pseudonym, and I was expecting something really rather different. In fact, the style and themes here are not different at all; it reads just like the more psychological and disturbing of Christie's murder mysteries and thrillers, and it was an interesting experience seeing that style—tense, unsettled, disturbing—in a story that doesn't actually have any murder in it. The book follows Joan Scudamore, a respectable middle-class Englishwoman travelling home after visiting her married daughter in Iraq; on the journey she's delayed in the middle of the desert, and, stuck with nothing to do, she starts thinking back over her life and the great success she's made of her marriage, relationships with her children and life in general... or has she??? It's a great bit of limited POV and playing with the gap between the character's understanding and the reader's: the past Joan, rather impressively, consistently and wilfully misinterprets just about everything she does and everything about how other people respond to her, and the presentation of present-day Joan's gradual journey to understanding is very enjoyable. The atmosphere of the desert, which brings about this change in her, reminded me of—of all things—Small Gods by Terry Pratchett: the desert as uncompromisingly stark and clear, forcing the traveller to confront their true self, with no space for pretence and nowhere to hide. A good one!
