We already had a bit of a genre disconnect.  When I told MOSS about the book, I noted that it was part of a series.  MOSS hesitated and looked confused.  “A romance series,” I clarified.  He altered the degree of his eyebrow tilt, but did not look sufficiently illuminated. I explained that quite often, while books in a romance series are related, they are not precisely sequential.  Usually what constitutes a series is that the various heroes and heroines are somehow related to one another.  The previous book’s characters may show up to be happily wed and spawning in the next book, but that’s usually the extent of the continuity.

With that being said, here are the other titles in what I tend to refer to as the “Slightly series”:  Slightly Married, Slightly Wicked, Slightly Scandalous, Slightly Tempted, Slightly Sinful. (I didn’t say that my name for the series was imaginative.)

The books detail the marriages of the Bedwyn siblings.  In  Slightly Married, Lord Aidan Bedwyn, the second-born son, marries Eve Morris in order to save her estate, after promising her dying brother on the battlefield at Toulouse to take care of her no matter what.  In Slightly Scandalous, Joshua Moore (Marquess of Hallmere), takes a few punches to the nose from Freyja Bedwyn and lives to tell the married tale.  In Slightly Wicked, Judith Law is a parson’s daughter who pretends to be an actress, bangs Rannulf Bedwyn, and eventually marries him in spite of himself.  Slightly Tempted tells the story of Gervase Ashford (Earl of Rosthorn), who pursues Morgan Bedwyn to spite Wulfric, but ultimately falls in love.  Finally, Rachel York falls for Alleyne Bedwyn in Slightly Sinful, but does so while he has massive amnesia after a head trauma on the battlefield.

Slightly Dangerous, which tells the story of the eldest brother Wulfric Bedwyn, is my favorite of the series, with Slightly Scandalous running a close second.  These two novels are the strongest, in my opinion, because their female characters come the closest to real-life heroines.  They’re sharp, funny, and stubborn, and are neither perfect nor laughable.  In these novels, too, the woman of the pair is resistant to the man’s charms.  I’m interested to see what MOSS thinks of that.  It will probably just seem awfully familiar to the poor man.

Stay tuned for a link, which will come soon after we record the podcast.  And expect regular updates on Fridays each week!

For now, though, I just have a link: at meloukhia.net, a straight-forward and sensible defense of chicklit as a genre.

Harlequin series romance is the most recognizable to the average non-romance reader, and it is statistically more likely to be baby-themed.¹ Picking out a category romance is a far more difficult process, since non-romance readers aren’t familiar with the codes of romance publishing.  I can scan the spines of romances at the bookstore and have some idea of which ones are right for me.  To an average person, the array is bewildering, and the back copy seems all the same.

The book MOSS picked out, however, was a perfect gift; that is, it was something I wanted, but which I wouldn’t have bought for myself.  MOSS picked out J.R. Ward’s newest paperback,  Lover Mine; a reader of this blog had recommended that I check out Ward’s work, but I had yet to get around to it.  I ended up reading the book in two days. While I am a speedy reader, it’s still a positive sign when I finish a 600+ page book in less than a week.

Under the fold is a summary of the various plotlines of the book.   Caveats: Lover Mine is the last in a series, so there is a possibility of spoilers for the entire series; there are scenes of rape and imprisonment in the novel, which necessitate a trigger warning; and, finally, there are several vampire boners. Although if you have a problem with pointy-toothed men with raging boners you should just go away, because there’s nothing for you here.  Nothing.

The main storyline is the romance between Xhex and John Matthew.  Xhex is a half-symphath, half-vampire.  As a symphath, she feeds on emotions.  As a vampire, she feeds on blood.  When I read that, I had an awful thought that she was going to get together with a woman who has really intense PMDD.  But no!  She has previously boned, and goes on to bone, one John Matthew, a mute and manly vampire.

When we meet Xhex, she’s trapped in a house by a Lesser named Lash.  Lessers are vampire hunters, but are less like Buffy and more like baby-powdered Prince impersonators without hearts.  Lash routinely stops into the house where he has Xhex trapped in order to rape her.  Most Lessers are impotent, but Lash is half-vampire and half-Lesser and can maintain an erection.  Handy for your raping needs,  I guess.

—  INTERLUDE: Cautious Reader asks, “How bad are the rape scenes?”  —
It was not played as sexy in any way, which I unfortunately found refreshing.  Sometimes authors (in general fiction, not just romance) will write a rape scene that both condemns the rape while offering the reader a rape fantasy.  I call this “having your rape and eating it too,” and no, I do not get invited out much.  This is not the case in Lover Mine, happily.  The sexual violence is alluded to, through physical injury (bruising, especially) and conversation between the characters.  However, Ward does manage to communicate the feelings of helplessness, rage, and sorrow that Xhex feels quite well, and some of the plot is told from the perspective of her rapist.  It would no doubt trigger readers who have issues with enclosed spaces, helplessness, and physical/sexual violence.
—  END INTERLUDE  —

John Matthew is part of the team that’s searching for Xhex.  No one knows how invested he truly is, however.  He and Xhex have made sweet vampire boners together.  Xhex just wasn’t that into him, though, or at least pretended she wasn’t.  Nonetheless, John loves her like a baby loves electrical outlets.  He even gets her name tattooed on his back, like the ultimate stalker failboat only it’s  okay because he’s the hero (these are not the droids you’re looking for).

Eventually John finds the house where Xhex is held prisoner.  But there is a twist!  Lash’s spell means that no one can see Xhex, even when they’re in the same room with her!  Xhex gets to watch John have a fit of the screaming weepies in between huffing her blood-spattered pillow, which sort of sucks.  Luckily, the arrival of the vampire search and rescue team weakens the spell.  After they leave, Xhex manages to break out of the house and flee.   Eventually John and she are reunited, and he manfully sacrifices his love on the altar of manliness, promising to love her (with his body) and leave her (EXCEPT IN HIS IMMORTAL SOUL and oh right also HIS TATTOOED BACK).

Xhex wants to have sex with John, but initially faces difficulty because of her rape by Lash.  The process of recovery was treated more thoroughly than in your average romance novel, without the kind of “I’ll never orgasm AGAIN, let’s have painfully awkward SACRIFICE SEX because that’s REALLY HOT!” histrionics that you find in Mary Balogh’s novels.  Ward does have an advantage over Balogh: the vampire element acts as a deus ex machina which makes Xhex’s recovery speedier.  Since Xhex has been alive so long, and been through a ration of shit in those years, she’s ostensibly better able to recover.  I don’t think that’s actually accurate, per se, but in the logic of the book it makes sense.

The remainder of their story is mostly: no-strings sex, Xhex learning sign language, sex, Xhex finding out about the tattoo and not filing a restraining order (?), sex, Xhex getting a tour of John’s really radically screwed up childhood, sex, Xhex finding out that John’s a rape survivor as well, more sex, sex, falling in love while having sex, John helping Xhex kill Lash, sex.  I was satisfied with the amount of sex in this novel.

—

In addition to this main storyline, there are three or four subplots.  Chapters of these subplots are interwoven with chapters of the main storyline, which just about ruins the flow of the book.  There’s one where the past mysteriously replicates the future; one featuring Qhuinn and Blay: Gay Vampires In Denial; one where a woman in Vampire Heaven yearns to be free, finally gets Pollyanna’d by having her back broken by her sparring partner, and bonus! finally hooks back up with her twin upon leaving Vampire Heaven (?????); and one where a TV producer of a supernatural reality show discovers a vampire (named Muhrder!) living in the attic.

The subplot that was most addictive for me was, of course, the gay one.  Qhuinn has sex with anything that moves– except for Blay, his best friend.  Blay is a gentleman with a fever– and the only cure is Qhuinn’s dick in his mouth.  Blay watches Qhuinn have sex; Qhuinn watches Blay watching Qhuinn have sex.  Qhuinn doesn’t want to bond with Blay because then he’ll have to give up his vampire aristo privilege; Blay just wants access to the public park that is Qhuinn’s loins.

Blay eventually meets Saxton, Qhuinn’s cousin, and they go on a date.  Following a homophobic encounter, Saxton gets beat up.  Blay tends to him, and — after requesting one more chance to get on Qhuinn’s probably-threadbare penis — finally makes the sweet off-screen nookie with Saxton.

—

On the whole, I was appalled by how much I enjoyed this book.   What follows, however, is a short summary of why exactly I was so appalled:

Slang: J.R. Ward is hep to the cool kids’ jive.  This means that she works such happenin’ terms as “hella” (to mean very) and “jel” (to mean jealous) into her writing.  It is extremely square for the reader.

All of Your H Needs: Aside from the slang, the vampires have their own words, seeming holdovers from eons past.  These words are like normal English words, but with one extra h.  For example: a symphath (like “sympath”), or a whard (like “ward”), or even Qhuinn (Quinn is the mere mortal spelling).  I don’t know what the real explanation is, never having read the other books; the only explanation that makes sense to me is that the fangs give vampires a lisp.

Jism: About two minutes after his first insertion into Xhex (I am so great at sexy terminology), John Matthew blows his proverbial wad all over the proverbial place.  “Well,” I thought, “That’s– certainly a first? I have yet to see a hero who deals with premature ejaculation.”But then John Matthew just kept… inserting.

And then jizzing.
And inserting.
And jizzing.

Cut to about forty money shots later — in the third or so sex scene — and I started to think that vampires were different.  Anatomically different.  I discussed this with a friend, since that is what you do when you are perplexed by the amount of spunk in a romance novel (have I mentioned I don’t get invited out much?).  She suggested that male vampires have an inordinate number of auxiliary testicles, which descend in semi-automatic fashion whenever the vampire is engaged in coitus.  This is, of course, the only logical explanation.  You’re welcome.

Missing Porn: I was satisfied by the amount of hetero porn in this book, even with the veritable sea of semen that would erupt from poor John Matthew’s schlong.  The homo porn, however, was severely lacking.  I was annoyed that Blay and Qhuinn didn’t get together by the end of the book, of course, but my annoyance could have been assuaged by the minor inclusion of a little frottage between Blay and Saxton.  I’m not particular! I’ll settle for a misdirected dryhump!  I didn’t even get that, though.  It was the old “fade to black.”  If you’re going to include a gay subplot, in my opinion, there’d better be at least a slightly porny outtake for your more perverted readers.  I suspect that, while the average romance reader might have been put off, the reader of 600+ page vampire erotica novel would know how to skim.

Mute Magic: John Matthew teaches Xhex the American sign language alphabet.  He also proves that he is a capable lip reader.  Neither of these things is effective for communicating paragraphs of emotional exposition, as Ward seems to assume.  Fingerspelling more than a couple of words is exhausting, and John Matthew and Xhex sign this way for pages.  There’s one particular scene where he’s leaning in, his face nearly touching Xhex’s… and he’s somehow both signing in a way that she understands and lipreading.  I can’t come up with anything sufficiently snide to say about the impossibility of that.  Very well then.

Your Homophobia Is Unrealistic, Dammit: Here’s a handy guide on how to tell  if an author of  gay-themed narratives is straight or not!  First, there will be an instance of overt homophobia.  Second, this overt homophobia will be the first time the gay characters explicitly become aware of their surroundings.  Finally, the overt homophobia will involve physical violence and/or slurs.The problem is that truly virulent homophobia is very rarely dressed in a paunch and hateful gaze, making threats and roughing up your boyfriend.  It’s more often a snide comment, a really determinedly open-minded face, and uncomfortable questions from the restaurant host.  When violence does happen, though, there’s always a way that it’s the gay person’s fault.  He was hitting on them, after all.  They were holding hands, in a neighborhood that isn’t friendly to that sort of thing!  He was so obvious.  It’s an abusive narrative, and abusive narratives rely on the victim always thinking — somewhere deep down — that they deserve it.

In Lover Mine, Blay and Saxton go to a cigar bar.  They’re accosted by an overweight, drunk businessman who makes snide comments.  They leave, and later Saxton is beaten up by– I’m not sure who, the businessman’s friends?  First, of course the businessman is overweight, because fat is a handy shorthand for nasty and mean.  Second, the cigar bar wouldn’t have tolerated that sort of bullshit, because gay men are perceived as classy clientele, and that’s good for business.  Finally, it’s just too clear-cut an example of homophobia, the poor gay man getting roughed up (somehow– even though HE’S A VAMPIRE) by those out-of-nowhere homophobic thugs.  Unfortunately for non-vampire queers, it’s hardly ever so easy to prove that you didn’t provoke it, that it wasn’t really your fault somehow.

—

LET’S END ON A DOWNER NOTE, SHALL WE?  OKAY.

…VAMPIRE BONERS FOREVER.

—

¹ – It seems like every other series romance is titled something like “BABY GETS A DADDY” or “AND DADDY MAKES THREE.”  The remainder have titles like “MISTRESS OF A MILLIONAIRE” or “THE SHEIK’S STIPULATION.”  This is perhaps a post for another day.

You see now why I bought it.

An Indian Brave¹ rapes a white woman. The white woman commits suicide after giving birth. So begins our hero’s horrifying-cliche-strewn life!

The child that results from this rape is given to the Indian Brave’s mother as a slave; the group to which the brave belonged apparently puts rapists to death, and the slave child is payback for losing her son. She calls him “He Who Does Not Deserve A Name.”  “He Who Does Not Deserve a Name” is kind of a mouthful, especially when you’re trying to scream it at a recalcitrant boy, but who am I to question Native Practices?²

Inexplicably tired of being beaten, HWDNDN finally runs away when he is still a small child. He is hungry and lonely when he comes across three cowboys who are about to kill a steer that does not belong to them.  They hardly ever do this!  They are just very hungry!  Unfortunately, since He “Bad Penny” Who Does Not Have a Name is around, they are caught by the man who owns the steer.  Even worse, the man has his friends with him, and they’re all rip-roaring drunk.  This band of miscreants consists of Hurd, three Evil Henchmen, and Swen the Misguided Guy Who Keeps Ending Up in the Wrong Place.³ Despite Swen’s pleas that they be a little nicer, Hurd and his Henchmen⁴ hang the three cowboys, then gang rape HWDNDN and brand him all over his face.

(That scene is alluded to throughout the book, but when the hero is shot by the heroine (no, seriously!  keep reading!) and falls into feverish reliving of his past (I shit you not!), we get to relive it with him.  He also conducts said fever dream in whispers (really!) so that the heroine gets to join in the fun, too.  Gentry takes exposition to a brand new level, my friends.)

Swen returns to camp, leading a horse and a mule laden with supplies.  He’s portrayed as a ridiculously poor rancher for the rest of the book, but I guess he had unknown resources.  HWDNDN doesn’t reveal himself to Swen, but he takes the horse and the mule and the supplies after Swen has left.  He leaves Wyoming on the horse.  He finishes off the supplies; when the mule dies, he eats it; and when the horse finally dies, he eats that too.  He proceeds to walk the rest of the way to Texas.  See, the cowboys told him great stories about Texas, in the two seconds they talked before Hurd came along.  HWDNDN walks there on the strength of that recommendation alone. Do not casually recommend a restaurant to this fellow!

The book opens with a scene of Kind White People finding the poor starved HWDNDN.  They, as Kind White People, take him in, show him love and kindness, and teach him how to shoot.  Despite all that Kind Whiteness, though, HWDNDN must leave them to seek his revenge.

And what a revenge it is!

HWDNDN becomes the fastest gun in the west, and is known by the name “Diablo^.”5 When we see the adult Diablo, he’s just been brought into town with a whole passel of other hired gunfighters.  He, and the forty-nine other gunslingers, are intended to drive nesters off of Hurd’s ranching land.

Diablo manages to fade into the background after he arrives, despite his horrific facial scarring and super-badass reputation.  As a result, he never actually does the job he was hired for.  Instead, Diablo focuses on — what else? — revenge. He tracks down, isolates, and hangs two of Hurd’s henchmen from that night.  Then he zones in on the big target, Hurd himself. Diablo burns Hurd’s brand-new mansion — under construction — to the ground.  He takes Hurd’s horse, Hurd’s dog, and Hurd’s prize rifle from Hurd’s house. Finally, he takes Hurd’s bride.

See, Swen of the Poor Timing has a daughter named Sunny. Tptally a common Swedish Pioneer Daughter name!

Sunny, despite growing up in a rough and tumble hardbitten town on the brink of the frontier, is dainty and feminine and blond and obedient and sweet. Her mother died in childbirth, and Sunny has made it her goal to be tractable in all matters as a result. Unfortunately her father is Swen the Pushover, and obeying him gets her engaged to Hurd the Destroyer. She doesn’t like Hurd — he dyes his hair, he sucks his teeth, he’s kind of pushy, he keeps lighting things on fire  — but what Daddy says, she does. And Daddy’s dying wish was that Hurd and Sunny get married.

Well, that’s what Hurd tells her, at least; as Diablo knows, Hurd actually killed Swen when Swen refused to let Hurd marry Sunny. Hurd blames the death on the nesters, and secures Sunny’s hand.  Diablo’s intent on taking everything Hurd values, so Diablo kidnaps Sunny.  It helps that he’s strangely drawn to Sunny, though he (of course) denies his attraction.  We know better, though.  Diablo of the Stony Heart stole a tiny portrait of Sunny from Swen’s house, which shows that he’s totally in Boner City for her!  This theft of the picture is in no way connected to the plot, for the record.   There is no plot-related device having to do with this interlude. Stop reading into everything.  There’s nothing to see here.

The main storyline isn’t the romance between Sunny and Hurd, anyway, or even between Sunny and Diablo. Sunny is supposed to come into her own and gain Diablo’s affections, but her development isn’t all that interesting. (In her defense, she’s about as captivating as a dishrag.)  The real power in this book is the relationship between Hurd and Diablo. The author seems to know it, too.  Gentry describes Hurd’s efforts to run nesters off of his land in detail.  She spends a surprising number of pages on Hurd’s mental degeneration after Diablo begins taking away his things. When Sunny and Diablo are left alone on the page together, it’s just the same old same old Stockholm Syndrome. Sunny and Diablo find each other compelling for no particular reason, and they continue to hurt one another for only marginally more understandable ones. Sunny shoots him in the side when she gets the chance to reach for his gun — in a moment of tenderness, natch — but then inexplicably keeps him alive through the wound and his fever. It’s aimless, in other words, and has only TRUE LOVE as its means of rationalization. It’s only when Hurd and Diablo are caught up together that the plot has any force.⁵

That being said, there are some horrifyingly hilarious moments while Diablo has Sunny held hostage in a cave.  There’s the aforementioned shooting.  Sunny holds up a druggist so that she can get medicine to save Diablo’s life.  She escapes, and is nearly raped by two of the gunslingers; Diablo arrives just in time to kill them both and ‘rescue her’ (or ‘return her to captivity,’ but poTAYto poTAHto).  The portrait that Diablo stole is found by Sunny, leading her to think that he killed her father.  Eventually TRUE LOVE wins out, and she believes his protestations of innocence.  During the struggle over the portrait, it falls and breaks on the ground.  Somehow Swen, through Mysterious Swedish Arts, hid a thousand dollars in the portrait… exactly the amount of money that Diablo has said he needs to start a ranch!  WHOA.

Finally, in a move deserving its own paragraph in this summary, Sunny decides that “Diablo” isn’t a good name for him, and she rechristens him “Jim.”  Yeah.

…Yeah.

I’m going to call him “Jimblo,” instead of Jim, to note the change.  And indeed, that might actually be less offensive than the renaming!  I also considered “Diajim,” “Jiablo,” and “LOLOL ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.”

Jimblo sets up a final showdown, which reunites Hurd, Sunny, and Jimblo.  Sunny and Jimblo are now devoted to one another, of course, and Jimblo’s got some cockamamie scheme where he’s going to get himself shot and killed and Sunny’s going to ride off to Boston.  I think?  His plan was constructed out of spit and asshairs, to tell you the truth.  It all works out, though, magically enough.  Hurd is lost to his crazed desire to regain Sunny.  He shoots the last remaining henchman by accident, right before the final showdown between himself and Jimblo.  His gunfighters and ranch hands have all deserted him, because he’s gone mad with his pursuit of Sunny.  He tries to kill Jimblo, and Sunny and Jimblo take Hurd down with a disturbing lack of effort. Before he dies, though, Hurd manages to confirm everything about Jimblo’s story.

Exit Sunny and Jimblo, who finally decide to — shocker! — ride off to start a ranch together.  They leave behind lots of rotting bodies, multiple now-ownerless houses, quite a few gunslingers who haven’t left yet, AWOL ranch hands, and nesters who have been driven off of their land to who knows where.  Texas got screwed in this deal.

Epilogue: two guesses, and the first one doesn’t count.  (Hint: it starts with ‘B’ and rhymes with ‘maybe.’)

This is probably what people refer to when they ask me whether or not there are good romance novels.  This is what they expect, and what they mock (to my face) when I mention that I read them.  This is the sort of book that people pick up to read out loud in a snotty voice.  What other genre is so often defined by its least worthwhile members?

For the record, however, I did finish the book.  I screamed with laughter several times, which has to count for something.  The relationship between Hurd and Jimblo was incredibly intense, and it was — believe it or not! — in part based on an episode of nester-rousting in the nineteenth century.  There’s something good in everyone.

Do keep this book in mind — I might make a separate post at some point about “disability romance,” or the scarred hero.  For now, though, I need to sleep.

¹ – A stock character in Wild West romances, unfortunately.
² – Of course, you might ask, who is Georgina Gentry to write Native Practices? But down that road lies madness and feminism, my friend.
³ – He’s Swedish. Let’s call him Swen for short.
⁴ – Start growing your ironic mustache, I’ve got the name for our indie rock band.
⁵ – It’s a classic example of a relationship that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick described in Between Men. That is, two men express their homosocial desires (or in this case, murderous sexuality) through the proxy figure of a woman. The Victorian Age truly never dies.

I’ve gotten this question quite a few times before.  I’ve thought of so many answers, ranging from the obtuse to the snide.   In the moment, though, my answers always desert me.  “Oh, sure,” I said, “there’s lots!  There are even English professors who write romance novels.”  My cunning answers deserted me, in other words, and I was left with eager-to-please-itude.  Oh, please like my girly novels, despite their icky girliness!  THEY’RE BETTER THAN THE SUM OF THEIR (LADY)PARTS!

If I’d had any grasp on my brain or my tongue, I would have discussed what makes something good.  As with any genre, whether or not there are good romance novels really does depend on what you mean by ‘good.’  There are romance novels that I would recommend to anyone with an easy heart and a clear conscience, because they feature interesting plots, evocative writing, and funny bits. (Funny bits are very much required, in my thinking.)  Even if we agree on these characteristics, though, there will be debate about whether or not the book actually fulfills the requirements, because someone won’t like it. That’s really the whole phenomenon of popular aesthetics, right there: “I love this shit therefore it is SUBLIME and sublime is GOOD and therefore this shit I love is GOOD.”

More often than not, the romance novels I read are in a murky area of ‘good’ness.  A book might be nicely structured, well-written, funny, well-researched, fascinating, but because the plot is constructed out of High Dramatics, I can’t quite recommend it to your casual man-acquaintance.  Sometimes the book doesn’t have a damn thing to recommend it beyond its High Dramatics, and I hide the cover when I read it on the train.  Yet I find both kinds of books ‘good.’  What these kinds of romance novels have, what makes them good, is indulgence.

These kinds of books exist in every genre.  My Other of Some Significance is currently reading a novel in the fantasy genre that is indulgent to the extreme: the hero is a poor orphan who turns out to be a prodigy in magic.  The prodigy undergoes intense trials, of course, but he emerges victorious with a snappy comeback on his lips.  MOSS is loving this book.  These books might be embarrassing, after all, and you might not recommend them to your friends, but you can churn through them like a box of Ding Dongs.

I’ve read two highly indulgent romances recently.  The first is Anna Campbell’s Untouched, which I took out from the local library, and which I will cover in this post. The second is Georgina Gentry’s Diablo, which will have its own post.  If you continue below the fold, be prepared for spoilers! Millions of spoilers! DUDE THEY TOTALLY HAVE SEX AND MAKE BABIES– oh, sorry, forgot to put in the break.

The Not-Prostitute Widow and the Potentially-Mad Virgin.

Untouched is the story of Grace Paget, a recent widow who is seriously down on her luck.  Grace is trying to meet up with a member of her extended family.  He doesn’t show up.  Instead, Grace is abducted by a pair of unsavory dudes, who assume she does sex work.  They dope her up and take her away.

Grace wakes up strapped to a table.  She’s a mite confused, as one might be, until she finds out that she’s meant to be the sexual plaything of the (hot) dude who has woken her up.  Said dude lives in a house with a small acreage.  It’s a really nice house, except for the part where it’s guarded by armed guys and surrounded by unclimbable walls.

The dude is Matthew Lansdowne, Lord Sheene.  When he was young, Matthew had some sort of brain fever — handwave, handwave, whatever — and his uncle had him locked up for his own good.  Because Matthew was mad, his uncle was able to take over the title.  The uncle is now used to having wealth and status and power, weirdly enough, so he keeps having Matthew re-declared insane.  Matthew is understandably peeved by this.  As of the opening of the novel, the uncle has decided to bring in a sex worker as a palliative.  Hence Grace’s presence!

This set-up is perhaps the most amazing thing I have ever read, and I used to read really terrible Buffy fanfiction.

Matthew doesn’t believe that Grace isn’t some stunning sex worker, even though she’s a) dressed in mourning, b) really shabby  mourning, c) is really convincingly scared of him, d) doesn’t try to have sex with him.  Even after he believes her story, he MANFULLY RESISTS the temptation to make pudding-sweet creamy delicious love to her.  Sexing her hot bod would be giving in to his uncle!  For her part, Grace is reticent about sexing him, because she thinks he doesn’t really desire her, and because her dud of a husband has only been dead for a short while.

Flimsiness of this premise aside, the first half of the book is the best.  I am biased: I love, love, love pining and thwarted sexual desire, and the first half of the book is replete with same.  If you are anything like me, you must go read at least the first half of this book.  There’s utterly ludicrous and inexcusable amounts of thwarted sexual tension, thinly excused as resistance to his uncle’s plans.  He sleeps on the couch!  He stands in the doorway at night, desiring her! Stilted conversations!  Raging erections and stalwart nipples!  How am I not writing this whole entry in caps?!

The sexual tension is resolved by the uncle threatening to kill Grace if they don’t make the beast with two backs.  I’m sorry, that bears clarification: SEX OR DEATH.  Love it!  They do the nasty, of course, and Grace admits her sullied past (her husband was a revolutionary, and she fell in love with his ideals, and her family threw her out, and she has never gotten a Good Boning). Matthew admits his sullied past (everyone thinks he’s crazy, he lives in a box, he has never known the touch of a woman). More boning ensues.

The second half is way less fun.  There is a seriously frightening near-rape, by one of the servants who guards Matthew’s prison¹; Matthew and Grace plot and effect a hilariously obvious escape plan; Grace makes Matthew promise not to kill himself for at least a little bit, although it means he has to deal with being beaten with a cane; Grace is revealed to be a CLOSET ARISTOCRAT (gasp!) who is able to save her loverdude; there’s a big scene, the uncle dies, one of the henchmen dies; Grace is like, “I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN” “Oh you’ve never been with another woman, we must part, you must experience the world,” and Matthew’s like, “One year apart, and then you better be ready to marry me”; fast forward to a year later, when they bang like crazed weasels in semi-public without actually talking about their problems, superficially discuss their problems, and finally agree to get married.

Epilogue: The usual babymaking.

The pacing is the problem here, as you can tell.  One half of the novel was deeply satisfying, and the other half was a breakneck scramble to resolve the plot.  As a result, a lot of plot holes were only haphazardly covered over.  Someone could twist their ankle!

Could I mention this in public as a good novel?  Ho ho, it is to laugh.  But is it a good novel?  If you mean “did you roll around in bed giggling and biting your lip while reading it, and occasionally ignore very real social obligations to read a little bit more,” then YES.  YES it was amazing and should be studied by the FINEST SCHOLARS OF BONERDOM.² And yet I could not suggest it as one of the ‘good romance novels.’

That’s a damn shame.  Woe betide a society that does not value its novels of thwarted yearning! Down that path lies vice, destruction, and students thinking the Scarlet Letter is boring.

So yeah, dude who I was talking to at a party, there are good romance novels.  I just can’t tell you about the really good ones.

More to come in Good Part 2: Guilty Pleasure Boogaloo.

—

¹ – I wish that there were trigger warnings on romance novels, sometimes. This is a post for another day.
² – Dr. Spoiler A. Baby, Professor of Boners. Office Hours: Whenever it’s hardest for you to make it. Ha! Hardest!

I’m something of a speed-reader.  It’s not a skill I developed consciously; I didn’t take a class or read a book on the subject.  I just read quickly.  How quickly?  If I’m really clicking along, I can read up to three decent-size (200 page) novels a day, which I learned during my comprehensive exams.  Those are Serious Business Novels, though, on which I planned to take a Serious Business Exam.  What I don’t know for certain is how many romance novels I can read in one day.  Generally I don’t take exams on those, and I bet I could read a lot more of them.  I want to find  out!

The only question I have for myself is what constitutes a “day.”  And because nothing is official unless it’s been voted on by others:

Take Our Poll
Take Our Poll

If you have another suggestion for some element of this “experiment,” post it in the comments!

Category romances distill the appeal of the romance novel.  Instead of attempting to appeal to a broad crowd through nuanced interpersonal interactions, category romances go straight for the prize.  A category romance is likely to give you a heroine who is soundly abused by her family and friends, but who maintains a flabbergasting meekness in the face of it.  One of the romances I recently read, The Youngest Dowager, had a heroine who believed that assault was normal during sex.  Yes!  I know!  AMAZING!

Since these books are thin, I can read them even more quickly than I do regular romances.  It goes even faster, because the books rely on well-trodden tropes of historical romance.  The minute a “gypsy” shows up, I know there’s going to be some brooding, or at the very least some Gypsy Superpowers.  I can fly right over the words, secure in the knowledge that everything is as it always is.

It’s that last phrase, thought idly to myself mid-read, that made me realize just how much these books rely on stereotypes to support their narrative.  The maids are plucky and friendly and Irish, for example, because the heroine needs her hair fixed and a confidant who won’t blab to the ton.  It reminded me of the point I’ve made to my students time and again: stereotypes serve a narrative purpose in our lives.  One of the benefits of reading these romances is that it makes visible to me the stereotypes I rely on or am encouraged to rely on as a white middle-class woman.  I may not be the ideal reader of these romances, after all, but I belong to the intended group.

So, because I am categorically incapable of taking things seriously, I made bingo cards featuring the tropes of historical romances.  Before you look at my frivolous offerings, though, check out these bingo cards based on conversations about marginalized groups:

• Ableism bingo: general disability, invisible disability.
• Racism bingo: the classic racism bingo card.
• Related to the above, how to suppress discussions of racism.
• Sexism bingo: gender bias bingo.
• Classism bingo: doesn’t exist yet, as far as I can tell, but there’s a discussion here of what said card would look like.
• Extensive collection of links to these kinds of bingo cards at A Second Thought.

Now, without further ado, Historical Romance Bingo cards:

She rides astride: an excellent horsewoman, who even rides like a man!
Surprise!title!: out of nowhere, our hero inherits an earldom.
“It’s never been like that before!”: no man has ever performed cunnilingus on me before. Let’s get married.
Gowns upon gowns: endless gown descriptions. Usually accompanies a makeover.
“All the servants love her”: and she’s made of sparkle powder and derring-do.
Kinky menace: her dead gay husband was into flogging chickens with a cat.  THE FIEND.

Hermit hero: he lives in a cave, away from the ravening masses, until our heroine — and her life-saving ladybits — show him how to live again.
Sickly friend: she’s a cripple, but at least she’s plucky!
Savages!: a non-white person or people who torture our hero.
Lawn: the female counterpart of superfine.
Lady Smartypants: the heroine is both pretty, abused by her family, and secretly a master chemist and Latin scholar.
Just her chemise: you know how, when you get rained on, you strip down to just your fine lawn chemise?  Yeah, like that.

Note that there is no square for black people.  That is because black people don’t exist.  LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU.

Jennifer Crusie's Cinderella Deal.

I had to give a presentation to a non-profit group recently, on contemporary gender theory and feminism. I pulled a pair of nylons out of my drawer, realized they had foot smudges on them, and carefully pulled them on so that the foot smudges were on the bottom of my feet again.

This scene is reminiscent of a lot of what’s called “chick lit”: a woman doing femininity, but doing it badly. While Jennifer Crusie writes for the same purposes as a lot of chick lit — for a long time she was shelved in the fiction section at my local Borders, same as The Devil Wears Prada — her heroines are absolute failures at femininity. They wear bizarre outfits, don’t want to have children, pack on extra pounds, leave their successful career to try to be an artist, and take in stray dogs. They’re usually a little miserable.

What appeals about the heroine who does femininity badly is that she’s still part of normal society, but I can relate to her. Crusie’s heroines are different. If they could just be a little different — a little more typically feminine or a little more tough-skinned — they could really make it. As it is, though, they’re just barely getting by.

I am a unremitting sucker for this narrative, as those of you who’ve met me might imagine. My daily life is less about smudgy stockings and more about making dirty jokes at staff meetings. (Goats are hilarious, and yet no one laughs at my goats-in-thongs jokes. What gives?)

When I heard that Bantam Books was issuing a reprint of Cinderella Deal, one of Crusie’s books from 1996, I got all sorts of excited. I hunted down a copy at a chain bookstore–

(Side note: I’m so sick of chain bookstores and the way that they organize romance novels. How do kinky threesome trade paperback novels get put in the romance section, while mass market paperbacks by a handful of romance novelists get shelved in the fiction section? Also, why would you have a display of “recent paperbacks of interest” that consists entirely of romance novels set in a corner of the fiction section, and put no copies of the books in the romance section? A THOUSAND INTERROBANGS at whoever thought that was a good idea.)

– and read it on the way home. Delayed gratification, shmelayed shmatification, that’s what I always say.

Here’s the text from the Amazon page:

Daisy Flattery is a free spirit with a soft spot for strays and a weakness for a good story. Why else would she agree to the outrageous charade offered by her buttoned-down workaholic neighbor, Linc Blaise? The history professor needs to have a fiancée in order to capture his dream job, and Daisy is game to play the role. But something funny happens on their way to the altar that changes everything. Now, with the midnight hour approaching, will Daisy lose her prince, or will opposites not only attract but live happily ever after?

The book basically follows that script.  Daisy’s in a tight spot; her paintings aren’t selling well, and she’s behind on her rent.  Even worse, she keeps adopting cats.  When she goes along with Linc’s scheme — which is intended to land him a perfect prep faculty position, one which will allow him the time to complete his novel — it turns out to offer her the perfect life.  She poses first as his fiancee, and then, when he lands the job, she even marries him.  Linc buys her dream house, that he lets her decorate in her own quirky way; she befriends his students and creates a safe haven for them; someone even starts buying her artwork.  Without a loving partnership between them, though, Daisy feels like something is missing.

This book might feel familiar to those of you who read Strange Bedpersons first.  Crusie essentially reworked this book to create that novel.  In Strange Bedpersons, the woman is an artistic liberal-minded lady, the guy is a Republican stickler for normalcy, and they’ve dated before, making their romantic connection a mite more  believable.  Of the two, I think I would recommend Strange Bedpersons first.  Both books, however, read like Crusie was writing for a formula that didn’t quite fit.  Don’t get me wrong — they’re both readable, and features Crusie’s classic banter (think 1930s screwball comedy, a la His Girl Friday or The Thin Man).  Still, I find “wacky girl gets a strait-laced guy” less appealing than “wacky girl learns to be openly wacky.”  I suspect this has something to do with my own level of wackiness, so your mileage may vary.

The only thing that really left me looking askance at the book was Daisy’s professed interest in painting “primitives.”  This is, according to the way Daisy refers to it, a genre of painting.  When I did a little research on it, I realized there was a booming business in “primitive” decor, and that there are really whole sub-genres in the genre of primitivism [Wiki].  The paintings that Daisy did were described in the book as large broad swathes of color.  Appealing, no?  And yet the word “primitives” has been used in a stereotyping and oppressive way.  I’ve always avoided using it, myself.  Every time Daisy said she wanted to paint primitives, or that she painted primitives, I was a little  less sympathetic with her for five or six pages.  Feminism has struck again, it seems.

Is anyone out there an art history buff, who can explain the use of the term for the genre?  I only gave the Wiki entry a skim; I’m going to research more and try to figure this out.  But a cheat sheet would be handy, indeed.

Check out other reviews:
Candy does a lightning review of Crusie’s work at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.
A review of Cinderella Deal at All About Romance, including a letter from Crusie to the reviewer.

There have been a few promotional trailers out and about that look promising to me, though.  Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman star in an adaptation of a Jeffrey Eugenides short story entitled The Switch:

Hortense at Jezebel observes that this is probably going to be mediocre and predictable — especially based on the standard rom-com trailer — but at least it made me smile, which is more than the trailers of Aniston’s other rom-coms did.

And of course there’s Date Night, starring Steven Carrell and the inimitable Tina Fey:

Which I pray will be at least semi-decent.

Have you seen any promising trailers lately?  Or did I miss an amazing romantic comedy in the recent past?

“If you look for me, I’m in the fiction section. Romance has its own section,” he says toward the end of a long conversation. Sunshine streams in from Sunset Boulevard. He’s smiling. Hard.

“I don’t write romance novels.” His preferred terminology: “Love stories — it’s a very different genre. I would be rejected if I submitted any of my novels as romance novels.”

This would  explain why I don’t enjoy Nicholas Sparks’ “love stories.”  I always thought it was because they were treacly pap with pain-pornography, but it’s because they’re not part of my preferred genre!

Later in the interview, Sparks snottily distinguishes his work — authentically emotional drama — from melodrama.  The origin of melodrama, however, was in authentically emotional drama.  If you look at the history of sentimental fiction (see, for example, Jane Tompkins’s work, or read more here), it was dominated by women, and it was meant to provoke tears and emotional responses on the part of readers.  It was supposed to be popular.  Ideally, it was even supposed to effect political change (see the well-known example of Uncle Tom’s Cabin).  Romance is one child of domestic fiction; sentimental drama is another.  Sparks seems intent on denying any familial resemblance.

It’s a very gender-defined move.  “Sentimental” and “romance” are now associated with women, even though it wasn’t always so.  Even worse, “sentimental” and “romance” are seen as sub-par, weak, and superficial.  So instead of comparing himself to romance authors, Sparks compares his work to Greek tragedy.  It’s not only to save (manly) face, though.  It’s a smart business decision, although Sparks only alludes to it.  After all, as he says, his work would have been rejected if he had submitted it as romance.  Romance is a gated community, and publishers, booksellers, and even readers are careful to monitor its borders.

He has one weirdly interesting observation:

“(Romances) are all essentially the same story: You’ve got a woman, she’s down on her luck, she meets the handsome stranger who falls desperately in love with her, but he’s got these quirks, she must change him, and they have their conflicts, and then they end up happily ever after.”

It appears that he’s read a romance or two.  Bad ones, mind you, but apparently he’s read them.  If he hadn’t read any romances, he wouldn’t dismiss the whole genre like that.  Right?  Right!

Kudos to The Pursuit of Harpyness for the link.

– First Mate Jess