The topic of this month is Historical
Published: 2013
Genre: Historical Romance
/ Victorian times
My Rating: 4 stars
In September we have to look
for a historical novel.
I bought this book with Your Wicked
Heart, as I enjoyed a lot the two books written by Meredith Duran that I
read for my AAR Top 100 Challenge. But while I enjoyed This Wicked Heart, it was nothing special so I didn’t read That Scandalous Summer afterwards, and
it languished in my TBR pile. When Fool
Me Twice won the RITA in July, I wanted to read it so – I had to read this
first. In the end, I read That Scandalous
Summer and Fool Me Twice, back to
back.
I enjoyed both of them. They are four-star books for me. But I preferred
to review this one for my September TBR Challenge, as it’s a book that got none
of the critical applause that Fool Me
Twice got.
This is the story of Michael de Grey, a doctor with a hospital for poor
people. As he’s noble, young, charming and very attractive, the ton just loves
him. His brother, the duke of Marwick –the main character in Fool Me Twice- is desperate and a little
bit crazy, so in this frame of mind he tells his brother that he has to marry a
girl he can approve; otherwise, Michael will be left with no money and of
course Alastair will close his beloved hospital.
Michael then leaves London, thinking that this way his brother will react
and begin his recovery. He goes as far as Cornwall, where he will live as a
rural doctor. One day he finds a very drunk lady in his rose bushes. It’s Elizabeth
Chudderley, a famous beauty who is, more or less, ‘the lady of the manor’ in
that place. This thing about a famous beauty reminded me of Evelyn Nesbit a women whose face was everywhere, in newspapers and magazines, and
even in souvenir items, at the beginning of the 20th century, and
inspired L. M. Montgomery the face of her beloved character Anne Greengables.
So Liza had that face for me.
It’s lust at first sight. They flirt all the time, but when they know
each other better, they also fall for the person inside. None of them say a
word about certain things. Michael does not say that his brother is a duke and that
he has no intention of staying in Cornwall more than a short time, until his
brother comes to his senses. And Liza does not tell him that no matter what
appearances can suggest, she’s broken and she needs money. So she’s trying to
catch a rich husband.
Part of the suspense of the novel comes from those things they ignore
about the other. But in the end knowing them does not change anything. Michael’s
low income as a doctor is useless for Liza, because she needs money not only
for herself but also–in a very medieval and paternalistic way- of those workers
that depend on her.
It’s set mainly in Cornwall, and in Liza’s house, when there’s a party
of scandalous socialites, as Liza herself. She hopes to find her rich second
husband in that party. It’s not a very original setting but, at least, we are
far from London, the Regency and ball rooms.
The most attractive part of this story was the emotional and sexual
tension between Michael and Liza. The greatest eroticism lies in moments of
little gestures –a touch, a kiss, a desperate embrace. But there’s also explicit
sex in this novel, very emotionally charged, because they always think it’s the
last one. First ‘let’s do it just once’; then, ‘this is the end, let’s make it
just one time more’. And so on.
It’s particularly intriguing to see how their mental processes evolve. What
they feel and think when they meet, about themselves and the other, and how
those thoughts and feelings evolve.
Michael’s parents were an awful and embittered couple. Therefore, he thinks
that marriage is the end of love – until he meets Liza. On the other hand, Liza
had a perfect example of marital bliss in her parents, so she knows that
happiness can exist in a married couple. But then she married and hers was not
a happy marriage, and then she had a lover that was a jerk, and now, well, she
needs money so love is not her number one priority.
Their problems are real, and they cannot be solved just by saying ‘I
love you’. And you cannot forget the social aspect of the whole thing. A
misalliance could damage not only the couple but all the family, as Cecilia
Grant explained so beautifully in A
Gentleman Undone. The conflict is so real, so well-constructed along the
novel, that the way it is solved, in the end, in a vaudeville tone, is a little
bit anticlimactic. I will say nothing more about it, because –spoiler.
This was a novel that I could not put down until I ended it. It was with
me less than twenty four hours. The characters sounded very real to me. Liza was
more interesting and complex. She has these financial problems and that awful
lover to deal with. But I think there’s something more important for her to get
over. Her mother died a year before the beginning of this novel, and Liza’s
always hearing her in her mind, her mother judging what Liza’s doing with her
life. Her sadness is shown in little details like Liza not being able to go to
her mother’s grave.
I think this could have been a darker novel, because many issues are not
explored, for instance, Liza’s previous unhappy marriage or her drinking
problem. But the author prefers to give these two people a great capacity for
joy and to enjoy life as it comes.
‘(I hesitantly admit) that actually made me both laugh and cry when proofreading various scenes in the copyedited manuscript’.
 |
This is the Spanish translation I've read
Cover
art: Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial/
Yolanda
Artola
Cover
picture: © Malgorzata Maj / Trevillion Images
|
Yes, I was so involved in the emotions of the characters that there was
a moment in which I got a lump in my throat, in a way quite close to the
emotional reaction I have to certain Balogh’s books.
I’m not sure why this book didn’t get A grade reviews, as I liked it
more that the rest of her books, but The
Duke of Shadows. Certainly, I liked a little bit more than Fool Me Twice, for instance. I love
character-driven stories when those characters interest me. And I’d rather read
about a mature woman with a past than about feisty virgins.
I’ve read this book in a very good Spanish translation, not in English. The
last three Duran’s translated books, Your
Wicked Heart, That Scandalous Summer and Fool Me Twice have been published by a publishing house (belonging
to the Peguin Random House Group) and a translator that respect the quality of
Meredith Duran’s prose. We are lucky, then, because that did not happened with The Duke of Shadows or Bound by your Touch, that were published
by a different set of publishing house and translator. They -how can I say this
without offending anyone? -, they just did not do justice to Meredith Duran’s
literary style.
So Meredith Duran is now a really auto-buy novelist for me. One author
of the group that I label as ‘Newest Historical Novel’, besides people like
Cecilia Grant, Courtney Milan or Rose Lerner. A group I define as opposed both
to Old Skool (bodice rippers and alphaholes) and the New School of Julia Quinn,
Tessa Dare and the likes, who are charming, light and completely void of any
relation to the hardships of life.
NB I loved this book so much that I couldn’t wait and translated –more or
less- my English review and posted the Spanish review before this TBR
Challenge, in order for people to buy this book that they can still find in mortar & brick bookshops.
