Compulsive listening

Occasionally, I go crazy for a particular song and listen to it over and over and over and over and over and over and over .... you get the picture.

The last one was Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands by Bob Dylan. Before that, This Side of the Blue by Joanna Newsome.

It's not like I have an obsessional song all the time. I just get them every now again.

At the moment, it's Sound & Vision by David Bowie. I'm listening to it approximately three times a day but I think I'm coming out the other side now.

Somewhat better than run-of-the-mill reads

I review about 20% of what I read. I always intend to review more, and even have some half-written reviews kicking around. The ones that tend to escape the net are the ones that fall somewhere on the spectrum between 'not bad' and 'pretty good'.

I thought I'd look at a few of my recent reads that fall into this category and look at what worked, what didn't, and why.

First up is Duchess in Love by Eloisa James. I think I've read three James books before. A couple of the Essex sisters ones and then, more recently Duchess by Night. They were all 'ok'. Competently put together but lacking in some sort of sensibility that left me feeling non-plussed by the HEAs. I'd pretty much given up James as an author when Laura Vivanco offered me this one. And being someone who reviews the offer of free stuff as the intervening hand of Fate, I decided to give it a go. It was - a bit more than ok. The book of hers I've liked best so far.

So what worked in this one? I think maybe the fact that it was something of a chamber piece helped. It's not uncommon - in my limited experience - for James to have a lot of secondary characters. However, in this one, there is a full secondary romance, and another story running through the action (one that apparently carries on through all four books in the series).

There are four female friends in this book, one of whom (Gina) is the eponymous duchess and two of whom (Esme and Helene) appear in future books (Esme's story is the one that runs through them all). The fourth friend (Carola) gets a secondary romance HEA in this book.

In actual fact, I wasn't particularly wild about the central couple of this book, but I liked Carola and Esme's stories quite a bit. In Esme's case, this was despite developing a grudge against her love interest, Sebastian, whom Esme, in their final bust-up calls **mild spoiler** a "stodgy - boring - virgin". I cheered at that point. Strangely, however, the story I liked best was Carola and Tuppy's story. This surprised me because they are classic secondary characters. Tuppy isn't hero-like at all. He's just a nice man. (I'm thinking Freddy from Heyer's Cotillion). And Carola is annoying and silly.

I think it's safe to say I'm unlikely to ever be a big James fan but I might give her another go. Anyone else read the other three in this quartet? Is Esme's story worth persisting with?

Laura also gave me an Edith Layton (new to me author) to try. How to Seduce a Bride. Again, whilst this didn't blow me away, it was all very competently done. Layton strikes me as the sort of writer you could trust to deliver at least a satisfactory read and maybe more. The hero has an atypical look (tall and slender) and despite the heroine having one of my least favourite characteristics (indomitability - don't get me started) I quite liked her. I would love to know if anyone has any strong Layton reccs. I have a feeling there may be a Layton out there that might really ring my bell.

A degree or two better than either of the two above, was First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh, the first in the Huxtable quartet. It's taken me a while to get round to this one.

Balogh is one of my favourite authors. Even her weakest books I tend to enjoy. Her prose is simple, direct and effective and she manages to create strongly romantic storylines with characters who behave generally rationally. It's all very understated but skilled. When I read a Balogh I know I'm in a safe pair of hands. Her books are very 'pure' romance. And yet they're not samey. In fact of all the historical writers I can think of, she tackles the greatest range of heroes and heroines: young, mature, rich, poor, respectable, scandalous, disabled, kindly, brittle, cold, warm etc.

First Comes Marriage is the story of Vanessa and Elliot and is the setting-up book for the whole series. As such, it lays a fair bit of groundwork. We don't just get Vanessa and Elliott, we also get character fixes on the other three Huxtables and on Elliot's cousin Con, all of whom are going to feature later in the series. It's all very neatly done though. I didn't hugely mind the sequel baiting. As for Vanessa and Elliot, their story featured one of my favourite tropes: the husband and wife who fall in love.

Elliot has been sent to inform the relatively poor Huxtable family that Stephen, the brother, has unexpectedly inherited an Earldom. Elliot had been the trustee of the previous Earl, Con's brother, a boy with Down's Syndrome. Unfortunately for Con, he is unable to inherit as he was born out of wedock (a fact that was not cured by his parents' subsequent marriage).

Elliot bears the Huxtables off to their new life and decides that, since it's time he got married, he may as well ask the eldest Miss Huxtable, Meg. What he doesn' t know is that Meg is in love with another. The second sister, Vanessa, therefore propositions Elliot before he can propose to Meg. Vanessa is the plain Jane of a beautiful family but she has a strongly charismatic personality that others respond to (another Balogh stand-by that I really like). And, having been married before briefly, to a young man who died of consumption, she assures Elliot that she 'knows how to please a man'. Elliot agrees and the rest of the novel is taken up with their falling into love.

It's by no means the best Balogh I've ever read and probably not a keeper, but I enjoyed it and I will, inevitably, pick up all of the books in this series at my leisure.

So quite a positive little batch, all in all! And I have many treats awaiting me in my TBR pile still thanks to a variety of reccs and interesting reviews by a number of other bloggers. *happy sigh*

Separated at birth #1

Every now and again, I think about doing another tash v slap. But, since I can never come up with one, I think I have to accept that that one's been exhausted. And so, a new feature, pretty much for my own sad amusement: separated at birth.

I've always liked the idea of cricket. Pristine whites, the village green, tea and scones. The crack of leather on willow. So seductive. 'Specially when the cricketer in question has the face of an angel.

But isn't it interesting that wicked boys so often have angelic looks?



So, separated at birth: Stuart Broad and Draco Malfoy.

Draco Malfoy, trainee wizard

Stuart Broad, England bowler

Reader-belief and the reader-writer transaction

You know how sometimes a whole series of seemingly disparate things come together and seem to point to a bigger theme that is dominating your thoughts?

The first thing was this: Mr T and I were listening to the Kinks' song, Waterloo Sunset. And I said to him: this is one of those diamond songs. And he said, yes.

The second thing was this: earlier in the summer I read a post at Romancing the blog by Jessica on the paradox of fiction and how readers react to emotion in fiction.

The third thing was this: I found my copy of Negotiating the Dead by Margaret Atwood, a series of essays about writing.

The fourth and fifth things were these: Laura Vivanco mentioned The Wizard of Oz to me. And then she did a post the other day which gave birth to a fascinating comments thread.

All of these things, and probably twenty more things that are less easily pin-pointable, all feed into my current thinking which is around authenticity and belief.

So, the diamond song thing. This shorthand came out of a Chez Tumperkin evenings when Mr T and I decided that good songs, really good songs, are not made but are discovered. I suppose it's the same as the idea that the finished sculpture is sitting inside the stone, waiting to be revealed by the sculptor. The point is, that the song, or thing, in question has a realness and authenticity that makes it seem unfabricated. Not made, but rather a thing that has always been.

Second, Jessica's post about the paradox of fiction. Jessica gave a brief description of this philosophical problem and questioned what it is in romance novels - given that neither the characters nor the story are real - that we get all mushy about. She said:

My view is that I am really feeling emotions when I am reading a romance novel — or at least when I am reading a well-written one — but I am not sure how to square this with my knowledge that fiction isn’t real. As a reader, I just accept it as one of the gifts that a good writer bestows.

The comments to the post are interesting, particularly a comment by Angela:

I think part of the reason is that while reading you are in a suspended state of being. The reader is not present in precisely the same way that a person is, their identity their sense of self, hibernates for the duration of the experience.

That comment really chimed with me. It made me reflect upon how important that element of belief is to me as a reader and brought to mind the famous George line from Seinfeld: Jerry, just remember, it's not a lie if you believe it.

I found myself thinking a lot about belief and emotion. How the belief informs the emotional response.

The third thing. I had this bag of books on the top of my wardrobe. And I wasn't really sure what was in it, so I got it down and amongst all the romance novels there was Negotiating the Dead. It is a fascinating book of essays, though no easy read. There's a chapter where Atwood talks about the relationship between readers and writers. She talks about her 'first real reader' who was Brown Owl, the leader of her Brownie troup. She wrote little books and gave them to Brown Owl who loved them.

The writer writes for Brown Owl, or whoever the equivalent of Brown Owl may be in the writer's life at the time. A real person, then: singular, specific.... So that is who the writer writes for: for the reader. For the reader who is not Them but You. For the Dear Reader. For the ideal reader who exists somewhere on a continuum between Brown Owl and God. And this reader may prove to be anyone at all - any one at all - because the act of reading is just as singular - always - as the act of writing.

The fourth and fifth things were both to do with Laura Vivanco. As I said, she mentioned The Wizard of Oz to me. And as we all know, The Wizard of Oz isn't really a wizard at all. He's an illusionist who makes the characters believe things with the aid of smoke and mirrors. He uses tricks and fibs to reveal greater truths and in that sense he presents a similar dichotomy that fiction does. Fiction is, put bluntly, a lie, and we know it. No reader who ever opens a work of fiction is led to believe it is anything other than entirely fabricated. Yet one of the highest compliments we can pay a work of fiction is to laud its truthfulness.

Hmmmm. There are complex things happening between the reader and the writer.

And then Laura wrote the post mentioned above. The discussion focussed around negative feelings associated with reading romance (I'm not going to summarise this. Go. Read it.). The thing that most fascinated me about the discussion was the different degrees of immersion commenters reported experiencing when reading books. (And I see that Laura has picked up on some of these comments again in her most recent post).

These very different reader responses seem to support Atwood's statement that the act of reading is as singular in its way as the act of writing.

So where do all these myriad observations take me?

Well, firstly to that difficult area between truth and non-truth. I suppose I feel that the mere fact that something is 'made up' doesn't mean it is not truthful. In fact, a not-true thing, can be paradoxically 'more truthful' than a true thing. Because it can be simplified, stripped of all the extraneous details that would make a story in the real world so messy and complicated, and rendered into a 'purer' form.

Secondly, reader-belief. The well-known phrase 'suspension of disbelief' was the invention of the poet Samuel Coleridge who was interested in introducing fantastical elements into poetry. The sense I have always had of that phrase is that it is for the reader to put aside his scepticism and approach the text with an open mind. But it's interesting to read the phrase in the context in which it first appeared, in a sort of autobiographical treatise Coleridge wrote, Biographia Literaria:

...it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith...

The sense of those words, to me, is quite different. Coleridge seems to be saying that it is for the writer to invest his 'supernatural' or 'romantic' characters with something truthful that speaks to reader and to win his 'willing suspension of disbelief'.

Maybe winning that reader-belief is what the reader-writer transaction is all about? Maybe, fundamentally, the reader (or some readers?) are looking to be brought to a state of belief. After all, 'worldbuilding' is seen as an important skill, characters we find compelling are said to 'leap off the page', and we dream of 'escaping' between the pages of our books.

I've spoken before about reader-writer chemistry and now I'm wondering if that chemistry is related to the willingness of the reader to believe and the author's ability to meet that desire. I am a very willing and open reader to certain authors who have won my trust. Similarly, certain tropes and characters will easily pique my interest. Other authors, tropes, characters will have to do more to win me over. There are certain fictional elements that I have strong barriers to because they clash so badly with other views or sensitivities I possess.

What do you think? Is belief important to you? Or is it enough merely to not-disbelieve? Or is the experience of reading not really about belief at all, but something else? What makes one book feel 'real' and another feel 'made up'? And which readers do you have reader-writer chemistry with?

This is so very show and not tell

Ok, so mostly I just want to get that giant wasp off the top of my blog, but also I really love the film Annie Hall, and it's been ages since I watched it.

One of the bits I love best is the lobster scene, not only because it's a really funny scene, but because of later, when Alvie and Annie start to see other people: Alvie has a date with another woman and gets the lobsters out again only this time it's not funny at all. It's this great moment where he sees what he's lost.

This is a great little clip - it's got the first lobster scene plus the follow up.

bits and bobs

1. We were stung by wasps at the weekend! We went for a walk in the country and Mr Tumperkin decided to pick some brambles. Unfortunately he managed to stand on a wasps' nest and they came after us. I got two stings, and big-littley got one. I managed to get the little-littley away (at a hysterical run) without a sting. Which was a relief. He has allergies and I was concerned he'd have a reaction. Especially since I could feel my own tongue swelling! Luckily it wasn't more than a sort of buzz that died away after about a minute. Poor Mr Tumperkin got stung LOADS. We were traumatised!


2. Every time I read that a hero 'threw back his head and laughed' it's driving me crazy. Who does that? It's a maniacal reaction!

3. I am oozing with books and cool recommendations!

• Laura Vivanco has given me Another Eden by Pat Gaffney to read which I've wanted for ages plus an Edith Layton who I've never read;


• JenB emailed me to recc Dark Designs by Madelynne Ellis cos of my yaoi recc plea and that's just arrived;


• Wendy Superlibrarian's review of Kiss it Better by Portia da Costa also persuaded me to order that cos I am a sucker for a beauty and the beast tale;


• I still await the Alpha and Omega book 1 that Janine reviewed at DA and that I mentioned in my outsider heroines post - surely it must come soon?


• Outlaw Hearts by Roseanne Bittner has arrived - as recc'd by Kristie J as the 'if you only read one Western' book! I am slightly nervous. It covers 20 years!

4. I sense a time of change; perhaps it's written in the stars?

5. So tired.

Happy 30th birthday: An unashamedly partisan review of Frustration by Charlotte Lamb with super-spoilers

I have been meaning to post about this book for ages. It's my favourite Charlotte Lamb Mills & Boon and it's 30 yrs old this year! I'm sure someone on one of the big blogs mentioned recently that they'd read it and found it rather alarming but it is a very great favourite of mine and a wonderfully typical example of what Lamb was doing at this amazingly productive time in her writing career (when she was publishing approximately one book a month). I can literally talk through this book scene by scene I've read it so often.

Are spoilers ok when the book is a thirty year old category, long out of print? Well, this post is chock a block with 'em. Read on at your peril.

The heroine is Natalie, a secretary in her 20s. She's a typical Lamb late 70s heroine: quiet and shy but with a steely core. Natalie is widow, having lost her husband Angus in a car accident. The book has one of my favourite ever openings for a category romance (hell, for any romance). It's very high conflict/ high stakes and emotional. Here are the opening lines:

It was during the coffee break that Natalie realised she had lost her wedding ring. She reached out to pass the sugar bowl to Carol and her hand stayed fixed in position while Carol stared at her blankly and she looked at that bare left hand with horror-stricken eyes.

"What's wrong?" Carol leaned over and took the sugar bowl firmly, then placed it on the table. Her neat-featured face showed distress as she took in Natalie's irrepressible tears. "Natalie! For heaven's sake!"

"My ring," Natalie got out thickly.

Isn't that a fab opening? Doesn't it just make you want to read on? To make it worse, this is Natalie's second wedding anniversary and her husband's been dead for just over a year.

Natalie is a typist at a TV station. She is persuaded by Carol to go to a work party that evening to take her mind off things. On a whim, she goes out and buys a new dress. But when she gets to the party, she's miserable and wants to leave. Until she sees a man who looks familiar:

She glanced around for Carol to say goodbye and then it happened. On the other side of the room she saw a dark head and her heart plunged as though she were in a lift that had suddenly gone down. The texture and colour of the thick black hair, the strong moulding of the skull at the back, the uplift of the neck, were all exactly like Angus....

...Perhaps her intense concentration got through to him somehow.... He turned his head and flicked a glance across the room. Even in profile he had a faint resemblance but then he focussed on her, and it was over. He did not look like Angus at all.

Isn't this awful and delicious? Aren't you just cringing and squealing already? I suggest you get your knuckles ready to bite on.

A hand touched her arm. She looked round, her breathing stopping as she saw who stood beside her.

"Hallo," he said in tones of intimacy, as though they had known each other all their lives, as though he had been waiting for her to come...

..."Dance with me," he invited...

They dance and it's all very dreamlike. Natalie just wants to pretend.

She didn't speak. The thick black hair was under her fingers. She touched it passionately, stroking the strong nape of his neck, unaware of anything but the dream unfolding her. Angus, she thought. Angus...

..."Let's get out of here," he muttered with a strange burning inflection...

Natalie goes off with the nameless man, who is the hero, Jake. They go to her flat and she gets completely carried away. I love the way that Lamb gets across in a very subtle way that Jake is just blown away by this amazing woman - she is his ideal and he has just fallen in a single moment. Natalie doesn't understand this because she's not really in the real world in this scene. It's this delicious secret that the reader can enjoy. And then something awful happens :

She was moaning now, twisting closer, the naked brush of skin on skin making her feverish.

Suddenly he lay still, staring at her through the dark. "What the hell did you just call me?"......

..."What?" she stammered.

"Who's Angus?" he asked harshly.

She admits that Angus is her husband but that's all. Jake's parting words are vicious:

"Thank Angus for the loan of his property," he said caustically. "But tell him I never have liked getting second hand goods, however cheap, and he has my sympathy."

The door had slammed before she was over the shock of the biting words and tone.

The next day, when Natalie goes to work, she discovers who the man is: Jake Lang. He's a film-maker who's been filming a nature series in Africa for the last two years. Natalie has actually spent the last few weeks typing up the scripts, memerised by Jake's voice. (Interestingly, Lamb herself was a secretary and worked as at the bbc and her husband was a journalist - she had a lot of media based heroes and heroines and even had a series (Barbary Wharf) set on a newspaper in the 80s).

Natalie is mortified and ashamed of what's happened. She tells Jake about Angus and that she thought he looked like him, that it had been her anniversary and she'd lost her ring.

"Were you married long?"

She laughed miserably, without amusement. "It wasn't even a year. That's why we were going to Scotland. To celebrate the anniversary with his family...."

"And this is the second?"

"Yes," she said. "Then yesterday I lost my wedding ring."

He made a rough sound of disbelief....

...She was silent and he said nothing either, his back to her. Then he said grindingly, "Why did he have to look like me?"

There was no answer to that. Natalie stood and picked up the tapes. "I know you're tired of hearing it, but I am sorry, Mr Lang." She went out quietly and he just stood there, without turning round or saying a word.

Soon after, Jake invites her to dinner but she makes it clear that she isn't interested in him and starts seeing a safe man, Tom. Jake seems to accept it but soon after offers her a job as his personal assistant and persuades her to take it despite her reservations, promising it will be strictly business. Jake is not an easy boss and Natalie becomes a buffer between him and the rest of the staff and quietly makes herself indispensible:

There follow a number of satisying, high conflict scenes between Natalie and Jake which explore the power play between them. Jake is determined to conquer Natalie by making her admit she wants him. She thinks he's only out for revenge and intends to walk away once he's defeated her. She doesn't get that his constant needling and taunting of her is the equivalent of the boy who pulls the girl's pigtails at school. He is desperate to get her attention but unwilling to lay down at her feet and make himself vulnerable, not least because of the blow to his pride that Natalie inflicted upon him that first night. At one point Jake does get Natalie to beg him to stay with her only to walk away, but Natalie snatches victory from the jaws of defeat in a highly satisfactory way. The reader is left in no doubt that Jake is the one who really suffers from this.

When I skim-read this last night, it was noticeable how aggressive Jake is, and how threatening his language to Natalie. I love this book, but I do wince a little bit at these parts. I love the book so much though that I'm almost mentally editing that stuff out as I go.

I'm going to resist the temptation to talk about all my favourite scenes because they're all favourite scenes. I do especially love the ones with Natalie's fearsome sister Angela who lovingly bullies her and her little boys who behave in a believably child-like way. Jake's parents are nicely observed too. For a short book, Lamb packs a lot in.

But it's the ending of this book that really really kills me. The whole declaration scene is so satisfying. I adore it. Natalie's sister and her husband decide to move to the US and they ask Natalie to go too. She agrees. She tells Jake, expecting him to be annoyed that she is moving out of his reach. But she is not prepared for his reaction:

"No!" Jake shouted hoarsely and his voice startled some thrushes parading on the lawn. The flew up with an excited twittering.

Natalie stared at him, dumbfounded, and he stared back as if he suddenly did not see her at all....

..."Do you think I don't know why you want me to stay?" she accused, the dark blue eyes angry. "You want to torture me until you feel your ego has been sufficiently placated. I'm going to pay and pay, aren't I, Jake? You hate me..."

"Hate you?" he broke in thickly, staring at her. "My god, are you blind? I love you!"

Oh my god. Jake!

Isn't it perfect? Don't you just want to be in this scene?

There is only one bad thing about this scene and this will tell you how often I have read it. Page 171 ends at broke in thickly, staring at her. and you have to turn over to page 172 to read My god, are you blind? I love you!
It very slightly kills the fabulous pacing and I mourn it a little every time.

I've posted the image of the original cover - which is the version I have. I prefer these 'black rose' M&Bs anyway but it's quite a bad one. Jake looks about fifty (grey sideburns! Cardigan!) and Natalie - who is meant to be 24 - looks like an exhausted 40 year old. Also they look incredibly stressed, like a married couple who are about to split. But the red is good and that iconic black rose.

Thank you for this gem, Charlotte Lamb; rest in peace.