Such excitement. I've been promising this review
forever and
ever. And it's lo-o-o-o-ong.
Be warned, there be spoilers here. Since the book was first printed in 1983, I take the view that spoilers are absolutely allowed but if you think you'll ever read it, you may wish to stop reading .... now. Because I pretty much cover everything.
This novel is a Loveswept, which is a US category brand I'm not familiar with. As I said, it was originally printed in 1983 (though my copy is a 1991 reprint) and is one of a handful of novels written under the name of Laura London, a pen name for Tom and Sharon Curtis. Tom and Sharon's couple-portrait graces the inner cover of the book. With their warm woolly jumpers and wholesome hairdos, they look a pair of Canadian figure skaters from the 1980 Olympics. Which is nothing to the point, but a detail about the book I greatly enjoyed.
In a nutshell, LTL is the story of Jennifer Hamilton, shy librarian, and Philip Brooks, male-stripper-cum-environmental-scientist. The characters are so very particular in this book that it seems only fair to give them some individual attention in this review:
The heroineJennifer is in her early 20s. A recent college graduate, she has recently left home to strike out on her own as the a librarian in a small town in Wisconsin. She is described as having a Dorothy Hamill haircut and eyes the colour of burnt honey and as being variously gentle, shy, vulnerable, wary and hopeless with men. We discover later that she is 'exquisitely pretty' through an overheard conversation; the fact that that information is not offered up through the parts of the text that are written from her own POV is significant. I like to think that the authors deliberately described Jennifer in a way that would bring to mind the baby owls that Philip is looking after.
Dorothy Hamill around the time that LTL was first printed.
Otus asio (Eastern screech owl) There is something in Jennifer's life that has contributed to, though not perhaps wholly caused, her wariness and vulnerability. She is (brace yourselves) illegitimate.
This shameful circumstance caused Jennifer childhood grief and made her disinclined to trust others. Of course, I'm laughing at this from a 2010-perspective, but looking at it through the 1983 lens (see previous post on
vintage books) this is not that ludicrous. If Jennifter was 23 in 1983 then she was born in 1960 and illegitimacy would have certainly been a reasonably big deal then.
The hero
Philip Brooks comes from old money. His family were of the Vanderbilt order of things but have lost shedloads of cash over the last few decades. All that is left of the old grandeur, for Philip, is the huge house he lives in. He's an environmental scientist with a passion for wildlife and the grounds of his house are a sanctuary to various wild creatures. Since the state have declined to take it on as a wildlife reserve, he is supporting its continued existence by earning lucrative sums as a stripper. At the start of the book, he takes his two newest hangers-on, two baby owls, back to the house to the look after them.
Philip is both ridiculously beautiful and unusually unmoved by beauty. Although the reader is given to understand that Jennifer is pretty, he doesn't see her in that way as such but more simply, as his mate. Nor does he doesn't recognise 'normal' sexual mores. As he sees it, if he and Jennifer want each other, they should simply be together.
The plot
The story starts with Jennifer being dragged to a male strip show by her new friends, all unsuspecting as to the nature of the show in question. When she realises, she is mortified. The show is described in great and quite excruciating detail. Before Philip comes on stage, Jennifer sees him at the sound console and they share a strangely intimate look. Later she sees him on stage. Philip's act involves him stripping then inviting women on-stage to kiss and touch him. Despite coming under considerable pressure to go along with this, Jennifer refuses, even when Philip himself tries to persuade her.
After the show, Philip comes across Jennifer again by accident. He recognises her and decides he wants her. Because the POV around this point of the novel is all Jennifer's, we don't get to understand how he comes to this view, only his later certainty about her. My only quibble with the book is that I'd have liked to understand how he came to this certainty and precisely when. (Was it during the strip show, or only later when he saw her an Abraham Lincoln costume while fundraising? Or only when she insulted him?)
Philip sets about a campaign. He waits for Jennifer outside the library and sends her friend home so he can drive her home; he takes her to the grounds of his house and introduces her to the wildlife he loves; he goes to her library and watches her pretend to be animals with the children. She's drawn to him, yet resistant.
There's a scene where Philip dissects Jennifer's reaction to his stripping and her objections to it.
"It's because I strip, isn't it?"....
..."Jenny, Jenny, why do you have to make this a problem?...... Alright then, let's explore your inconsistencies," he said. "If I posed nude as an artist's model, would that disturb you?"
Knowing that she was going for a baited hook, yet not able to resist the temptation, she said, "I'm not sure, probably not as much."
"I see. You like a high culture tag on your exposed skin. What if I was an artist who painted nudes?"
..."That would be different."
"High culture," he repeated dryly, "and you prefer to the exploiter to the exploited. Smart."
"Now just a - "
"What if I were a doctor and spent the day examining naked bodies?"
Exasperated, and yet enchanted by him, she said, "Doctors at least don't kiss their patients."
At the end of the scene, he tells her to come and find him when she's ready.
All of this action is conducted against a bitterly cold Wisconsin winter: needle-like snow; crystalline air; brittle ice-crust; icy water like frigid poison. This winter transcends mere setting and becomes almost a character when Jennifer decides to go and find Philip and give herself to him. Her car breaks down and she manages to lock herself out. She has to walk to his house in minus 60 weather and when she gets there, he's not in. By the time he arrives, she's collapsed outside the house and hypothermic. (I cannot tell you how much I love the sick-heroine story trope. Nor can I tell you why. I feel it is almost a shameful thing, like a love for processed cheese.)
Jennifer recovers quickly. She is introduced to Chaucer, Philip's grumpy and charming pet screech owl, and the baby owls. He tells her about his privileged childhood and his present life as a stripper. He takes her up to the attic and they dress in decades-old finery and dance together. He tells her he loves her. At length, she does what she went there to do and gives herself to Philip.
One of the charming things about the book is the occasional letters that pass between Jennifer and her mother. These disclose a deep, affectionate relationship between mother and daughter, so rare in romance. Yet cleverly, Jennifer's mother is part of the major conflict/ black moment in the book. She writes to tell Jennifer that she is coming to visit - she and some friends are going to the Cougar Club where Philip strips, a decision that was directly influenced by Jennifer's letter to her mother after she went to the Cougar Club at the start of the book and told her that the most beautiful man in the world was there.
Jennifer can't bear the thought of her mother seeing Philip stripping and heads off for the Cougar Club herself. She sees Philip dancing and kissing other women and is distraught. She goes to his dressing room in tears. His friend tries to persuade her to leave and discloses that Philip has been drinking in order to be able to dance. There's an excruciating scene when he finally comes to the dressing room. He's bleeding from his hip, and when he sees her register this, he says:
"Another paper cut. Brand new dollar bills are fierce."
It's an ordinary enough observation yet poignant, bringing vividly to mind the women that have come to see him, filling their purses with cash they will later push on him. Then he looks at her.
... the short tidy hair, her clean fingernails, the long, immaculate eyelashes, each separate and satiny.... fragile mouth, fragile eyes. Neat, bright fastidious you, he thought; soiled me.
Isn't that a lovely last sentence?
They argue - and here comes one of the very best declaration climaxes I think I've ever read.
She began to shake. "Philip, I love you. But it hurts too much."
..."Don't love me then," he said. "You want me, you desire me, then use me. If you've started to love me and it hurts too much, then stop loving me and use me instead. Let me worry about the love. Whatever you do, stay in my life!"
Of course this is not the end. Jennifer goes home and her mother is there. Their talk decides Jennifer not to give up. She goes looking for Philip in his forest. Without the stripping money, he can't save the forest or the wildlife, but he will have her, and she will help him. (And there's a pleasing little epilogue that lets them have their dreams after all).
Two Particularly Pleasing Things About This Book
Thing the First: Owls and cougars
As I said earlier, I like to think that Jennifer was deliberately described so as to call to mind the sort of baby owl that Philip is nursing, with her fragile eyes and Dorothy Hamill prettiness. As for Philip, it's no accident that he dances at the Cougar Club. In some ways, he is hunter and she is prey.
For a moment, she was painfully open, her unguarded sensitivity carrying the simplicity of a line drawing - Tweetybird in a tough predicament..... He had a sudden unsettling vision of himself as a predator - the puma holding a small struggling creature under one paw.
Hunter/ prey; experienced/ innocent; soiled/ pure. And as is often the way in romance, it's the big-eyed baby owl, who ends up standing on top of the puma, blinking innocently down at its exposed belly.
Fanciful? Moi?
Thing the Second: Not a word wasted
Sometimes, novels contain sentences, paragraphs, pages even, of wasted words. This novel didn't feel like it contained a word that didn't serve some purpose. For example, there is a repeated motif of temperature. The brutal winter is a strong element of the setting and a crucial plot element, but it tells us about the characters too. It's not an accident that Jennifer almost dies of cold and is saved by Philip; nor that at the end of black moment (the scene in the Cougar Club) Philip puts his muffler round Jennifer's neck as she leaves and says to her these two words:
Keep warm.
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