One of the main reasons Nathan, Megan and I started Wordcandy was our desire to give serious (okay, semi-serious) literary consideration to genres of fiction that do not ordinarily receive their fair share of critical attention—genres like romance. Unfortunately, a personal prejudice has prevented us from reviewing a huge portion of the romance novel market: I am very sorry, but I cannot stand historical romances set before 1780.I know, I know. There are lots of good pre-Regency-era romance novels... but just think of the grossly inadequate dental care! The chamber pots! The semi-annual baths! It's all so off-putting—I mean, I realize that the human race survived these primitive times, so obviously there was some romance... but I'm really much happier not thinking about how it was managed. I've struggled through a few romances set in the 1400s, but they were all the kind of books that made a (probably historically inaccurate) point of mentioning their protagonists' unusual interest in bathing and tooth powder.
Anyway, all this means that I'm probably not the best person to be reviewing Margaret Mallory's novel Knight of Pleasure, but tough luck: people keep asking me for my opinion (she's a local author), so we'll all just have to make the best of it. Ready?
Knight of Pleasure is set in early 1400s Normandy. In an effort to avert the Siege of Rouen, Henry V decides to marry off an impoverished and widowed English noblewoman, Lady Isobel Hume, to a powerful French lord. Unfortunately, the political effectiveness of the match is hampered by the Frenchman's primary loyalty (which is to himself) and Lady Isobel's growing attraction to one of Henry's knights, the rakish Sir Stephen Carleton.
I wish I could set aside my early-historical prejudice here, but it's tough. Knight of Pleasure has historical information coming out of its eyebrows—some of it interesting (the political machinations surrounding Henry V's capture of Caen), some of it totally gross (the perceived sexual viability of girls as young as 11). If this is the kind of thing you enjoy, Mallory's book is obviously carefully researched, without too many words like “Ere” or “Forsooth!” sticking out like sore thumbs from her otherwise modern dialogue. The protagonists' initial attraction should have been introduced with more subtlety (they don't even meet until page 44, and yet they're groping each other on the floor of an empty storeroom by page 57), but their ongoing courtship does manage—eventually—to kick up some semi-plausible sparks...
...which would have been so much hotter if the author had made it perfectly clear that both parties had bathed first.
I'm sorry! I can't help it!
Labels: Book Reviews, Romance
5 Comments:
Ha ha ha! Oh, the timing your posts have with what I have been reading/seeing lately!
In the past few days, I read:
1. An article about how today's youth apparently feel more depressed and stressed than youth in the 1930s. The article claimed that life today is harder (excuse me?), with more demands on looking outside for definitions of "good life."
2. An article about how people feel depressed after viewing Avatar, because the movie presents such a happy, perfect world that cannot be attained here.
I put these together for my own conclusion, that we paint stories in such glossy, happy, romantic ways that any time other than our own seems rich, beautiful, and magical. Even more, we have the technology to illustrate and document that perfection. So, we look, see this gloriousness, and feel depressed by our own current, mundane lives.
For example, medieval romance was so much better than modern romance, since women wore sumptuous gowns of velvet and brocade, lived in palaces, and passed idyl time doing needlework while waiting for the men to come in from their honest hard work of handling horses.
8:18 AM
HAH! I'm topical!
Seriously, I can't even go camping without wistfully thinking of my very own shower. I am *not* the right person to get misty-eyed over the romance of days of yore.
11:06 AM
PLUS, this kind of book always reminds me of a teacher I once had, whose area of expertise was the Civil War era. He told me (I was in sixth grade, and I can still taste the bile that rose up in my throat at the thought) that all those images of a 19th century gentleman sweeping his hat off to a lady were totally historically inaccurate, because said hat probably would have been so full of lice and other creepy-crawlies that the woman would have thrown up in it.
Anyway. Now that I've shared that anecdote I need to go lie down.
11:14 AM
Ah, harkening back to better days! There is an episode of Robot Chicken that features a couple role-playing the woman's fantasy: to be ravished by Captain Jack Sparrow. Finding her partner's lack of enthusiasm frustrating, the woman requests, "Be realistic." So, "Jack" sweeps off his hat to reveal lice, kisses her with terrible breath, confesses the lack of bathing, and complains of rickets. Somehow, the woman no longer feels in the mood.
Think that would make a popular romance novel?
11:45 AM
Setting aside issues of hygiene, what about when the heroes in historical romances indulge in rampant man-whoring, which magically never seems to lead to disease and/or illegitimate children? (Think Johanna Lindsey's books.) How could people fantasize about some guy when his codpiece is concealing a raging case of the pox, and he's knocked up a veritable army of widows and servant girls?
1:42 PM
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