Salt and corrosion

Just for the record: Australia's political war drums have started again. Could we be looking at our seventh Prime Minister since 2010? It won't happen before February (Parliament has shut down for summer), so we've got all of January to watch this mess unfold. The May election to end this nonsense can't come soon enough.

It is that time of year again, f-list. Time for my annual Barbara Cartland book! This year: the nonsensical tale of a Marquis and his... very unusual wife.

A Very Unusual Wife: The watch list
Orphaned heroine with unusual name: Not orphaned - in possession of two parents and three siblings, in fact - but cursed with the name Elmina (her siblings are Mirabel, Deirdre and Desmond, which are at least actual names).
Who — speaks with — Shatner-esque pauses: Yes, of course. "Can I do — that?" Also afflicted with this problem is Lady Sapphire Carstairs, her rival in love: "Who is this — fortunate girl who is to marry the most — attractive man in — the whole world?"
Who lives with her titled uncle: No, it's her father, the Earl of Warnborough, which is not pronounced how you think it is.
And his unsympathetic wife: In this case, her mother, whose worst fault seems to be an old-fashioned taste in dresses.
Absurdly named hero with aristocratic title: Alston, the Marquis of Falcon, who is "the most consequential as well as the most exciting man in the entire neighbourhood".
Female friends of heroine: Two sisters, who seem all right, and one male friend/groom/karate teacher, Chang.
Male friends of hero who seem more pleasant than he does: The Marquis isn't too bad, as these chaps go, but he does have a nice friend, Major Charles Marriott.
Hero and heroine united in shared love of a dog: No, it's horses this time, specifically an Arab mare called Shalom.
Act of vengeance by a bitter former servant: None.
Heroine requires rescue from: Being kidnapped by French horse thieves.
Duels fought: Chang and the Marquis do karate on the horse thieves.
Book ends with one of the pair recovering in bed: Elmina, after nearly being shot during the kidnapping.
What the heroine believes the hero's lips give her when they kiss at the end: As the sun rose, they were part of it and its burning glory swept through them.
Diamond-studded snuff boxes mentioned: None.
Heroine inwardly approves of the hero's champagne-coloured pantaloons: No, it's white riding breeches this time. Also: his nightshirt: "... with the frills round his silk nightshirt high against his neck almost like a cravat and the red of his robe accentuated by the darkness of his hair, he looked, she thought, almost as if he had stepped out of a picture."
Sample stilted dialogue:
"I hope you will enjoy this champagne, Falcon. It's a brand that was recommended to me years ago by King George when he was on the throne."
"He was certainly reputed to be a great connoisseur of wine," the Marquis said conversationally.

(Note that the Marquis spends a lot of his chapters thinking about how boring conversations at Queen Victoria's court are, and, I mean, if that's an example of his own conversation, he's not helping the problem.)

( This book, f-list )

Weekly knitting update: ( About half-way through the first clue )

Amazon sent me a three dollar e-book credit a couple of weeks ago, which I ignored because why would they just send me a credit? Surely it must be a trap. Then they kept sending me reminders so I finally decided to spend it just to stop the emails. But what to spend it on? The newly minted Booker winner? Or something else? Something else, obviously. As if I'm not going to read something with a cover as marvellous as this:



Warned by a Ghost by Barbara Cartland

Well. This was a turn-up for the books. The plot made sense. The hero and heroine were not irredeemably stupid. It was all... coherent. I mean, it wasn't good. But it made sense. More or less.

Our heroine is Sedela Craven. I misread Sedela's name and spent half the book thinking she was only a couple of vowels off being a perforated crispbread. But that's my problem. Nothing to do with her. Anyway, Sedela has long blonde hair and big blue eyes, but I feel that goes without saying by now. On the other hand, what does need saying is that Sedela is not a complete idiot. She turns out to be a good judge of horses and also a competent event planner, which gives her at least one more skill than any previous Cartland heroine.

Sedela is a distant cousin of the Marquis of Windlesham, who has been away for years, first in the war against Napoleon and now in London being friends with the Prince Regent. While he's away, Sedela often pops into Windle Court to visit her old nanny, Nanny, who now lives there waiting for the Marquis to have children. Today, she is horrified when Nanny reads her a letter from Nanny's niece, Lucy, who is a lady's maid in London for Lady Esther Hasting. Lady Esther is a rather racy widow, and she has got her hooks into the Marquis. Oh no! Sedela and Nanny agree that Lady Esther would be a terrible Marchioness and hope that the Marquis comes to his senses. On the way back home, Sedela comes up with a plan...

( Not a good plan, mind. )

Let us end the year and (almost) the Cartland Eternal Collection with a summary. Boy, she was phoning them in by this stage. I give you: A Portrait of Love.

The watch list
Orphaned heroine with unusual name: Not an orphan, but still: Fedora Colwyn.
Who — speaks with — Shatner-esque pauses: Yes. Sample dialogue: "The lilies are very — beautiful!"
Who lives with her titled uncle: No, her ill and poverty-stricken father, a gentleman art restorer
And his unsympathetic wife: No, she's sympathetic, but dead
Absurdly named hero with aristocratic title: Kimball, Earl of Heversham
Female friends of heroine: None
Male friends of hero who seem more pleasant than he does: Sir Ian seems far more sensible than the Earl, and Major Gower seems all right (although the Earl himself is probably tolerable in small doses).
Hero and heroine united in shared love of a dog: No, it's a painting by Van Dyck this time
Act of vengeance by a bitter former servant: The bitter character is not a servant, but the Earl's soon-to-be-ex-mistress, Lady Sheelah, who murders Kimball's wife and and frames Fedora. (Yes, the Earl has a wife and a mistress, and Fedora still falls for him.)
Heroine requires rescue from: Poverty (she gets herself out of the murder rap)
Duels fought: None, the villain in this case is a woman and she escapes to France
Book ends with one of the pair recovering in bed: No, not this time
What the heroine believes the hero's lips give her when they kiss at the end: Fedora felt as if there were not only birds singing in the trees but the music of the Heavens could be heard above them. The beauty of everything she had seen since she came to the the Castle was all there and part of the Earl, his arms and his lips... there was no time but only eternity where they had lived and loved and lost one another, found each other and lived and loved again in the river of life where there is no death.
Diamond-studded snuff boxes mentioned: None, sadly
Heroine inwardly approves of the hero's champagne-coloured pantaloons: No. His pantaloons are not described at all. He wears riding breeches that are "smart".

This is the story of, god help us, Fedora Colwyn. Fedora. She's a hat. The Colwyns have lived at Mountsorrel since the dawn of time, but alas! They have fallen on hard times. But hooray! They have England's second-finest art collection. But alas! The estate is entailed, so they can't sell any paintings. But hooray! Fedora's father is an expert art restorer who is in demand by the greatest houses in England. But alas! He is such a gentleman he refuses to take payment for his work.

So Fedora and her father and their faithful servant, Jim, are slowly starving, living off bread donated by the villagers. Fedora's father is also very ill, and they can't afford his medicine. Imagine Fedora's excitement at receiving a letter from the Earl of Heversham. The Earl is the owner of England's finest art collection. He wants Fedora's father to come and work on his paintings. Only the Earl seems to think that Fedora's father is some sort of common worker, and offers payment. Fedora's father would be appalled if he knew, but Fedora conceives of a plan.

Fedora, her father and Jim travel to Heversham, where Fedora's father thinks he has been invited to look at the paintings as a gentleman art restorer, while Fedora plans to speak to the Earl and get payment in private. The Earl agrees. Fedora's family has a painting by Van Dyck, which Fedora resembles. The Earl has the same painting on the wall of his mother's old bedroom. Which is real, and which is fake? The honour of both houses rests on it! Happily, Fedora's family says they're both real. What luck, hey? The Earl and Fedora decide this means they have a mystical connection and that they're meant to be together.

And that's it, more or less. I mean, apart from how Fedora finds out he has a mad wife in the attic (hello, Jane Eyre), and the mad wife is stabbed by the Earl's conniving mistress, who tries to frame Fedora. That takes a whole paragraph to clear up. (Suspense is not the Dame's strong point.) Happily, the wife's death is ruled to be death by misadventure (being stabbed multiple times with a palette knife... misadventure!), leaving the Earl free to marry Fedora. Hooray! The end.

These books are getting slighter, they really are.

( A burning question )

October books read

* We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler (2014)
( Read more... )

I've sort of stalled in my Booker reading. I've started the third one, and it's annoying me so much I had to put it down. So I moved on to a special treat:

* The Ghost Who Fell in Love - Barbara Cartland (1979)
( Read more... )

The fence across the road now has Warning: Golf Balls!!!! and Watch Out For Flying Golf Balls!!!! signs on it. (I suspect the children of the house made them rather than their renovating parents, if only because they were finished so quickly.) I saw Brian Next Door in his front garden and he said he did indeed find a fifth golf ball on his roof. 'I picked it up with gloves on,' he said, 'and it's in a ziploc bag, in case the police want to fingerprint it.' I kept a straight face, f-list, but, oh, I laughed later. The City by the Sea isn't exactly a hotbed of crime, but I'm fairly sure our police have got better things to do than fingerprint golf balls. Given that it's been over twenty-four hours since the last golf ball landing, I think the Golf Ball Mystery has petered out.

Possibly because the culprits have run out of golf balls.

In other news, I have two weeks off, and after reading all that Serious Literature for the Booker Prize nominations, I thought I would follow it up with something special.

The Chieftain Without a Heart by Dame Barbara Cartland

The watch list
Orphaned heroine with unusual name: Clola Kilcraig. She's not an orphan, although she is motherless.
Who — speaks with — Shatner-esque pauses: Yes. She even manages to put a pause in Thank — You.
Who lives with her titled uncle: No, it's her father, William Kilcraig, The Kilcraig of Clan Kilcraig.
And his unsympathetic wife: No, but her older brother's wife isn't very nice.
Absurdly named hero with aristocratic title: Taran McNarn, Duke of Strathnarn, Marquis of Narn and Chieftain of Clan McNarn.
Female friends of heroine: None. Clola is apparently the only young woman in all of Scotland. She has male friends, though, being close to her brother, Hamish, and to both Taran's nephews.
Male friends of hero who seem more pleasant than he does:Three, and one of them is King George IV.
Hero and heroine united in shared love of a dog: No, it's the Scottish Highlands this time.
Act of vengeance by a bitter former servant: It's a bitter current servant: Clola's maid, Mrs Forse, attempts to poison Clola, as some sort of anti-English plot (given that Clola is not English, this seems particularly poorly thought out on Mrs Forse's part).
Heroine requires rescue from: Being poisoned and forced to jump off a high tower. This rescue is not carried out by the hero, though. Also, Clola herself rescues someone who has been kidnapped and trapped in a completely different tower.
Duels fought: None, even though Clola's father, the Kilcraig, is described as preferring a Claymore to a serious argument.
Book ends with one of the pair recovering in bed: Clola, after the poisoning and jumping.
What the heroine believes the hero's lips give her when they kiss at the end: His lips held her captive and he kissed her until the room seemed to whirl around them and The Castle itself dissolved into the sunlit sky. Like the music that had carried Clola on angels' wings into the sky, she felt that the Duke was carrying her still higher into the heart of the spheres carrying her into a glory and a wonder that was so indescribable that she knew there were no words but only the singing of the stars.'
Diamond-studded snuff boxes mentioned: None.

Never mind these modern novels with multiple view points. Sure, they win awards, but they are so old hat. Dame Barbara Cartland was doing that back in the 1970s. Not very well, admittedly, but she tried. So it is with The Chieftain Without a Heart, which is the thrilling story of a chieftain who doesn't have a heart and the woman who captures the heart he doesn't have. We get to hear both their points of view, which is... kind of weird and unsatisfying.

( They cry oot for vengeance! )

I found another Barbara Cartland novel going free to a good home. The first one I found, you may recall, was The Saint and the Sinner, the story of Pandora and her rakish distant cousin, Norvin. Having read a second one now, I thought I should develop a Cartland watch list for use in the event of subsequent readings. So here is my retrospective list for The Saint and the Sinner:

Orphaned heroine with unusual name: Pandora
Who – speaks with – Shatner-esque pauses: Yes
Who lives with her uncle: Yes
And his unsympathetic wife: Yes
Absurdly named hero with aristocratic title: Norvin Chart, Earl of Chartwood
Female friends of heroine: None
Male friends of hero who seem more pleasant than he does: One (in the end, probably equally pleasant, but much less rich)
Hero and heroine united in shared love of a dog: Yes
Act of vengeance by a bitter former employee: Robbery and kidnapping
Heroine requires rescue from: Aforementioned kidnapping
Duels fought: One
Book ends with one of the pair recovering in bed: Norvin, after being shot in the head during the duel
What the heroine believes the hero's lips give her when they kiss at the end: ...all the beauty of Chart, all her love of the great house and the things she had revered and treasured because she was a part of them
Diamond-studded snuff boxes mentioned: One. (You may think this category will be irrelevant for any other book, but you'd be wrong. SO WRONG.)

Which brings us to the Cartland I have just finished, The Prisoner of Love. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but it wasn't as good as The Saint and the Sinner. I wasn't sorry to see the back of Pandora, but I missed Norvin. He was quite a decent chap. Also, although The Saint and the Sinner was rubbish, it at least wrapped up its one plot in a way that made sense, which is more than The Prisoner of Love manages to do, as you'll see below.

The Prisoner of Love

Our heroine is Sorilda. Yes, that's her name. Sorilda is eighteen, with red hair and green eyes. She inherited her red hair and green eyes from her nameless Austrian mother. Her nameless Austrian mother didn't have a name, but she did have the red hair and green eyes for which Austria is famous. (Is it?) Sorilda's father was a promising young politician and diplomat. He not only had a name, he also had a title. Sadly, Lord Leonard Eaton and his nameless Austrian wife died in a train crash in France when Sorilda was young. Since then, she has lived with her uncle, Edmund Eaton, Duke of Nuneaton, in Nuneaton Castle. Uncle Edmund is an absent but not unkindly guardian, who happily pays for quality governesses and tutors for Sorilda and lets her have the run of the Castle.

This happy arrangement changes when Edmund, a widower with grown children (one of them the Viceroy of India) suddenly remarries. His new wife is a social-climbing young widow, Mrs Iris Handley, a twenty-five-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty, who takes an instant dislike to Sorilda. Her laugh is not described, but I suspect it is tinkling. (Iris is a clear cousin of our old friend, Lady Audley, but, unlike Lady Audley, she is not MAD.) Iris makes Sorilda wear drab clothes and sends her maid, Not Mrs Danvers, to slick her hair down with oily goop, so she looks as unattractive as possible. She refuses to let Sorilda out in society. Given that she doesn't like Sorilda, I'd have thought the best thing to do would be to get her married off and out of the house, but Iris clearly believes in cutting off her nose to spite her face. Anyway, Sorilda feels like a prisoner... a prisoner of hate.

Sorilda hears tell of their neighbour, the Earl of Winsford, who has a presence that is unmistakeable. Much like a gas leak. The book is weirdly coy about the Earl's name; even after Sorilda is married to him (spoiler!) she thinks of him as the Earl. It was actually quite exciting (for a limited level of excitement) when his name was finally revealed 29% of the way through. So you can know the same thrill I will save his name for later. For now, all you need to know is that he has a fine leg and he races horses and all the ladies who aren't Sorilda love him. And I mean ALL the ladies, including Iris.

Iris tricks Sorilda (degree of difficulty: low) into taking a message to the Earl's castle instead of trusting it to a servant. She says it is an invitation to tea, which Sorilda believes, because Sorilda is kind of stupid inexperienced in the ways of the world. It isn't really an invitation to tea. Instead, the message contains instructions on how to sneak into Nuneaton Castle for a midnight assignation when the Duke goes to London. I know, f-list! I was shocked too.

Anyway, the Duke goes to London and Sorilda finally realises what the message was when she sees the Earl sneaking in. She is outraged and full of moral indignation about both Iris and the Earl, but when she hears the Duke's carriage come home unexpectedly, she decides to spare him the shock of discovery and knocks on Iris's door, shouting that he has come home early. However, the reason the Duke has come home early is that he was tipped off by a bitter former servant that Iris sacked, so he knows the Earl is about and has a servant block off the secret door. The Earl, trying to escape, dives into Sorilda's room, so when the Duke comes in, he finds the Earl trying to get out the window and Sorilda sitting up in bed, wide awake. Scandal! Iris, not thinking this through, tells the Duke that the Earl was there to see Sorilda, and is then horrified when the Duke says, okay, fine, in that case, they'll be happy to get married.

Obviously, the Earl isn't at all happy about this and nor is Iris and nor is the Duke, who clearly doesn't believe the story he's been told, but Sorilda sees it as a chance to escape the prison that Iris has put her in. So, to everyone's shock, and despite having never met him before and hating him for cuckolding her uncle, Sorilda coughs to the lot: taking the message to the Earl, being the object of his visit, and the need to get married.

Sorilda then locks herself in her room for two days and refuses to let Not Mrs Danvers in to put the oily goop in her hair. She goes through her nameless Austrian mother's clothes until she finds a lacy black mourning dress. When she opens to the door so she can go to the wedding, she is revealed as a great beauty rather than a drab mouse, so the Earl is slightly mollified (I don't know if it's been made clear before, but the Earl is a bit of prat). Directly after the wedding (and I mean directly, no stopping for cake or chit chat), they go straight to the Earl's house in London to avoid the gossip in their neighbourhood. The Earl offers to give Sorilda one of his houses so they need never see each other, then takes it back and decides they will simply lead separate lives in the same house until such time as they agree to create an heir. Barbara Cartland is the Queen of Romance, don't you know.

Anyway, that turns out not to be such a bad deal, in that the Earl is happy for Sorilda to do whatever she wants, including spending his money on whatever fripperies take her fancy. Although some of the society women of London shun her for stealing the Earl away from them, Sorilda generally has a tip-top time. She even manages to enjoy the times the Earl takes her out, including to the opening of the Crystal Palace where she meets Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and catches up with Uncle Edmund (happily) and Iris (not at all happily).

After this jolly old time in London, they return to the country, where they don't catch up with Uncle Edmund and Iris at all. One day while Sorilda is out walking, a small boy comes up to her and tells her that her dog is trapped. She runs after him in a panic, eventually finding herself - but not the dog - in a deserted crypt on the estate. Sorilda has been tricked again! The boy locks her in, leaving her to die. Dun dun DUN!

Sorilda realises that Iris is behind this. When I say 'realises', I mean 'jumps to the conclusion'. To be fair, it's (a) the same conclusion I jumped to and (b) apparently correct, so well done, Sorilda. Rather than trying to get out, Sorilda sinks into despair, pondering the ways she has been Iris's prisoner, metaphorically in the past and now quite literally in the crypt. More than that, though, she realises as she drifts off, she is also the Earl's prisoner... a prisoner of her love for him. A prisoner... of love, if you will. Do you see what she did with the title there? I don't. One sentence she was thinking about Iris, then she was all, oh, and by the way, I love the Earl. It's all a bit hasty, is what I'm saying, but I've never been locked in a crypt and left to die, so I don't know how I'd react. (Although I'm fairly confident in saying I wouldn't declare my sudden love for Sholto, Earl of Winsford. You see? Finding out his name is Sholto after all this time, that was a bit exciting, wasn't it?)

Happily and coincidentally, once Sorilda goes missing, the Earl realises he loves her too, so he goes looking for her. This makes it sound as though he wouldn't have looked for her if he didn't love her, cementing my thoughts re the Earl and being a bit of a prat. Anyway, he finds her, they kiss, the end.

Seriously, the end. No mention of Iris and retribution for what she'd done, or the poor old Duke having to live out his days with her. Just, yay, you're alive, isn't it handy we're married to each other, let's never talk about Iris ever again. At least Lady Audley got sent to the MADHOUSE.

So, the watch list:

Orphaned heroine with unusual name: Sorilda
Who – speaks with – Shatner-esque pauses: Yes, but only after being rescued from the crypt
Who lives with her uncle: Yes
And his unsympathetic wife: Yes
Absurdly named hero with aristocratic title: Sholto, Earl of Winsford
Female friends of heroine: None
Male friends of hero who seem more pleasant than he does: One
Hero and heroine united in shared love of a dog: Yes
Act of vengeance by a bitter former employee: Reading private mail, using knowledge gained therein to tip off husband about wife's planned infidelity
Heroine requires rescue from: Being locked and left to die in a ruined crypt
Duels fought: None (one threatened)
Book ends with one of the pair recovering in bed: Sorilda, after two nights in the crypt
What the heroine believes the hero's lips give her when they kiss at the end: ...everything that she had ever longed for, part of the beauty that had always moved her and the music that had sung in her heart.
Diamond-studded snuff boxes mentioned: Iris has commandeered the diamond-studded snuff boxes (note plural) given to a previous Duke by the Prince Regent. More than one!

( The highlights, such as they are )