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My Take in Brief: I really enjoyed this one. Amazing how different it is in every way from THATH. She’s like Kinsale that way!

Setting: 1890s (Gilded Age) Chicago, during the World’s Fair

Plot: “Biological ethicist” Prof. Winter, a U of Chicago anthropologist, takes in “Ontario Man”, later known as Michael, a man raised in the wild, to study him. Ontario Man develops relationships with Winter’s  three children, the most significant being with his daughter Sydney. Michael’s adjustment to life in civilization is the focus.

Heroine and Hero: Sydney Darrow is a young, beautiful, kind-hearted, and intelligent widow, at first intrigued by, and then in love with the wild man her father has brought to live with them. Michael is …  hard to describe. See below.

Conflict: Surprisingly, this is not a book that stands out for its conflict. There is very little internal conflict, but some external conflict. Sydney’s aunt is a determined social climber, but Sydney herself isn’t too worried about her social standing. There’s also some external conflict generated by Michael’s potentially criminal actions later in the book, and also a small amount generated by the mystery of his parentage.

Word on the Web:

Flight Into Fantasy, Shannon C., A

AAR, Marianne, B+

Rip My Bodice, negative

Writer Bonnie Dee, loved it, with some qualms

Amazon.com, 4.5 stars after 17 reviews

Fun Factoids:

1. Wild At Heart was Gaffney’s next book ETA: was the second book Gaffney published (thanks Janine) after the controversial To Have and To Hold, and the heroes couldn’t be more different.  Was Gaffney pacifying her readers with a gentle hero? Here’s what she said:

So listen, I’ve got a new book coming out in mid-December called Wild at Heart, and I’d just like to say right here and now that the hero is nothing like Sebastian Verlaine.  It’s about a ‘lost man,’ discovered in the Canadian wilderness and taken back to civilization to be studied by scientists and anthropologists. “Tarzan in Canada,” I call it, and it’s not like any other historical romance I’ve ever read. Certainly nothing like anything I’ve ever written. I absolutely adore this hero. I didn’t write him as an “antidote” to Sebastian, though–because to tell you the truth, in spite of the heat I took for To Have & To Hold on Sebastian’s behalf, I’m unrepentant. I loved him before and I love him still. And get this: it’s my secret but unabashed hope that, after every book I write, faithful romance readers say the same thing about me!

2. In AAR’s polls for 1997, this book won favorite hero (a 4 way tie), honorable mention for most luscious love story, and favorite American romance.

3. Here’s an interesting essay on Feral Fantasies in fiction at the Internet Review of SciFi, which mentions Wild At Heart.

4. The hero of Wild At Heart is Tumperkin’s second favorite romance hero, after Mick Tremore of Ivory’s The Proposition.

Fun Gossipoid: This book was the subject of a Help A Bitch Out Request at Smart Bitches back in October. Here’s what one commenter, Liz, had to say:

Oh – fun fact – not only is it Wild At Heart, but it was Gaffney totally schooling Alice Hoffman who’d had a much more poorly conceived feral man book the year prior.

Check the SBTB thread for a list of “wild man” romances.

The Racy Romance Review

There is so much I could write about! For one thing, the setting, which is utilized to stupendous effect by Gaffney. Fin de siècle Chicago was an amazing place, even apart from the World’s Fair. The city, the train to get there, the zoo, the whorehouses and bars, the posh hotels — key scenes take place in each location. The World’s Fair alone comprised over 600 acres. The goals of the fair’s directors were “the dreams of unity, the assertion of culture and education, and most importantly the valorization of American technology and commerce”.

Yet, in portraying the hero as unblemished by civilization, as unable to lie, as caring and honest, and in portraying Dr. Winter and his associates as uncaring at best for Michael’s welfare, Gaffney poses serious questions about the supposed “blessings” of modernity, and the alleged superiority of human beings to nonhuman animals.

The tensions between nature/animals and civilization/humans are a major theme in the book, but come to a head in a scene in which Sydney, her siblings, and Michael ride in the ferris wheel. Sydney is terrified. Michael does the only thing he can think of: he climbs out of the car and stops the wheel. It’s a blatant critique of technology, a reminder of Michael’s brute “otherness” and an extremely touching, romantic scene.

ferris-wheel

Winter’s lack of concern for a human subject made for some heartbreaking scenes in this book, but was quite accurate, historically. After all, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, in which black men from rural Alabama were deprived of known, effective treatments for syphilis by the US Department of Health until Congress stopped them in 1976, are hardly any better.

(I did have some theoretical problems with the portrayal of Winter’s research program. He says, late in the book, that Michael’s altruism flies in the face of Darwin’s theories. But at the time Winter was doing his studies, Darwinism was not thought to require selfishness at the level of the individual, not even by the infamous father of “Social Darinwism”,  Herbert Spencer. I also don’t share the view of Gaffney and the characters that civilization is corrupting.)

This is really Michael’s story, and if it succeeded slightly less well for me that To Have and To Hold, it’s because in THATH, both the heroine and hero were so damaged and distinctive, and their characters climbed so far out of the depths. In Wild At Heart, Sydney has a relatively short distance to go: she has to reject the agenda set for her by her aunt and embrace her feelings for Michael. It’s to Gaffney’s immense credit that this Aunt is three dimensional (“Duty was her passion. She was easy to respect, a lot harder to love.”), not a stock evil stepmother.

Michael isn’t completely wild, although his companions for the past 8 years have been nonhuman animals. We find out early on that he had human contact and has the ability to speak and write, if in a rudimentary fashion. The realistic and lyrical way Gaffney charts his progress was amazing to me. At first, he is such an outsider to the civilized human world that he has to keep making comparisons and references to his former life to make sense of what is happening. The heroine has red hair, and he compares her to a fox, for example. He ascribes animal motivations to the humans around him to understand them.

But Michael is no cypher.  He is an intelligent man and an astute social critic. There’s the obvious: his horrified view of how humans treat nonhuman animals. But he also wonders why people always explain things in words that they already know. The social element of language has been completely lost to him.

When Sydney teaches Michael to write, already half in love with her, he has a plan. This is his first homework assignment:

Sydneys dress was green blue this day like her eys. She has smal feet and flotes when she walcks. She lafs like music.

Sigh.

I guess Michael is a “beta” hero. I found this essay on betas, by Michele R. Bardsley, and looked at the traits that define this type of hero. Michael has many of them: he’s kind, responsible, decent, helpful, doesn’t savor confrontation but will do it if necessary, can be an introvert, and is thoughtful. But he has his impulsive and even violent moments, his grand gestures, and can be alpha when necessary, which, according to this essay by Claire Ashgrove, is acceptable for a beta.

There’s not a ton of sexual tension in this book, but when the hero and heroine do consummate their relationship, it’s incredibly lovely and sweet. Michael, of course, is a virgin while Sydney, having been married, is not. (As Tumperkin wrote, “FINALLY, A DECENT EXCUSE FOR BEING A VIRGIN!!”).

Jayne Ann Krentz apparently has gone on record saying that the reader doesn’t want a beta hero, ever, and some of the reviewers of this book (see above) clearly hold that opinion.  This is really too bad, because they might miss out on one of the most remarkable heroes I have encountered in romance, and one of the sweetest love stories.

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