(Part 1)
Winnie is an interesting character in that her character composition doesn’t make sense to me. Here’s the underlying tension I have with her.

If Winnie is the woman from the her part of her first scene and she wanted revenge on her cousin, she’d have it. If she wanted to not be a spinster, she wouldn’t be. She also wouldn’t have money problems. Why? Because she understands the world of appearances / comportment. She knows that to wield power you must act the part and her position in the world (high level peerage) is such that why wouldn’t she use that realization/underlying truth to her advantage. And because she’s high ranking peerage and it’s a very small circle of people (I believe the author got this wrong but maybe someone with more knowledge can clarify and shift the tension for me)

If Winnie is the self-conscious hidden away spinster, then she’s not teaching other women how to wield power, she’s not interacting with Mick without any class consciousness and she’s not allowing him such familiarity from the moment they meet. Actually they wouldn’t have met because she wouldn’t have intervened.

If she’s truly in love with her vocation, then she’s out in the field expanding her knowledge base, she’s comfortable with her power (she’d have to be to break out of the expected female cultural role) and wouldn’t hide her face away from commoners. Unfortunately given her father’s academic concentration on upper class speech, there’s no way Winnie could have knowledge of Mick’s accent without leaving home. And since she wasn’t close to her father, the knowledge she has is book learned from his research gained in the eleven years after his death. A difficult task at best that would require her to rather obsessive about the topic and yet that studiousness doesn’t carry on to any other part of her life. If Winnie has broken the stereotypical female cultural mold of the time period (and there are many real life examples of women who did), why is her knowledge base so very tiny and specific? She knows nothing of male centric topics and can’t balance her bank statements. Actually I don’t think she’s very smart at all.

If Winnie believes she’s so content with her life then Mick can’t make her feel so much discontent within 24 hours of meeting him. Pricks of awareness? Definitely. But if Mick’s able to make her feel so much so fast wouldn’t she have already been shall we say itchy, almost ready to pounce on anything that crossed her path?

See, what you’ve done to me, Jessica? I’m trapped in the swirling tangents of my mind by your commentary. There’s a thread I’m trying to pull apart I hope you and your audience will be kind enough to help and bear with me since I won’t be trying to make a cohesive argument as much as discovery inquiry.

Seriously, I would love to know what didn’t work for you. I won’t be offended or upset at all.

I sent you 2 e-mails instead here. I went a tad long. Okay, very long on the first. Remember wet blanket. You have been warned. LOL

At the top is BEAST. Sigh. Le Sigh. Truly a thing of beauty.

Near the top are BLISS and BLACK SILK.

And then there is the rest of the Ivory books, which do not rank in the bottom but also do not quite work as well for me as the top tier books for various reasons–mostly Ms. Ivory’s own fault since BEAST was as close to perfection as humanly possible.

I enjoyed THE PROPOSITION. No doubt about it. I think I would very much enjoy it still were I to read it again.

The thing about it is that it is Ivory’s most beloved book. It won a Rita. It was popular. It was uncontroversial in anyway except for possibly the Snape killed Trinity bit at the end–which was rather ludicrous.

I’m not sure it was quite Ivory enough for me. I expect a certain amount of outre to an Ivory book. I expect a certain twistedness in the psyche, a certain philosophical exploration of the most uncomfortably human parts of the soul. Mick and Edwina are both too nice, too unperverted, too straightforward.

So I don’t have any real complaints about this book other than that it is too normal–beautifully, gorgeously executed, but still too normal. And if I liked normal I wouldn’t be reading Ivory, would I?

@AQ: Yes, Far and Away, and also the scene in the Titanic where Kate Winslet danced.

Seriously, I would love to know what didn’t work for you. I won’t be offended or upset at all.

But on the plus side, I also had a fabulous time with the tavern scene. The feel of it reminded of a scene in that movie with Tom & Nicole did about Irish immigrants.

As an aside: Although Winnie doesn’t need to be saved she does get rescued at the end and the plot arc belongs to Mick.

It’s interesting to me that Winnie’s character is given so many handicaps, as a fan of Pygmalion and a hater of My Fair Lady, I would’ve appreciated a stronger character who hadn’t put in such a position of weakness (no female friends, no family, no support network, money issues, separated from society, etc., etc., etc.), especially given that pulling off a scam of this magnitude would’ve required a lot more work (and for Winnie to be much more than she was) than anything Prof. Higgins was or did for Eliza. If Winnie had come from that position of strength, I think this story would’ve had a better chance of working for me.

As it was, I found the story cute (if rather fluffy since it’s a take off of Shaw’s Pygmalion). I also appreciated the slow sensual journey the leads went on –it was a fun seduction for the sexual side of Winne as well as the live in the moment aspect missing from her life.

And that’s all I have to say since anything more is just being a wet blanket at a great party.

Because, My Fair Lord highly recommended by you? I am so, so there. This will be my first Ivory. I am excited.

and on a different note: that spoiler banner is hilarious! where did you get that?