Friday Five

Feb 18 2011 Published by under Friday Five

My this ‘n that post was such fun last week, that I’m going to see if I can make a regular — although shorter — habit of it.

Here are 5 things I’m thinking about this Friday:

1. Romance reviews as a genre

In my narrative medicine class we’ve been reading through Tod Chambers’ The Fiction of Bioethics. Chambers demonstrates that the clinical ethics case — which is basically the tool of my trade — is a specific genre with its own features (filter, reportability, closure, characters, chronotrope, and gender). I’ve been writing and teaching ethics cases for a decade now without ever thinking much about them as genre, and I found Chambers’ analysis very illuminating.

I wonder what the features are of online romance reviews as a genre? I’m not talking about what the reviews should be like, but about what they are like. I bet it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with a list. It would likely include a plot summary, description of conflict, intertextuality to situate the book in relation to the genre, subjective declarations to situate the reviewer in relation to the book, heat level, a certain length (between 300 and 3000 words, for example), etc. That would be an interesting project for someone!

2. The boys are very into their reading. My 9 year old, while working his way through the Harry Potter series, has read another Doug TenNapel comic book, Iron West, and all three Amulet books, which his older brother promptly grabbed and read. My 11 year old is obsessed with The Edge Chronicles, and I’ve just picked up a copy of Howl’s Moving Castle based on this review at The Book Smugglers.

We’ll see if they can be cajoled into a blog post!

3. I’ve been thinking about simple ways to increase this blog’s numbers, and realized that most of the things I’ve tried over the past two years, like BlogCatalog, haven’t worked very well. But there is one thing I wanted to mention, which is this site. Bloggers have to put their own blogs up there, so any blog you see was posted by the blog owner. It’s an easy process. I wouldn’t rely too much on the specific numbers they post (although mine are pretty accurate), but I will say that I get visits from people coming from that site many times a day.

Of course, the more of you who put your blogs up there the lower my ranking will go. D’oh!! Anyway, if you have any suggestions for getting your blog out there to new readers, let me know. Nathan Bransford asked recently “Have blogs peaked?” , and the hundreds of replies are pretty interesting reading.

4. My first post is going up tomorrow at Heroes and Heartbreakers. It’s about nonverbal signaling of the hero’s feelings. I’ll provide a link tomorrow. That’s the only one I have written, so my resolution for this weekend is to write at least two more.

One of those posts is going to be about the pleasure in the kind of imagining we do when we read fiction. Recent work in the philosophy of psychology suggests that it’s just the supposing things are different than they are which is pleasurable in reading fiction, regardless of whether something tragic or happy or sexy or sad is portrayed in the book. Perhaps more interestingly from the point of view of a certain dichotomy we are familiar with in romance circles, recent research suggests that our engagement with fiction is much more subtle than the language of “identification” versus “nonidentification.” Specifically, our imagining when we read can be engaging and strong and emotional while being impersonal. We do not have to place ourselves in the spatio-temporal framework of the narrated events of the novel to get lost in a book. I don’t think I’ll get into all that for H&H, but it’s interesting stuff (read Harris, P. L. (2000). The work of the imagination. Malden, MA: Blackwell. for more.)

5. I downgraded my Audible membership and still can’t seem to keep up. I spent my 5 credits this week, on the new Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Call Me Irresistible, Darynda Jones’ First Grave on the Right, Darkfever, Married By Morning by Lisa Kleypas and To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt.  I’m about 25% into the last, and it’s so compelling that I am tempted to run upstairs and get the paper copy I bought at RomCon and just read the damn thing — much faster.

I hear the wine has been uncorked, so I’m off. Have a great weekend!

26 responses so far

Review: Match Me If You Can, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Sep 25 2010 Published by under Reviews

MMIYC (2005) is the 6th book in Phillips’ Chicago Stars series.  The Chicago Stars are an NFL team populated by gorgeous, rich, successful white men with Ivy League educations. The men are driven, daring, bold, self-assured, intelligent, sexy, and great in bed. But they are also — by the end at least — monogamous, caring, giving, respectful, self-aware, and make plenty of time for family. In SEP’s world, the relationships are kind of like the companionate marriages of early American farm life — two spheres, different roles, mutual respect (with the exception, I realize, of Phoebe Somerville, but I can explain that one away). By the end of an SEP novel, the women have it all: a fantastic egalitarian relationship, two successful wealth-generating careers (usually at least one of the couple is the best in the country at what he or she does) and beautiful children who somehow never need a nanny. This is pure fantasy, and it’s romance novel writing at its absolute best. Even though reading Phillips requires me to bracket a hell of a lot of what I know about the real world, I love this book, and pretty much everything this woman writes.

Heath Champion is a kind of Jerry Maguire — there’s even a reference to the film character played by Tom Cruise in the book. Known as “The Python”, he’s the top sports agent in the US, wedded to his cell phone, his clients, the rush of success, and the almighty dollar. Heath’s a charmer and has no trouble attracting women, but he’s getting older and wants a wife to complete the picture. He views the acquisition of a wife much like any other lifestyle accessory. And, just as he delegates other things, he’s delegated his search to Portia Powers of Power Matches, the most successful dating service in the greater Chicago area.

Heath is not interested in falling in love, although he rationalizes that he and his wife might come to love each other one day, especially after the children arrive.  In the real world, even men who take “trophy wives” convince themselves they are in love, so how can we explain Heath’s bizarre attitude towards marriage and family? Any seasoned romance reader will know … it’s the childhood, stupid! Heath grew up in poverty, with a drunk father and a series of girlfriends who substituted for his absent mother, and as he got older, taught him about sex. The character — and the book –  glosses over and minimizes the sexual abuse Heath suffered, something I doubt would happen if he were the heroine. But these experiences left Heath with a huge hole where his trust in women and in love should be. Unlike heroes of yore, or some present day Harlequin Presents heroes, Heath is not an angry misogynist. He’s just protecting what is in fact a pretty fragile and undeveloped core from the vagaries of emotional ties that can rip and wound.

Annabelle Granger is the classic SEP heroine: the plucky down on her luck gal with a wry sense of humor. The first scene of the book is a comedy of errors as Annabelle tries to make her way from her late grandmother’s Wicker Park house, where she’s been living, to Heath’s uptown offices. She hails from a very successful family, but never really found her way professionally, something her disapproving mother never lets her forget. When her Nana died, Annabelle decided to take over her small matchmaking business, Perfect for You. Via a college friendship with Molly, the heroine of an earlier book in the series, Annabelle gets a ten minute audience with the Python, and hopes to land Chicago’s most eligible bachelor as a client, thereby catapulting Perfect For You into profitability.

As I read over this summary, it sounds like the setup for a book I would hate. The kind where the hero is in total control, giving cold stares and punishing kisses, and the heroine’s strength amounts to enduring it until a two paragraph grovel on the last page. But Heath and Annabelle are never less than equally matched in wit and determination.  If anything, she manages to put a few over on him. Perhaps it’s a flaw in the book, but it’s a flaw that made the book more enjoyable to me: despite descriptions to the contrary, Heath never comes off as any kind of a Python. Immature, selfish, and occasionally idiotic? Yes. But never less than respectful towards pretty much everyone.

Phillips writes characters with terrific senses of humor, and this book is one of her funniest. I’ve both read it (I own the hardcover) and listened to it (wonderful narration by the late Anna Fields, who narrated loads of SEP, and died tragically in 2006). As is typical of an SEP novel, the hero and heroine spend a lot of time together, because Heath decides not only to hire Annabelle, but insists that she come with him on the dates. If the date is going well, he’ll signal her to skidaddle. Of course, none of them do, and Heath and Annabelle spend more and more time together, trying to figure out just what kind of woman would suit him. An attraction grows, one which at first they chalk up to having both been celibate for a while. On Annabelle’s part, this is due to a broken engagement with a man who suffered from gender identity disorder, a minor character SEP skirts the line between respecting and using for comic relief.

Phillips usually has a secondary romance, and while it often involves an AARP-enrolled couple — something I rally appreciate as a woman is is getting older and not seeing my age range reflected in the genre — in this case it involves the 40 something Portia, an uptight, work, appearance, and status obsessed, but (of course) deeply unhappy and lonely woman who falls for what appears to be the wrongest possible guy in Heath’s bodyguard. In typical Phillips fashion, however, once characters choose the right values — the deeper ones of everlasting love and family — all the superficial goods follow. I had qualms about this romance, which involves the comeuppance of the successful career woman at the hands of a man who is subordinate in the workplace but, being a man, is her superior in the realm that counts, a plotline with which viewers of movies like The Proposal – which I also loved despite my better judgment — will be familiar. On the other hand, Portia’s behavior after she realizes her life has been All Wrong is the source of so much comic mischief, she’s proof once again that I can forgive this author practically anything.

I’m no judge, really, but I think SEP is a tremendous writer. I find that there is so rarely a misstep, so rarely a dull moment, no repetition, no mental lusting, no wasted words. Her books just snap, crackle, pop for me. And I love her characters.

Here’s a bit of the dialogue. A subplot involves Heath’s attempts to sign Dean Robillard, the rookie Stars QB, who hesitates because the Stars owner, Phoebe Somerville, hates Heath’s guts. Heath has showed up at Annabelle’s door after hearing she has spent time with Dean. Raoul is the lover Annabelle halfheartedly made up, although Heath knows there is no Raoul, so the character is kind of an unstated joke between them:

“Only boxes of think mint cookies this year, girls, ” Annabelle said as she pulled the door open. “I’m on a diet.”

Heath pushed past her. “Do you ever check your phone messages?”

She gazed down at her bare feet. “One again, you’ve caught me looking my best.”

He was in hyper mode, and he barely glanced at her, exactly as it should be. “you look beautiful. So there I am, stuck in a Bible study class in Indianapolis, when I hear the news that my matchmaker is sunning herself on the beach with Dean Robillard.”

“You took a call in the middle of Bible study?”

“I was bored.”

“And you were in the class because…? Never mind. Your client wanted you to go.” She shut the door.

“Why the hell did Robillard ask you out?”

“He’s smitten. It happens all the time. Raoul says I can’t help the effect I have on men.”

Uh-huh. Bodie told me Dean wanted to go to the beach, and he needed a decoy.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“So I could get Raoul’s take on it.”

She grinned and padded after him into her reception room. “Your scary henchman knew about this yesterday. Why did he wait until today to tell you?”

“My question exactly. You got anything to eat?”

“Some leftover pad thai but it’s starting to grow hair, so I can’t recommend it.”

“I’m ordering a pizza. How do you like it?”

Maybe it was just because she was practically naked and didn’t like his attitude, or maybe she was just an idiot because she settled a hand on her hip, slid her eyes over him, and let the words slide off her tongue. “I like it hot … and … spicy.”

His eyelids dropped to the V of her robe. “Exactly what Raoul told me.”

She beat a hasty retreat for the stairs. His low chuckle accompanied her all the way to the top.

There are a few things that didn’t work so well for me in this book. A couple of word choices were bizarre. In one scene, Annabelle’s breast are described with the adjective “guinea fowl” and in another, post coitus, the word “spunk” is used inappropriately.  The Surgeon General should place a saccharine warning on all SEP epilogues for the reader’s health. And, more seriously, Anabelle’s issues with her judgmental, unsupportive family get short shrift. On the last point, I find there is sometimes a tone problem in some of the later SEPs. Perhaps Annabelle’s family’s carping was meant to come off as humorous and goodnatured, but to this reader, it came off as a serious violation of respect for a family member that required more time and effort to fix than it got.

Overall, though, Phillips is pretty much my favorite contemporary romance writer, and, although I am a minority on this, MMIYC is probably one of my favorite of her books.

18 responses so far

Review: This Heart of Mine, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Mar 06 2010 Published by under Reviews

(1) A semi-short positive review of this book, followed by (2) discussion of the rape of Kevin by Molly, and (3) the character of Lilly in the context of a feminist analysis of beauty culture

Audio note: I listened to this on audio (and then I immediately read it in paper), and it’s one of the best romance audio recordings I have ever heard. Anna Fields has narrated several SEP’s and she’s always fantastic. Highly recommended.

(1) Review

THOM (2001) is one of the Chicago Stars/Bonner books. Molly Somerville was the surly teenaged half-sister of Phoebe in It Had to Be You (1994). In THOM Molly is the author of a modestly successful series of children’s books based on the adventures of a fashion conscious, and conscientious, bunny named Daphne and a rowdy and sometimes thoughtless badger named Benny. Ordinarily a straight arrow and good girl, Molly is known to go off the rails every so often, in usually innocuous ways like setting off a fire alarm in college or dying her hair. In a move which is characterized alternately as crazy, and a mature and beneficent act, she gave away the 15 million dollar fortune left to her by her SOB father, and is barely getting by. She idolizes Phoebe and Dan’s marriage and family life, and wants that kind of love for herself, but pessimistically believes it will never happen and resigns herself to the idea of being a wonderful spinster auntie.

Molly’s had a crush on Stars QB Kevin Tucker, the model for Benny, but it’s tempered by her dislike of his selfish playboy ways — he has a habit of draping international models on his arm at all times — which Molly unfavorably compares to Dan’s. Molly respects Kevin’s football skills, but she doesn’t respect him as a person, which perhaps explains why she climbs into his bed one night and has sex with him without his consent. They are both horrified, but Molly becomes pregnant and, because this is Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ world, they get married, in part due to the intense moral suasion applied by Dan and Phoebe.

This all happens by page 90, and the next 300 pages deal with the aftermath. Kevin always saw Molly as a spoiled rich girl (he didn’t know about her divestment), and her sexual assault and the forced marriage (not at gunpoint, but at “football contract” point — Phoebe owns the team Kevin plays for, after all) hardly help. For his part, Kevin has some demons, especially his relationship with his estranged birth mother (he was adopted), and his inability to form close personal relationships. Football for Kevin has filled in the gaps where his personal development should have been.

Through a bizarre but pretty believable set of circumstances (another gift of SEP’s) Molly and Kevin end up together that summer running Wind Lake, a summer camp owned by Kevin’s late parents. There they meet the usual SEP cast of well drawn and often funny secondary characters, like the randy young couple who are supposed to be caretakers, but are too busy shagging each other — much to Molly and Kevin’s frustration, on many levels — to actually get any work done.

SEP is a master of contemporary romance. I am not sure I think she has an equal. Funny dialogue and situations, sexual tension, secondary romances — often, as in this case, with older couples — that actually enhance rather than detract from the main romance. And that’s balanced by moments of true heartbreak, all the worse because you have been laughing and lusting along with these characters. There was a scene in THOM that absolutely killed me – if you’ve read it you know I am referring to one that takes place on the road — and a few others after which I needed literary CPR. When I am reading an SEP, I just think “this is the complete package”.

This is not to say that everything worked perfectly for me. In particular, Molly’s bouts of insanity didn’t ring true to me. Her assault of Kevin, in the beginning of he novel, and later, near the end, when she nearly tanks the HEA, felt out of character, and not in a good way. I can see Molly really bugging readers who have less patience than I do. Like many contemporary authors, SEP laces the characters’ self-understanding with a psychology narrative, so Molly explains to the reader that it is family of origin issues that make her do these crazy things. It felt artificial. Kevin too, psychoanalyzes himself at the end, explaining what he was running from and why in language that could come straight from Dr. Phil. The whole HEA scene was off, come to think of it, but it didn’t detract in a major way from my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

But the pleasures of this book outweighed those irritations for me. Especially the humor. For example, every random person Molly meets says, “I’ve always wanted to write a children’s book”, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, Molly’s unconsciously writes sexually suggestive lines for the Daphne books as the sexual tension with Kevin ratchets up, and the sex advice Molly gets from a newlywed teen at the camp.

SPOILERS:

(2) Molly’s rape of Kevin. I know a lot of people stopped reading at this point, feeling that no couple can overcome such a violation. I’ve blogged about rape in romance, although my focus was on women as victims. My feeling about it, regardless of who is the victim, is that if a rape is portrayed in a titillating way, a way that is meant merely to arouse the reader, and a way that doesn’t take seriously the real life consequences — whatever they would be for that character, in that setting — I put the book down. In THOM, the rape was not portrayed in a titillating way — neither was sexually pleased by the experience (a real difference from when a hero rapes a heroine, I might add) — and the repercussions reverberated, at least for Kevin’s attitude towards Molly, for at least 3/4 of the book. Kevin calls it a rape, and it’s a major obstacle in their relationship, Kevin only forgiving Molly towards the end of the book. That they never tell Phoebe and Dan about it indicates the seriousness with which they take it. Molly’s actions were reprehensible, but they were out of character. Her rape of Kevin doesn’t reflect her pervasive anti-men attitudes, or a domineering personality.

You could argue that Kevin should have been more upset for longer. And you could argue in a society in which rape of men is not taken as seriously as it should be, Kevin’s quick recovery (or non-traumatic reaction) shores up pernicious rape myths about men (that men always want sex anyway so you can;t rape them.). But Kevin rejects those rape myths and Molly does eventually too. (Although many people do not think it possible to rape a man, so THOM is not as hopelessly regressive as it might have been.) all I can say is that the book overall worked for me. Narratively, one thing SEP did which was very smart was to have Molly miscarry, which makes her very sympathetic. It worked for me, but I can see why others feel differently.

(3) A major subplot is the arrival of Kevin;s birth mother, Lilly, to the summer camp. Kevin has a lot anger at Lilly, who went on to becomes a famous TV actress, for giving him up. His estrangement from her is the major developmental work his character must do, and it’s presented as the key to his ability to have loving relationships with other women, like Molly. Those psychoanalytic tones again!

Anyway, I have a very mixed reaction to SEP when it comes to my politics. She is not a feminist writer by any stretch, and is quite retrograde in many respects. I kind of go into an enjoyable fugue state when I read SEP, and later rile myself up by pointing out all the ways her books bug me politically. But the character of Lilly really crystallized the problem for me, and why I can continue to read SEP.

Lilly is an aging beauty. She was the Farah Fawcett of her day — the sexy star of an all female detective show with a famous poster which sold millions. She is a widow when we meet her, essentially retired from acting, and at loose ends over her estrangement from Kevin. She is also in a kind o recovery form her marriage, which was characterized by the dominating behavior of her late husband, who controlled her and her career, both.

At the camp, Lilly meets Liam, a reclusive ornery famous painter (naturally, you would have both a famous actress and a famous artist together at a summer camp in Illinois. (To her credit, SEP has Molly note how bizarre this situation is). Lilly feels washed up, like she’s no longer attractive because of her extra girth and wrinkles. But Liam wants to paint her naked. He finds her irresistible, and loves her all the more for her imperfections. The way Lilly is written, it’s almost entirely her own vanity — a personal character flaw — that leads her to think her value as a human being is diminished as she loses her looks. And it is a man who rescues her from this crazy idea.

In my world, it is patriarchy that leads women who are less than physically perfect to feel worthless and diminished. And they don’t just feel diminished: they are. To take just one example from my own profession, studies show that women who are thin and attractive get better student evaluations regardless of the quality of their teaching. And before you object the same is true for male profs … it isn’t. Female professors’ evaluations are much more strongly tied to how closely they hew to gender norms than are men’s. (there’s a lot more I could say here but I will stop now). From a feminist point of view, the problem isn’t that some woman are superficial and vain, although they are. It’s rather systemic, and patriarchy is a system that, on the whole, benefits men (and some women, especially the beautiful ones).

I liked Lilly and Liam’s story as I was reading it. And I really liked this book. But while the idea that a woman can just “shake off” beauty norms by “being strong” and finding a man who loves her “just as she is”, may make for fun reading, it’s bad politics.

27 responses so far

Review: Ain’t She Sweet, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Jul 03 2009 Published by under Reviews

My Take in Brief: I loved this book. But I can’t believe it’s an SEP.

9780061032080_0_Cover

Setting: Contemporary small town Parrish, Mississippi

Heroine and Hero: Sugar Beth Carey, blonde knockout, former wealthy queen of the mean girls, returning home divorced, widowed, and poor, but much wiser and more humble. Colin Byrne, aristocratic (i.e. silk pj wearing, tall and big nosed) British born writer, has made a successful career writing a nonfiction chronicle of Parish life. Both in their 30s.

Plot: There’s a lot going on in this book, so much it veers towards women’s fiction. Sugar Beth, in dire need of funds, has returned to Parrish to retrieve a valuable painting from the cottage her aunt has left to her. Colin, who now resides in the manor home Sugar Beth grew up in (on the same property as the cottage), plans to take revenge on the woman who once ruined his teaching career by falsely accusing him of sexual harassment. At the same time, Sugar Beth’s return exposes fault lines in the marriage of Winnie, Sugar Beth’s estranged half sister, and Ryan, the high school boyfriend Sugar Beth jilted, and creates drama and excitement for the rest of Sugar Beth’s old gang, still known as the Sea Willows.

Conflict: In the first part of the book, the conflict between Colin and Sugar Beth is that he hates her. Later, the conflict is that Sugar Beth, thrice married, has no wish to fall in love again. The two other significant conflicts involve decades old resentment and anger between Sugar Beth and Winnie, the latter of whom is the product of Sugar Beth’s father’s long time affair with Winnie’s mother, and a deep festering undiscussed “open” secret in Winnie and Ryan’s marriage.

Word on the Web:

The Romance Reader: 4 hearts

Musings of a Bilbiophile (Brie), B

Flight Into Fantasy, Shannon C., “highly recommended”

Racy Romance Review:

I have a very complicated reader relationship with SEP. I know this is romance reader sacrilege, but I truly hate her caveman jock heroes — Dan Calebow of It Had to Be You,  Bobby Tom of Heaven, Texas, and Cal of Nobody’s Baby But Mine, although I enjoyed parts of all of those books.  I strongly prefer her other types of heroes — Gabe of Dream a Little Dream, Ren of Breathing Room, even Heath of Match Me If You Can (a book which featured one of the only less-than-spectacular-to-them first sex scene b/t the h/h that I can recall reading) This despite the fact that the latter male characters and the books themselves were not necessarily as memorable and strong. It’s a case of my political and aesthetic tastes at war, I guess.

In Ain’t She Sweet?, we are introduced to an SEP classic — a  bedraggled, down on her luck, but still beautiful heroine, who uses her sexuality like a shield and a weapon, returning to her home town, tail between her legs. But I couldn’t believe it when I opened Ain’t She Sweet? to find a writer hero with an exquisite design sense who “had the face of a dandy, vaguely effete”,  wearing a purple velvet smoking jacket over black silk i pajamas. WTF? Not to worry — SEP later signals his masculinity by giving him big workman hands and a bricklaying past and the world tilted back on its axis again. Still, I was thrilled with Colin, even if he wasn’t as fully developed as I would have liked (a subplot involving his writer’s block was more of a chance for Sugar Beth to demonstrate her empathy and womanly nurturing than providing true insight into his character). It felt so good to be reading an SEP without having to gargle frequently with my limited edition Votes for Women Mouthwash that I let that slide.

Anyone who has read an SEP knows she can write dialogue, especially witty banter, with the best of them. Colin is an unusually urbane and verbal hero, so we get a lot of it in this book. In order to make her pay for the lies she told as a teen which sent Colin back to England in disgrace, he gets Sugar Beth — once the richest girl in town –  to work as his housekeeper, in the very home where she was raised. But she is single mindedly fixed on the goal of finding the missing painting and refuses to let a little degradation distract her. Here’s an example. Sugar Beth is preparing for a dinner party Colin has planned (little does she know he intends to make her squirm by inviting half the town. Lighter shades To Have and To Hold):

Sugar Beth: “…make sure you take the cost of that pitcher out of his check when you pay him tonight.”

Colin: “I’ll do that.” The caterer had probably broken the pitcher because he was staring down her blouse.

“No, you won’t. Except for me, you’re Mr. Big Spender. Even with that incompetent West Coast weasel of a caterer.”

“Such prejudice from someone who once lived in California herself.”

“Well, sure, but I was drunk most of the time.”

He caught his smile just in time. He wouldn’t give in to that seductive charm. Her self-deprecating sense of humor was anothr manipulation, her way of making sure no one else threw the first punch.

“Is that all?”

She eyed his dark trousers and long sleeved grape colored shirt. “If only I hadn’t sent your dueling pistols to the cleaners.”

He’d promised himself he’s stop sparring with her, but the words came out anyway. “At least I still have my riding crop. Just the thing, I’ve heard for disciplining an unruly servant.”

I also loved Sugar Beth. She was smart, funny, and strong. SEP doesn’t minimize her awfulness as a teen, but helps us to understand how it arose. I confess I had to work extra hard to work hard to suspend my disbelief at the idea that a town leader in the conservative rural South would have a second, private, family a few miles down the road from his public one, and that everyone, including his lawful wife, would look the other way, but SEP made it work. Most of her character journey took place prior to the events in the novel, when she had two unsuccessful marriages (which involved abuse, infidelity and alcoholism) finally finding the kind of paternal love she had always been denied in her brief third marriage to a wealthy man decades her senior, who died penniless. The work Sugar Beth has to do is less on her own character in isolation than on the relationships she left behind — with individuals, like her half sister Winnie, but also with Frenchman’s Bride itself, and indeed with the town of Parrish. In some ways, Colin, who owns Frenchman’s Bride and has close relationships with many of the people Sugar Beth hurt and left behind, and who himself was hurt by her, represents this work of restoration and forgiving. I thought it was ingenious.

Some reviewers felt that after 15 years, the old high school chums (nauseatingly, still traveling in a pack called “the Sea Willows”) should have put Sugar Beth’s sins behind them, which were, after all, many of their own sins. I can see that point. On the other hand, high school is a very vulnerable time, when everything emotional is magnified 100 times. If you are still living in your old home town and dealing with the same people, it can be easy to hold on to the past.

Winnie in particular comes up for a lot of reader criticism, and I agree that she was stunted and also given a free pass by the author for what I consider a sin worse than most of Sugar Beth’s. Winnie got her husband on the rebound from the larger than life Sugar Beth, and has never quite gotten over being second to her glamorous half sister. I liked the way SEP shows us a marriage which is functioning despite a rather large elephant in the room. She didn’t have the space to fully develop Winnie and Ryan’s overcoming their problems, but I was glad to see a long time married couple get some air time, something SEP does in other books (In Nobody’s Baby But Mine and Breathing Room, for example).

The small town southern setting was really well done, and this is not something I usually associate with SEP. Seeing the town through Sugar Beth’s eyes, past and present, was one of the most compelling parts of the novel.

Despite his lack of character development, the romance between Colin and Sugar Beth was mature, and sexy, and fun, and quite satisfying (especially effective was the party scene when he realizes he has gone too far and begins to sympathize with her), but I read this one for Sugar Beth. She is by far my favorite SEP heroine. She’s downtrodden without being totally abject (like Rachel in Dream a Little Dream or the pathetic heroine in Heaven, Texas), she has a knowing sexuality and no fear of using her looks, without sending the message that a woman’s allure to men is her only ticket to success and happiness (like the “bimbo empowerment” heroine in It Had to Be You). I’ll have to reread Dream a Little Dream to be sure, but I think it’s my favorite book by this author.

11 responses so far