“That Reminds Me…”

Just seconds ago, I closed To Have and To Hold by Patricia Gaffney and my fingertips are tingling with the need to dump my brain onto the page. This was one of those books I will put into the shortlist known as The Mother Lode. Certain books seem to unleash me. For me: To Have and To Hold is a Mother Lode book because it is so perfectly itself, but it simultaneously mirrors and refracts and suggests other books, philosophies, ideas. Humanity, I guess. But. Sigh. Okay. I guess I am just going to dive in. Backwards.

On the inside back cover, Patricia Gaffney describes her imaginary village of Wyckerley as “humble imitation of Hardy’s invented Wessex country” and I think Gaffney is being humble in her use of humble. Wyckerley is an homage in the best sense of the word. Gaffney’s love of Hardy comes through beautifully, not as a weak approximation but as a source of inspiration. Lately, I pretty much reserve the use of homage for when I am despairing of something’s authenticity and hope to point out its derivative lack of originality. It’s best said with a mediocre French accent, as in “Some people think that movie is an homage to Kurasawa,” the clear implication being that anyone who thought that is a pretentious idiot.

[Patricia Gaffney gets it right...]

I have a degree (technically a certificate) from London Business School in corporate finance. I had always been a liberal-artsy English-and-art-history type, and I wanted to dispel my own myths about myself. I didn’t want to rely on a man to translate a financial statement. I didn’t want to get rooked. Or maybe it was a Working Girl motivation: I hoped one day to turn to Harrison Ford and say, “I have a head for business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?”

But financial fluency is just like any other foreign language: if you don’t use it, you lose it. After 13 years out of the financial world, I can still read a P&L (sort of), but the main thing that has stuck with me? The Bottom Line. It has to balance out. All the crafty accounting in the world isn’t going to get around the basic facts of what goes in, what goes out, and what is left.

And, as usual, money and sex have lots in common.

[Everybody wants more of both!...]

Whew! I just turned the last page of Shadow Kin by M.J. Scott and cannot wait to write about it. What a treat! What a surprise! I loved Rudyard Kipling’s Kim in the same way: I thought it was going to be one thing, but it turned out to be so much more.

In the disclaimer department: I have never read Twilight. I have never read anything that would qualify as a contemporary paranormal. I’ve read some Ursula K. Le Guin. J.R.R. Tolkien. I’ve read some futuristic dystopian stuff like Hyperion and Neuromancer. But M.J. Scott’s wonderful book was a revelation.

Like most great books, it sort of pales in the summary: “Hired assassin falls for her target. Worlds collide.” Sounds about as original as “Mopey guy goes on a whaling boat for a few months.” Or “British girl thinks guy is really arrogant, then realizes he is wonderful.” Or maybe I thought this book was great because it felt like it was written for me personally, to read at this very moment in my life. Maybe I would have found it less excellent at some other time of my life...but no, I can’t think of any point in my life when this book would have disappointed me. So here goes. The why of it.

[Don’t forget the “how awesome” of it...]

As romance fans discuss books amongst themselves in Romancelandia, there is a recurring discussion that crops up every few months about whether readers appreciate negative reviews, positive reviews, DNF reviews, don’t-ever-read-this-book-even-if-doing-so-will-postpone-the-apocalypse reviews, etc. I am not here to dissuade you from your opinions on that score. Read what books you choose. Visit the blogs you choose. Hate them. Love them. Have at it. More power to you.

As for me, I tend to talk almost entirely about books I love. It is probably some residual etiquette from my rather conservative upbringing. I can hear the adults of my childhood informing me gently that people don’t really want to hear a litany of complaints, dear. One friend of mine’s dad went so far as to tell us that when people ask, “How are you?” they only want to hear one thing: “I’m great!” (He was in sales.) But the point my girl-power teachers and mentors were trying to make was, if you are dissatisfied with something, you should do something about it, not whine about it. Social change and all that.

[Where does Henry Higgins come in?...]

Raising an 11-year-old girl in a rape culture has its challenges. The first time the two of us were driving along and heard Katy Perry sing, “Infect me with your laser, I want to be your victim—” you can imagine my reaction: as Tommy Boy would say, “I wanted to jerk the wheel into a bridge abutment!”

All I could think was, “Great. Another consensual rape lyric.” My daughter nonchalantly informed me that the song wasn’t about rape, it was about alien abduction, duh.

Oh, well. In that case. Sure.

And now—probably because the song’s got a great hook and it makes me want to slap my hands to the beat against the steering wheel while I am stopped at a red light and making googly eyes at the charming air conditioning repair guy smiling at me from the other lane—I love that song.

[It IS pretty addictive...]

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of...”

Well. Maybe nothing? Of course, there are the countermanding poor-little-rich-girl arguments. But let’s talk about the woman of a certain age. A woman who has arrived. A woman such as Jane Averham, the heroine in Margaret Westhaven’s Four in Hand.

When we meet her at the ripe old age of 34, Jane has suffered through a tedious marriage to a philandering, careless husband, produced two lovely daughters, and attained her widowhood. She worked hard for it, honey. And along comes a young, dashing, smoldering Archibald MacGowan. In a wonderful reversal of the familiar wayward-single-girl-in-need-of-rescuing, Jane wants an affaire du coeur and it is the gentleman who wants the formal, public commitment of marriage.

[Of course, turnabout is always fairplay...right?]

“Ten thousand a year!”

One of my favorite things about Jane Austen (in addition to the language, the plotting, the characters, the conflict resolution—you get the idea) is the money. Austen speaks plainly about money.

To my mind, love and money have a lot in common. The same language applies: you make it, you lose it, you crave it, you manage it, you save it. Both are hard-won. It’s not socially acceptable to talk about either one when you walk into a cocktail party. “So, my husband and I were making love the other day…” or “I just cashed my $5000 paycheck.” Ew. How gauche.

As it turns out, I tend toward gauche. I dislike the roundabout subtlety that most people adopt when discussing love or money. So when an author gets straight to the heart of either topic, I am grateful. Joan Wolf has already been justly praised on this blog for her sharp, witty handling of how perceptions of love and money can establish the bedrock of a relationship (or nearly destroy it). Janet Webb’s analysis of the spine-tingling necklace/whore scene in His Lordship’s Mistress was a delicious reminder of one such fulcrum point.

[Dirty Sexy Money?...]