Sunday, January 11, 2009

More on Georgette Heyer...

OK. I finished The Quiet Gentleman a little while ago and here's what I thought: it should not have been classified as a romance but a mystery. The majority of the book is focused on the mystery of who is trying to kill Lord St. Erth. The so-called romance was thrown in at the end as something of an afterthought. I know I'm used to today's fiction, where subtlety is a lost art or at least it is when compared to what I think of as literature: classic fiction that was printed way before I was born but most of the time I was thinking "Come on already!"  I was a hundred pages in and was still waiting for something to happen beyond the dowager bitching about, well, everything. I stuck with it and finished it and was relieved when I did. And don't even get me started on the exclamation points.

The Grand Sophy is better but Sophy didn't show up until Chapter Three. Two long (and they were long) chapters of exposition and character introduction. I'm hoping I can keep with this one long enough to finish it but my patience/interest is wearing thin. I'm sorry to disappoint all those Georgette Heyer fans out there; I'm sure I will find the Heyer book to make me fall in love with her but I doubt either of these are going to do it. 

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