Middle-Aged Fantasy: The Winter Sea

The Winter Sea by Di Morrissey

Pan Macmillan

Pp. 416

This novel is pure escapism and wish fulfilment. Cassie decides to leave her high-paid but unsatisfying legal job and husband in Sydney for a holiday on the coast. On a whim she buys a dilapidated restaurant and turns it into a roaring success with the help of the local fishing community. The spanner in the works (of course there has to be one) is in the form of a historic family incident with far-reaching repercussions. Because it's a typical holiday read there is a caring community for affirmation, an abandoned dog for company, and a handsome vet for romance. It contains a lot of stereotypes which are completely undemanding.

One of these stereotypes is the notion of Italy and the history of emigration. There are several flashbacks, which direct the reader to the old country where “Italian families are always there for each other” in a sort of Sicilian Godfather-like way. Italians love fishing and women, and they have romantic notions of both.

Characters describe things to each other in a manner that is clearly meant as exposition for the reader, and historical nuggets are dropped into the narrative with resounding clangs. The transition to being Australian is not easy; as someone worries that their English might not be good enough to pass the test they are told, “It could be in any language. If they don’t want you, they will make it impossible for you to pass.” We are reminded that Italians were put into internment camps during the war. “People are in here just because they’re Italian. Doesn’t matter what their political convictions are – Fascists, Communists, neutral. It almost makes you cry when you think of the poor buggers who left Italy to escape Fascism only to end up here.”

Cassie is a modern woman who decides to make a break, in parallel with these characters from the past. We are meant to see her as an independent woman, who is better-off without her overbearing husband, Hal and patriarchal career. This burgeoning feminism is not extended to other female characters, however – more Italian stereotypes. Moving home and setting up a new business is remarkably easy to do as Cassie buys a place in Whitby Point, by the sea (Ulladulla, NSW coast), with a more relaxed pace of life than in her previous Sydney home, which suits her interests. She extends this minimalism to her restaurant, which she decides to run with no real business plan. It is busy but idyllic and the dream of many a middle-aged idealist.

By trying to force a modern character into a tried and tested romance formula, Morrissey’s character’s credibility strains at the seams, but she has enough fans who will love it anyway and there’s no point in ruining a perfectly good fantasy with realism and detail.

Ulladulla Harbour and Foreshore

Thorny Issues: Briar Rose

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen

Tor

Pp. 281

Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose is one of a series of re-told fairy-tales created by Terri Windling, who states in the foreword, “For countless centuries, storytellers have used the richly symbolic language of fairy tales to explore all the dark, and bright, and shades of gray of the human experience. Jane Yolen knows this better than most. And does it better than most.” Yolen takes the story of Briar Rose (also known as Sleeping Beauty) and links it to the Holocaust in ways that seems perfectly feasible while simultaneously fantastical. It is a Young Adult novel, with simplistic and unrealistic plot devices and characterisation, but it is also interesting reading for anyone who understands the power of the land of make believe.

Rebecca Berlin (Becca) is a young woman who has grown up hearing her grandmother (Gemma), always telling the same story, Briar Rose, in exactly the same words. No one knows much about Gemma, but after her death, Becca finds a box of personal effects which leads her to think there may be a war-time past. Her editor, Stan, encourages her to go to Poland to seek out the mysterious past of her grandmother. With the ease of stories over reality, he arranges her travel and translator through his journalistic contacts, so that when Becca reaches Poland she is assisted by a woman named Magda an incredibly hospitable tour-guide, translator, and unlocker of gates both literal and metaphoric.

They conveniently find a man, Josef Potocki, who knows Gemma’s story, which he relates to them in the middle third of the book – a story within a story, within a story. It transpires that the castle is a concentration camp, the brambles are barbed wire, the sleeping beauty is gassed, and the prince’s kiss is the breath of life. Tales are told as a means of coping with events, and if they are painful and don’t provide relief, one wonders what is the point. Becca is desperate to paint herself as the heroine in this tale; the Cinderella of the story. She can’t wait to return to America and boast to her sisters that she found the truth, even though they thought she was crazy for trying – yes, there are two of them with similar names (Sylvia and Shana) and she is the youngest.

The fairy-tale tropes loom large throughout the novel, and the narration is tightly constructed at the expense of character. This is satisfying in and of itself, and true to the genre. It may read like a creative writing challenge, but it certainly passes the test it has set itself.

The Rose Bower from the Briar Rose series (1885-1890) by Edward Burne-Jones 

Ahead of the Tide: To Calais, in Ordinary Time

To Calais in Ordinary Time by James Meek

Cannongate

Pp. 389

Mixing elements of The Canterbury Tales and Shakespearean comedy, this story takes place in South-West England in 1348 as a group of bowmen (led by a man called Hayne) travel through the country from Outen Green in Gloucestershire to Calais to fight the French, as the plague is advancing steadily towards them. As the novel was published in 2019 all the reviewers drew contemporary parallels with Brexit and the existentialist threat of the climate crisis, but anyone now would automatically think of the Covid pandemic.

The novel is narrated from three different people’s perspectives, all with a clearly different voice. Will Quate is a serf who is bound to work the land of a nobleman, and he is betrothed to local beauty, Ness, but he sees a better future in proving himself an archer and buying his freedom through his service. The Lady Bernadine is the daughter of the aforementioned nobleman and betrothed to his friend in a deal done between them which favours the old men and not their promised daughters. Seduced by romantic notions inspired by a French novel, Le Roman de La Rose, she believes herself in love with a young knight, Laurence Haket who happens to be the owner of the troop of archers. Lastly, Thomas Pitkerro is a proctor or clerical administrator from Avignon on secondment to Malmesbury Abbey, who just wants to go home. He provides a record of the journey and acts as a substitute priest to the travellers.

The bowmen are earthy and brutal: with the exception of Quate, who has joined them later, they are rough men who kill, kidnap and rape. There are stories of fights and people being put in the stocks; there are set pieces of violent battles and startling frank sex scenes. Lady Bernadine thinks she is in love with Laurence Haket, but he has failed in her ideas of courtly love and has got a country woman, Ness, pregnant. While she steals away from her father, she disguises herself as Madlen, who is pretending to be Lady Bernadine, but Madlen is actually Hab – a rough young serf, pretending to be his sister, Madlen, wearing a dress he stole from Bernadine. Will Quate has agreed to marry Ness, but he falls for Madlen, while knowing she is an incarnation of Hab. It’s a mixed up muddled up shook up world indeed; one could almost call that a Shakespearean plot.

Some of the etymology is intriguing in itself: a river full of fish is ‘fishous’; once a woman is pregnant, she becomes the responsibility of the man who impregnated her – she must marry him and become his burden/ burd/ bird. The language is part French and part old English: the common-folk do not understand the words of the nobles and vice versa. The adventures and exploits will end at the sea, but for some, it ended when they left their village. “Only in Merioneth are there true things. Only there is the world true and forever. Here, or in France, everything is a tale. All shifts. Everything haps once, no more, and then it’s gone, out-take that some bard like me minds it.” If stories aren’t remembered, they might as well never have occurred. James Meek suggests that we need a common language to understand them.

Holding Back the Nausea: The Boundary Fence

The Boundary Fence by Alissa Callen

Mira

Pp. 343

This outback romance is full of clichés rather than character.  All the women like baking and organising events, and they all want to get married and have babies. All the men like rounding up cattle (or, in our hero’s case, bison), and fishing. They also all want to get married and have children; they have “dreams of finding someone to love and to raise a family with.” Ella is the local vet who has had heartbreak in her life – we are told this repeatedly – and she has a scar on her thigh to prove it (an attractive one, obviously). She is beautiful and smells of cherry blossom. Saul is a local dude who runs a bison herd, has had trauma in his life – we are told this repeatedly as well – and is devastatingly handsome. Of course they should be together but keep inventing spurious reasons why they can’t be – “As hard as it was, for both of their sakes, he had to stay on his side of the boundary fence” – which drag the book out until they fall into each other’s arms at last.

There is little danger that we shouldn’t see this couple as dreamy but slightly damaged. Ella is “Dressed in loose black running shorts and a fitted white tank top, she was all long legs, curves and tousled blonde hair.” To be fair, Saul is equally objectified. “Even though he wore a loose royal blue shirt, as she drew near she had trouble looking away from where the cotton pulled tight across his biceps.” Ella has a lot of trouble looking away.

For some reason – there would be no book otherwise – they decide they will only cause more heartache if they fall in love, so they try so hard not to. It is a hardship for us all. With supposedly selfless passion, Saul wants Ella to be happy, even if this means not being with her. She cuts her hair to try and see if he will still be interested in her when she’s got short hair – which is, of course, beautiful. Yes, it really is that superficial. While the author falls over herself trying to explain how they are so noble and altruistic, they are incredibly self-absorbed, to the point that Ella seems to think everyone is studying her so closely they remember what she looked like the last time she wore a certain dress. “Bethany had already once remarked that she looked different and it hadn’t been due to her haircut… She’d wear something no one had seen before to mask anything else that could appear different.”

The book makes an effort with the setting – the town of Woodlea near Dubbo, NSW – and it’s all red earth and dusty boots in the outback. There are bush dances and rodeos; country weddings and hay bale competitions; beer nights and convoys of hay runners; snake bites and sick horses. It is very hot and dry verging on drought and this conveys a soupçon of atmosphere. There are lots of characters in the book but they have no individual features and are impossible to tell apart; sometimes it’s even difficult to know if the characters are human or animal.

It is no spoiler to say that Ella and Saul get their happy ever after, as that is the only point to this pap. “Nothing could have prepared him for kissing Ella. Her sweetness and warmth moved him in ways that went beyond the physical. She filled the lonely and dark void within him with laughter and warmth. Emotions he’d banished and refused to acknowledge flared into life. Being with Ella made him feel complete.” Well, good for him; being with them has made me feel nauseous.

Love's Labour's Knots: Ties That Tether

Ties That Tether by Jane Igharo

Jove

Pp. 306

Azere is a young woman of Nigerian descent, living in Canada, who is obsessed with her cultural identity and screen romance. The novel is written in a light, fluffy style, combining the predictable plots of all her favourite films, while hammering home some ethnic issues. Azere falls for a Canadian man of Spanish descent after a one-night stand but tries to do the right thing by her family, even after he shows up at her work (advertising) as the new marketing director. Her mother has another man in mind for her – one with whom she was in love as a young teen, who took her virginity on a camp and never spoke to her again until now. This has all the makings of a modern sassy rom-com with a younger sister and cultural sensitivity thrown in.

In the opening line Azere tells us, “Culture is important. Preserving it, even more important. It’s the reason I’ve always abided by one simple dating rule.” Due to a promise to her father on his death bed, Azere will only date Nigerian men in an attempt to preserve her culture, even after immigrating to Canada. Her mother and sister are aware of this promise, which rules her life. Let’s start with the culture, because that is what the author keeps banging on about with deafening repetition. She claims, “That’s what my mother has been doing since we moved to Canada – shoving my culture down my throat, so I don’t forget where I come from.” After the eighty-fifth reference, I know the feeling.

She explains the richness of her culture and it is clear, and understandable, that she doesn’t want to relinquish it. Her mother is clearly a powerful influence, although not all her cultural strength is positive, as in when she tells Azere, “If you want to be a feminist, fine. But please be a married feminist with at least three children. In our country, a woman’s honour is her husband and her children. A career means nothing.” Her father, before he died, was a commanding force, and she also has a cultural issue of needing to look after her younger sister. Occasionally in trying to explain how special her culture is, she denigrates that of other people. Her mother sees no difference between a white man and a Hispanic one; there are clearly shades of racism at play here.

Azere is motivated by romances and romantic comedies, and all the references are upbeat and contemporary, from Beyoncé to Sex in the City: it’s pure trash but it makes a change from the tired old Jane Austen template. She is self-aware about the narrative structure, pointing out the mechanics of the story including the lead character’s sidekick – “someone bold, witty, and capable of providing comedic relief and harsh truths the lead isn’t willing to face” – or the grand gesture, “one of the most pivotal scenes in romantic movies”, which is meant to prove one’s love, earn a lover’s forgiveness, or win back a lover’s affection. All of these tropes are deployed. Part of the romantic genre is to place an obstacle in the way of the couple; miscommunication of which threatens their relationship and only love can overcome. In this there is an ‘intrigue’ that goes on far too long about Rafael’s ex-partner, but it provides the definitive hurdle: it is forced, but it fits the romantic mould.

The chapters are told from alternating viewpoints – Azere’s and Rafael’s – although the voice is the same. Everyone cares about their wardrobe, hair and make-up and has “perfectly groomed eyebrows”. Rafael describes Azere’s “spaghetti-strap knee-length dress”; it seems incongruous that the male perspective would notice this detail. Of course the woman is petite and the man big and strong: Rafael epitomises the unsavoury aspects of the masculine hero, and when he tells Azere, “You’re mine now, and there’s no way in hell I’m ever giving you up” we are meant to view it as charmingly romantic rather than disturbingly possessive.

The novel is a simple love story which follows the predictable lines of a modern romance. It has an ethnic and cultural element which gives it slightly more depth, but some of the faux-profound asides are out of step and sound a wrong note. It is shallow entertainment and if it accepted itself as such, it would be a more rewarding novel.

Cliched Romantic Claptrap: A Matter of Grave Concern

 

A Matter of Grave Concern by Brenda Novak

Montlake Romance

Pp.325

Brenda Novak has written over 50 novels and is a New York Times Bestselling Author, so she clearly has a following, although if trying to place her genre it would be somewhere on the misogynistic side of historical romance. This novel begins with an interesting premise about Abigail Hale, a woman who buys corpses to supply the medical school, run by her father, with cadavers. These corpses are often found illegally by grave robbers or, worse, people who kill in order to have a fresh stock of bodies. 

Resurrectionists by phiz

One of the grave robbers in The London Supply Company, Max Wilder, is actually a nobleman in disguise, trying to find out what happened to his step-sister who has disappeared and he fears she has been murdered. This scenario is interesting, but it all goes rapidly downhill when Abby goes to the home of the leader of the gang, Big Jack, to recover the money they took from her. She is captured and she falls in love with Max, who supposedly protects her, but also initiates her sexually while holding her captive; it’s all very distasteful and the sexual fantasy element seems misguided.

Abby dreams of being a surgeon, although women are forbidden from practicing medicine. Supposedly she has some feminist leanings, but she still likes to be dominated and falls for her captor. She refers often to the plight of women in the late Regency period, “Because she refused to adopt the role society tried to press upon her, she had always fought to fit in, even at the college. Lecturers and students alike couldn’t understand why she couldn’t be content to sit in the corner and darn socks.” Women have few options, apart from to go to the alms-houses, which “provided such a cruel and meagre existence that no one wanted to end up there”, and of course, there is prostitution.

There are offerings of historical information which do not blend with the plot, and land with a clang, such as the mention of “Sir Robert Peel’s new police force” or “the notorious gentleman’s guide to the current brothels and prostitutes in London – Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies.” It is as though Novak wants to educate as well as titivate, and she is far from subtle with the introduction of knowledge, but she also writes of England for an American market, as evidenced by her slips of language. Although Max is a high class noble (Lucien Cavendish, the Duke of Rowenberry), he tells Abby to, ‘Quit being so smug”, which is not an English expression of any era.

Interior with a Sleeping Man and a Woman Darning Socks by Wybrand Hendricks

Max is supposedly heroic and appealing in the way he cares for Abby, and she is drawn to his male magnetism and controlling aspect. “Max Wilder couldn’t be classified as a saint. There was something dangerous about him, something bordering on the uncivilized. From what she had seen so far, he dared more than a man should. He flouted whatever rule he chose to flout, and seemed to have no compunction about asserting his will in any given situation, regardless of how it affected others.” The novel constantly switches viewpoint, and we are meant to believe that a man so used to getting his own way is attracted to someone who might question his authority.

Abby admits her love for Max only to discover he is betrothed to another woman through an old alliance between families; of course it wouldn’t do for him to have any romantic attachment to anyone but her. Although she is now pregnant with his child (and we have been told about the consequences of unwed motherhood), she does the ‘decent thing’ by not telling him. “If she loved him, she would support him in what would make him the happiest, and she knew what that was.” This is patently ridiculous and a romance novel trope; one of many. There are long scenes of what Max and Abby feel for each other, but the actual plot hurries towards the end. In the last few chapters there are stabbings, abduction, hangings, and circumnavigations of the globe which appear to take weeks rather than months.

The sexual politics are at best uncomfortable and at worse downright offensive. As for the narrative, all of the potential interest in a story about grave robbers, medical science, and a young woman trying to negotiate a life in a man’s world is swept away on a torrent of clichéd romantic claptrap.