A Flaw in the Blood

Stephanie Barron's first departure from the Jane Austen mystery novels takes place during the Victorian era. It involves Queen Victoria and begins with the death of Prince Albert in 1861. Albert has a secret and numerous good guys and bad guys want that secret so badly that they are willing to kill for it (and they do so with relish). This reads like a gothic romance—unrequited love, a murderous stormy night, guilty secrets, hopes dashed, revenge plotted, etc. In fact it is major melodrama with purple prose and lots of exclamation points. I love Barron's Jane Austen mysteries - in those she really knows her Jane and the Regency period. But unfortunately this departure isn't up to her usual stellar mystery treatment. It starts very slowly and I found it difficult to get into. Reviews say that it's a fast pace potboiler. I could see the potboiler aspect, but fast paced? Maybe for the horse and buggy period but not in this novel. I couldn't finish it. The prose was too purple for my tastes - definitely in the "it was a dark and storm night" tradition - and the plot didn't seem to pull together before I gave up. The characters aren't all that well drawn and I really didn't care for any of them - especially Victoria. I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't. I hope she returns to Jane's mysteries as they are the best of her work.

Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited

What else can scholars say about Gone with the Wind? Biographies of all the stars, David O. Selznick, Margaret Mitchell, made-for-TV movies, etc., have mined the depths of the novel and the resultant film. What can Molly Haskell say that's new? Not much. However, the way she pulls together the strands of the story - both the novel and the making of the movie - makes old ground entertaining. The book is part biography, part history, and part feminist analysis. The author of From Reverance to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies and part-time film commentator on Turner Classic Movies stitches together disparate stories from how long it took Mitchell to write the book, why she was reluctant to have it made into a movie, Selznick's persuasiveness, and every other tidbit that seems trivial to produce a "big picture" view of the entire enterprise. She also analyzes characters and their impact on a Depression-era public using her feminist viewpoint to understand why the novel and the movie were unbelievably popular. This year is the 70th anniversary of the release of the movie and this book does a good job to make it relevant to readers now.

Twilight

I'm reading Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, the super sensational vampire romance novel for teens. I can understand why girls would love this book - a mysterious gorgeous boy for whom all the girls are beside themselves and a shy girl who's different, how and why the two connect, and the undercurrent of sexual tension between them. I realize that it's written for the young adult audience and not for a middle aged adult like me, therefore, I shouldn't judge too harshly. The writing is okay but there's not much there to keep me interested. It's too slow (like the movie, which is, uh, deliberately paced) and wordy. It takes a lot of patience to stick with it.

I do like the atmosphere Meyer creates - she knows how to write about the Pacific Northwest and its gothic elements (dark clouds, rain, fog, deep dark forests, a chill - i.e., creepy. Throw in a remote Italian castle and Ann Radcliffe would feel at home). I also like the lead characters, Bella and Edward. Particularly Bella - Meyer really understands her and her "otherness," and treats her sympathetically. She kept my interest throughout. Edward, the man/boy of mystery, is more difficult. He's uber-complex and introspective. Bella has a hard time figuring out what makes him tick - me, too. Sometimes he is too deep, especially for a teenage girl to comprehend. And that is the big problem for me. Edward is "17 years old"; however, he's existed 100 years. He may look like a teenager, but he's not - he has decades of world experience. Bella is mature and very smart but she is only 17 with a certain degree of innocence. He has all the experience that comes with age and using it on Bella. Plus he displays a lot of traits of a stalker - watches her while she sleeps, etc. Creeped me out a bit.

I wanted to like it because of my interest in vampire literature and film and that the story is based, sort of, on Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. But Meyer is no Austen and the novel is too long.