Daniel Jones: Modern Love--50 True & Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, & Devotion

• On Amazon
• At NYT store
• NYT samples

Modern Love is a collection of 50 short essays from The New York Times' freelance Modern Love column. "Love" here includes a lot of poignancy and lonely introspection, but little sex or sweetness. However, the best of the essays are excellent.

Editor Daniel Jones’ selections are interesting and surprisingly even in quality. Perhaps too even; the themes and voices can be too uniform, and the collection is grouped by similarity rather than variety. At one point I thought there were 30 essays too many, but I enjoyed them more once I started to skip and skim.

Why “modern” love?

The collection hits some obviously modern notes: flirting by text message, a painful conversion from housewife to feminist, being lovers and colleagues, sperm donors, gay adoption. The essays also touch on a mobile society: the long-distance romances and pseudo-familial relationships developed by people living far from home. Implicit too is a set of male/female relationships that I’m not sure older generations have experienced: unisex dorm life, cross-sex friendships, and mixed housing situations lasting long after college.

My favorite essays are those that directly address modern culture, particularly Waldman, Korelitz, and Hekker. For those writers who hew to the more personal, Jones appends “where are they now” updates that I find slightly jarring. Each piece is short, and many are online, so I’ll just point to a few of the interesting ones.

Seeking: R We D8ing?

In this section romance is largely about the writer, not the other person. In Sandra Barron’s R We D8ing?, an exchange of cryptic one-liners (from R we still on 4 2morrow? to What did I do 2 upset u?) is a mini-relationship with a full complement of emotional highs and lows. It’s fascinating that we can invest meaning in even such a sparse exchange.

Mindy Hung’s I Seemed Plucky and Game, Even To Myself describes playing a role to be desirable. Trey Ellis' Who's That Lady in the Bedroom, Daddy? feels unfinished, but it’s unusually sweet for this collection.

Finding: I Think I Love You

Howie Kahn's The Third Half of a Couple evokes years of group living. Good roommates can become as close as family or lovers. Kahn takes that intimacy a step farther, using his friends as a shield against dating.

I depend on the stability of their marriage; I need them to stay together so I can go where they go and do what they do. Simply put, I'm their third wheel.

Breeding: What to Expect That You're Least Expecting

Ann Hood's Now I Need a Place to Hide Away touches on music and memory and the joy of a shared obsession. The TMI problem of Helaine Olen's The New Nanny Diaries Are Online may ring a bell if you’ve ever google-stalked a friend. Dan Savage writes honestly about the pitfalls of open adoption.

Staying: The Ties That Bind

Ayelet Waldman contributes a controversial essay, Truly, Madly, Guiltily, that I've read before but always enjoy.

I am the only woman in Mommy and Me who seems to be, well, getting any. ... I love my children. But I am not in love with them. I am in love with their father.

Jean Hanff Korelitz's Sleeping with the Guitar Player has a surprise ending from a cynical start:

in the last few years I've experienced, via my husband, another masculine stage, one I'd been blissfully unaware of. This is the time of a man's life that I must now and forever think of as the guitar-in-the-basement phase.

I’m sure some readers hate her framing of the guitar-in-the-basement in terms of gender and ambition; it’s as provocative as Waldman’s essay.

Leaving: The Ties That Fray

I like the honesty of Terry Martin Hekker's 2006 essay on motherhood and feminism, Paradise Lost (Domestic Division):

In the continuing case of Full-Time Homemaker v. Working Mother, I offer myself as Exhibit A. Because more than a quarter-century ago I wrote an Op-Ed article for the New York Times on the satisfaction of being a full-time housewife in the new age of the liberated woman. I wrote it from my heart, thoroughly convinced that homemaking and raising my children was the most challenging and rewarding job I could ever want.

Read her 1977 Op-Ed as well. The essays are both passionate and forthright, though they present different viewpoints thirty years apart.

Bound: Family Ties

I find Leaving and Bound difficult sections to read. They’re too much alike, a litany of strangely similar divorces and deaths. Skipping around in the book helps, but neither the situations nor the telling can hold my interest through these final sections.

Overall this collection might be a C+, but a few pieces in it are A- quality. I’ve read my fill for now, but I discovered some interesting personalities through the columns.

Read more...

Show less...

The science of romance

This week is Time Magazine's annual Mind/Body special issue. The theme this year is "The Science of Romance".

Several of the articles articulate physiological and psychological patterns that I would love to see more imaginatively treated in fiction--and not only in romance. The body language of flirtation, and why we flirt while in a relationship. Why we develop cultural ideas--beyond the "good girl" notion--about sex on the first date. How online dating really works. Why the darker side of passion can be attractive.

Time's descriptions of the articles:

• Why We Love
  Breeding is easy, but survival requires romance too. How our brains, bodies and senses help us find it


• Why We Flirt
  That smile! That glance! That rapt attention! We flirt even when we don't need to. And that can be good.


• Marry Me
  Say yes, and you're in for more than love, children and a home. Better health and a longer life are part of the deal
  By Lori Oliwenstein


• Are Gay Relationships Different?
  Why gay couples have more equality and less tension at home--but still split up more often than straight pairs


• Crazy Love
  Our partners may be obsessive, possessive, even dangerous. There's a reason we stick around--often at our own peril
  By Steven Pinker


• Love Letters [not available online]
  A peek at what real people write when they're falling in love


• We Just Clicked
  Online matchmaking sites in the U.S. are eyeing millions of singles in China, India and beyond. Will love translate?


• Young Love
  Romance is a grand pageant. Your debut may not come until you're in your teens, but you spend a childhood rehearsing


• Romance Is An Illusion
  Could something that feels so real be a mere trick of the mind? Sure, when the survival of the species is at stake
  By Carl Zimmer


• Love Lines
  One-liners on love:

  'Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.'
  DOROTHY PARKER, poet and writer



• To Our Readers
  Romance makes us giddy--€”or flat-out crazy. Our science team breaks down the chemical, sociological and evolutionary reasons

Famous Pairings

• Famous Couples
  A gallery of some of the twentieth century's great romances


• Star Pairs

Love among animals

• Wildly In Love
  Humans aren't alone. Romance appears to roam among animals too


• Wildly In Love
  A collection of amorous animals with illustrations for TIME by Dugald Stermer

Read more...

Show less...

C.L. Wilson: Lord of the Fading Lands

• On Amazon
• Author's website
• Excerpt (PDF)

Erin Galloway of Dorchester Publishing was nice enough to send me an advance copy of Lord of the Fading Lands. I’m glad she did--Wilson has a gift for storytelling, and her prose is polished. I was disappointed by the book’s reliance on well-used tropes: the romance is straight out of Christine Feehan’s Carpathian playbook and the fantasy setting is more detailed than innovative. Nonetheless, for a debut novel it’s striking, and I’ll try another book sometime.

Rainier Tairen Soul, King of the Fey, is several thousand years old and a part-time fire-breathing giant winged cat. The last time he ventured out of the Fading Lands, he destroyed half a continent. Now a vision sends him back into the world, seeking a future for his people.

Ellysetta Baristani is the adopted daughter of a woodcarver in stodgy, pious, unmagical Celieria. Ellie appears to be simply a preternaturally nice mortal girl, but Rain recognizes her instantly as his other half. Women don't get to choose their marriages in this world, so it's up to Rain to convince the Celierian king to release Ellie from another man’s claim. Claiming Ellie and politicking distract Rain from investigating a nebulous conspiracy, but it appears that that conflict will happen in a later book.

Alpha and orphan

Ellie and Rain are familiar romance character types—so familiar that based on an excerpt, Laura Vivanco pegged the characters:

the hero was a type I’d read many times before. He’s the most powerful male in the world, he’s capable of violent rages, he has a very tortured past and he falls in love with an innocent, much younger woman. He’s so possessive he frightens her, and he reacts instantly to any threat (perceived or real) against her….

The heroine’s an orphan who’s something of an ugly duckling (perceived as ugly by her adoptive culture, coming into her own power), under threat and in need of rescue…

Wilson sometimes sacrifices character development for reinforcement of these standard traits. Instead of how Rain reacts to the world, we’re told what he wears; instead of who he is now, we get his powers, his tragic history, and generalizations about the Fey.

The built-up world

Wilson’s attention to detail is laudable, but sometimes less might be more. For example, an important courtroom scene includes a lengthy description¹ of Rain’s clothes. It doesn’t say anything new—we know he's handsome, wealthy, and powerful—so rather than the fashion report, I’d like to see the legal and political interludes developed farther. These scenes are crucial to illuminate inter-kingdom politics, and to explain the villains. (The evil Mages merit more discussion--thus far, they're simplistic villains for villainy's sake.)

Sci fi and fantasy author M John Harrison propounds a different approach to worldbuilding:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding. […] Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there.

and

Substitute imagination for exhaustiveness, and inventiveness for research.

Harrison is often provocative, and here he stakes out an extreme view, but I agree to a large extent. Not every world must be built the same way, but in Fading Lands I wanted a better balance of emotional and political explication versus décor. The detailed description also slows down some key scenes, which may be one reason some readers find Fading Lands slow going.

Truemates, lifemates, fated love

In the Elloran world, fate and race determine much of the characters’ lives. Every Fey character is noble and gifted; every Celierian character is ordinary. This robs the diplomatic conflict of tension: the Celierians are too far outclassed by the Fey. Ellie’s special qualities are evidently due to her non-Celierian blood; even her father’s business success has a non-Celierian cause. The Celierian women come off particularly poorly. Their lives are dictated by fate, race, and whichever man claims them, and they’re not notably charming, admirable, intelligent, or honorable: they’re perfect pawns for the men of the story.

The lack of outstanding female characters, and the emphasis on fate, are also clear in the romance. Wilson says her “truemates” concept is not the same as Feehan’s “lifemates”. I see no essential difference between the two, though some readers disagree with me. Like Feehan’s Carpathians, Fey men are fearsome warriors, but each kill adds darkness to their souls, gradually deadening their emotions. Like the Carpathians, Fey women are gentle; Ellie fits right in, as her sweetness heals all wounds and even inspires a Fey bodyguard to pledge himself to her. (It’s a little much; not even Feehan’s women save the souls of men other than their mates.) Like Feehan's Carpathians, there's some lip service given to the importance of the woman making an emotional choice but the outcome is never in serious doubt.

Fading Lands also reminds me of Ann Maxwell (Elizabeth Lowell)’s Timeshadow Rider (1986), a space-fantasy romance about a made-for-each-other couple from an all-powerful race with an animalistic side. However, Maxwell’s book is explicitly about overcoming cultural conditioning and sets up a more clearly worked-out tension between fate and choice.

Wilson is a good storyteller, and I enjoyed Fading Lands, though I found it heavy on genre clichés. Many romance readers will enjoy the alpha male/sweet female relationship, but on the fantasy side the mythology and characterization seem rather standard and un-innovative. It didn't strike the sweet spot for me, but it was an engaging read.

Grade: B-
(I'd give it a C+ for carrying forward so many bad-old-days-of-fantasy conventions, but it's really no worse than average in that regard. Besides, it's a B+ for storytelling. Storytelling and voice mean a lot to me.)

---

¹ From Chapter 6:

Tall, lean, and searingly handsome, Rainier vel’En Daris exuded the dark, dangerous beauty and mystery of the Fey race as he strode down the blue carpet. His black leather tunic and snug leggings seemed to absorb light, while his bristling collection of Fey blades were so highly polished that they reflected light back with almost blinding intensity. Black boots, tooled with scarlet and purple tairen, crossed the length of the throne room in smooth, ground-eating strides. A scarlet sash embroidered with taired worked in gold thread draped from his left shoulder to his right hip, just below one of the two crossed bands of Fey’cha daggers, while a chain made of fist-sized squares of gold, each set with large Tairen’s Eye crystals, hung from one shoulder to the other. A golden crown circled his head, each of its six points topped with a small globe of priceless Tairen’s Eye crystal. Even without the crown, no one who saw him could fail to recognize he was a King. He carried power as effortlessly as his broad shoulders carried the purple-lined black cape that billowed out behind him.

Tags: book, review, fantasy, romance, magic

Read more...

Show less...

Emma Donoghue: Landing

• On Amazon
• Author's website
• Excerpt

Landing is a well-written epistolary romance. The central duo are an "odd couple" drawn in rather heavy-handed contrasts, but they aren’t simply stereotypes: they’re nicely fleshed out in their different milieux. Unfortunately, I don't completely buy the final solution to the long-distance affair.

Landing opens with Jude Turner and Síle O’Shaughnessy sharing a disturbing experience on a transatlantic flight. Back in Dublin, Ireland, and “Ireland”, Canada, Jude and Síle start a correspondence that rapidly becomes central to their lives. The two women fall in love through email; telephone calls and visits deepen the relationship and increase the tension of the distance between them.

Contrasts

Síle and Jude are drawn as such opposites that the contrasts become a little tiresome, though they never become caricature. Indo-Irish Síle, 39, leads a big-city life in Dublin and loves to travel. Canadian Jude, 25, lives in her childhood home in a town of 600, two hours from Toronto. Síle is into gadgets; Jude is a techno-phobe. Síle is involved with a refined blonde Irish woman; Jude with a rough-edged half-Mohawk man.

On the other hand, Donoghue uses these contrasts well in writing about Jude and Síle’s passion for each other. This is the first time I’ve read a love story between two women that shows a wide array of loving feelings, not emphasizing the “feminine” side of love or the couple’s common experience as women. Landing has what Nicola Griffith calls "triple girl cooties: a girl writing from the POV of a girl who likes girls", but this triple-whammy doesn’t render the story bland. The characters’ differences create a varied dynamic, and Donoghue writes about their feelings in ways that I often find touching and real. The darker side of relationships is missing--Jude and Síle don't spend enough time together to argue--but their love is well described.

Why, then, am I unsure that Jude and Síle have what it takes?

A lack of togetherness

Jude and Síle have a far more dimensional relationship because of their differences. At the same time the contrasts are so strongly drawn that I have trouble imagining a happy ending. The long-distance relationship plays into this uncertainty, adding layers to the story but also keeping the women's relationship somewhat superficial.

Jude and Síle's letter-writing provides a lot of opportunity for quotation and allusion. In a metafictional touch, Jude often excerpts letters from the museum’s archive. However, many of the allusions are rather bleak stories, such as the Nathaniel Hawthorne story of the snow-child who couldn't thrive outside her natural setting.

At the same time, the epistolary structure of the book keeps Jude and Síle physically apart. The reader never sees them become comfortable in each other’s sphere and the relationship stays at the level of a honeymoon, so there's little conflict.

Real life = emotional life

There’s a persistent theme in Landing that “reality” consists of what’s most emotionally vibrant in life, not simply the habitual or the near at hand. Without that emphasis, I suspect the story would fall flat. If our "nearest" were necessarily our "nearest", who would ever try a long-distance relationship or an on-line flirtation?

This theme is particularly explicit when a written “I love you” changes Síle’s perceptions about where her “real” life lies: not in routine and familiarity but in emotional connection from afar.

She’d made the mistake of thinking that dinners out and traffic jams were her real life, and this connection with Jude was just a transitory preoccupation. But now she saw that she’d been living out her real time onscreen [via email]….”

As the relationship progresses, both women find their everyday lives receding:

They rang each other at any time of day or night…. Síle had started taking occasional baths now, to remind her of Jude, and because there seemed more time to kill.

Different styles of cleaving unto

The style of commentary in Landing reminds me of an article by Elizabeth Campbell:

[Epistolary] novels have always been about sexual politics.... [They] use the letter as a subversive and freeing agent and also as a mirror in which they not only seek themselves and/or another but attempt to change their lives to reflect the mirror image.

Donoghue integrates several ideas of femininity and gay culture into the story. Both Síle and Jude are openly gay, and comfortable with themselves, which adds a great deal of honesty to their developing relationship. Both women have close friends and supportive communities, but at times experience prejudice.

Síle's relationship with her partner is more comfortable than sexual.

Kathleen had silently forwarded her a link to some online journal article about the high incidence of "what is popularly known as bed death" in long-term lesbian relationships.

Having lived celibate for several years, Síle is occasionally disconcerted by Jude’s past relationships, and seems alarmed that Jude still considers herself bisexual.

”Did it feel any different with the girls?” Síle wanted to know.

No answer for a second. Then, “Sex is always different, depending on who you’re with.”

“Your generation’s really ditched the old labels, haven’t you?”

I found Landing well written but a little static in places, slightly sterile in the first half’s letters, and I don't completely believe the ending. I plan to try Donoghue's historical novels: I'm curious to hear her voice in a different setting without the epistolary form. Her Slammerkin is the story of Mary Saunders, a servant who murdered her mistress in 1763. Life Mask fictionalizes a (possibly) historical love triangle between playwright Richard Sheridan, actress Eliza Farren, and the Earl of Derby in 1790s London.

Grade: B- because I wasn't convinced. But I really am interested in trying Donoghue's other books.

Tags: books, reviews, romance, ireland, canada, lesbian

Read more...

Show less...

Julie Anne Long: The Secret to Seduction

• On Amazon
• Author's website

Julie Anne Long writes beautiful passages about emotion, about being exquisitely aware of another person, about a fledgling relationship. She also writes clunky, irritating plot and pointless, overwrought secondary characters. I almost set the book down after chapter 2. I'm glad I persisted, but I can't recommend the book as a whole. It's frustrating, because here and there Long's prose can be exceptional. The book is strong in the middle, but forced and chaotic at the beginning and end.

In The Secret to Seduction, Sabrina Fairleigh starts out a rather self-righteous small-town vicar's daughter. A few days' stay at the home of Rhys Gillray, Earl of Rawden, changes Sabrina immeasurably. Rhys is bored with his life and his coloratura mistress, so he tests Sabrina against his alter ego--The Libertine, rakish author of sensual poetry. In short order the two end up married, and then several subplots play the story out. An intimate, relatively contained romance story goes wild with secret identities, secret sisters, a false suitor, blackmail, international intrigue, and a whodunit complete with cliffhanger court trial.

The good parts

Sabrina's response to Rhys's sensual poetry is lovely, and hot without being explicit. The poetry opens up her emotions in a new way; perhaps it's her first conscious exposure to sensuality, or the first time it's evoked by a man within her social circle.

Though with every page her mind told her she should stop reading, her hands, as if of their own accord, turned the next page and the next. Until at least her head swam with the explicit, lush heat of the words.

I like the use of reading as a central plot point. For Sabrina, reading is transformative. Her experience illustrates that words are dangerous; her innocence is gone by the time she finishes reading The Libertine's poetry, regardless of her physical state.

Besides, she's carried away by a good read... and a sexy read, too! And I appreciate Long's description of what romantic writing can be:

The poetry wasn't salacious. The word was far too simple. There was a very focused beauty to it, and a subtlety difficult to describe.... And in some ways they were reverent, his poems, but they were also shameless and abandoned.

The other outstanding parts of the book are a few equally tight-focus scenes between Sabrina and Rhys. Long writes beautifully about their burgeoning intimacy, without too much heavy-handed explication.

And music too

As with the poetry, I enjoyed Long's use of music to illustrate character and show an unspoken understanding between the accomplished musicians at the house party. Music and poetry are time-honored ways to indicate passion, heroism, sophistication, closeness to both the sacred and the profane. A recent article in The Guardian describes Monteverdi's setting of Orpheus and Eurydice as

a conscious attempt to recapture what music meant to the ancient world: something that was not merely a skill, a display of virtuosity, but an enchantment, something that spoke to the soul, something deeply and sweetly natural.

Rhys is the one with all the poetic ability; their talents are a little more evenly matched in music. Sabrina doesn't excel as do Rhys and his mistress Sophia. But when Sabrina performs well at the piano, she becomes one of the inner circle of artists in the house, someone worthy of Rhys' attention and Sophia's competitive spirit.

The not-so-good parts

This is the 3rd book in a series. The most jumbled writing occurs early on, in bringing the reader up to speed on the secret sisters story from books 1-2. However, that's not the only problem in the writing. As soon as the focus moves from Sabrina and Rhys, the writing, plotting, and pacing are eye-rollingly bad.

Part of the problem is that Long's history is "wallpaper" at best: as soon as Sabrina engages the larger society, the shallowness of the historical setting is apparent. The novel works so much better in the isolation of Rhys' estate, I suspect it would cohere best of all if Long transplanted Sabrina, Rhys, and some sexy books to a sealed cargo container.

There's also a lot of breathlessly bad prose:

She wondered what on earth the woman had said to cause such a pronounced reaction from such a very large man. Such passions. How uncomfortable it must be to be at the mercy of them.

And with that thought, somehow she knew: this man was the earl.

Sabrina tried to force her interest and trepidation back into the clothes of compassion, but they wriggled back out again.

They wriggled back out again? Enough said.

I'm torn in reviewing The Secret because some of Long's prose is excellent. I wonder if this is a case of a good writer who hasn't found the right niche. The Secret to Seduction read like a great novella unwisely expanded to book length. Stripped of the ungainly side plots, The Secret could be a lovely shorter work, a meditation on awakening sensuality and intimacy. I won't be reading Long's earlier books, but I would love to read a novella.

Grade: C

It's been a bad week on the "L" shelf. Next reviews brought to you by the letters A and D.

Tags: books, reviews, novel, fiction, romance, historical

Read more...

Show less...

Julia London: Extreme Bachelor

• On Amazon
• Author's website

Extreme Bachelor is full of empty-headed gender stereotypes, a tough guy who talks like a soap opera, a heroine who's too stupid to live, a bad guy who's too stupid to live, a large cast of extra women who are too stupid ... you get the picture.

Prologue: Leah Klein (actress) loves Michael Raney (secret agent man). Michael might love Leah. Michael breaks up with Leah when the CIA sends for him. Leah has a breakdown and passes up the movie role of a lifetime.

Rest of story: Leah's next big chance is a minor part in War of the Soccer Moms. (This is where I should have stopped reading.) Michael, meanwhile, retires from the CIA and joins his friends' company, Thrillseekers Anonymous. Leah and Michael are reunited when T.A. is hired to teach the soccer moms to do warlike tuck and rolls.

Michael's boffed every actress in Hollywood, so naturally the cast of Soccer Moms includes Leah and several of his recent conquests. Michael thinks the boffees are irrelevant: all he wants is Leah. Leah says no way, maybe, yes please, you broke my heart, no, yes, you unfaithful liar, yes, I don't trust you, yes baby yes. Michael's confused. He pouts and goes on quasi-dates with other women--women who invariably turn up in Leah's vicinity and stir trouble. (By this point I'm rooting against the romance. Leah and Michael only deserve each other in the punitive sense of the phrase.)

Trying hard, but...

Extreme Bachelor was praised by Publishers Weekly and others for its "wit" and "humor". Apparently I got a defective humor gene. I get bored with self-absorbed characters who whine and try to convince the world that that's cute. Sex and the City is not for me.

Also, why is repetitious shallowness funny? Most of the humor seems to involve women forgetting everything as soon as anyone mentions shoes. Literally: Leah derails a woman's train of thought by looking at her shoes. Now, I like shoes, but this wore thin.

EVERYone is stupid

It's not only the soccer moms. Everyone in Extreme Bachelor is on the ditzy side. Michael forgets every woman he's dated since Leah. As several of them appear on-set, and they're all desperate to get him back, this forgetting is quite a feat.

Leah forgets everything else whenever she gets a chance to talk about herself. This is good and bad. The book briefly perks up near the climax, when it looks like Leah will take "too stupid to live" to its Darwinian extreme. Surely if she pulls this ditzy act on the Bad Guy, she'll get herself whacked?

Sadly not. The Bad Guy's a ditz too, which makes the climax the slowest scene in the book. Drawn-out, labored dialog--mostly Leah and the Bad Guy exchanging Dr. Phil-like advice. When Leah and Michael are tied up, awaiting execution:

"I think," said [the Bad Guy], his eyes getting all squinty as he thought hard about it, "that you have been hurt in this life, Leah. Your heart has been broken, and it is not so easy to mend."

Leah forgot the rope a moment. "That's true."

Oh. God. Michael was now in danger of vomiting.

She FORGOT the ROPE?

And in the denouement, a group of women "almost killed each other over a pair of shoes." Surprise!

Inconsistent characters

By halfway through the book, I didn't believe a word of London's characterizations. Leah veers from shallow to tragic with no middle ground. We're told that after dating Michael for a few months, she was so in love that she went through AGONY, just AGONY, when he left. Does she ever show this kind of emotion? No... just a recurring freak-out when his exes appear in the wings.

Michael, in contrast, is a hero with a painful past, vulnerable and loving and heart-on-his-sleeve... no, he's a cynical, physical, secretive CIA agent. (There's no attempt to make this combination credible.) He declares his love in purple prose straight from a soap opera. He's never forgotten her look, her smell, the feel of her. She's everything to him. Nothing and no one else matters. Be still my heart. But in practice he seems to fare just fine without Leah. Cancel that membership in Codeps. Anon.

In principle, I love the idea of a man of parts. Not all tough guy, not all poetry, but a character who's real and layered. But there's well-rounded, and there's characterization that gives you whiplash. Michael's a victim of the latter.

So. In Extreme Bachelor, men are hot, skirt-chasing bastards who care deeply (albeit intermittently) when they're resting between skirts. The women are shallow, needy cats who compete viciously for men but can be distracted by shoes or talking about themselves. Inconsistent and not very interesting.

Read instead

This kind of writing is so not my cuppa, that I have trouble coming up with a better-written substitute of the same kind. If you like the shoe angle, try Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me--Min has great shoes (Cal even loves them), but mentioning footwear doesn't suck her brain out through her eyes. If you like humorous romance with mild suspense, I enjoyed Marianna Jameson's Big Trouble. If you like Extreme Bachelor's humor, I can't help you.

--Update! I found the perfect substitute! Jennifer Crusie is back in the game with a romantic comedy--romantic suspense--sexy screwball comedy--tender mob story--well, I don't know what to call it, but it's good. London tries to get romance and humor out of unlikely characters, unlikely jobs, and a suspense plot. Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer combine the same elements, very successfully, in Agnes and the Hitman.

---

Grade for Bachelor: D
I can't give an "F" to a book that uses language this well. But I can't give a C to a book that bored and annoyed me. This is exactly the sort of book Ds are made for.

Tags: books, reviews, fiction, romance, chicklit

Read more...

Show less...

Cait London: At the Edge

On Amazon
Author's website

At the Edge feels strangely dated. Remember all the 1980s red-cover Silhouette romances with these themes?

Disturbingly tortured hero and heroine?
Neil Olafson whose baby son was kidnapped; Claire Brown who's psychic, was kidnapped by Evil Scientist Fiends as a child, lost a baby, AND can't be near her beloved family because their psychicness makes hers hard to manage.

In an isolated place (often in the American West)?
The wheat fields of Montana

They never talk about anything in particular, but somehow they're mysteriously bonded?
Yes, but this time there's an explanation. It's something magical in their shared Viking ancestry. Unfortunately, explaining the bond isn't an adequate substitute for showing the reader a real relationship.

His protective/possessive instincts prevent him from understanding the Truth about her?
To give a little credit: in this case he's protective, not possessive, and the truth about Claire is pretty weird. (Though honestly, the truth about Neil looks weirder by the end. Maybe the shoe is on the other foot.)

Manymanymany pages of overwrought discussion of emotions and fears?
Yes, yes, yes.

(optional)
Acquaintance who wishes one or both protagonists harm?
Ohhhhh my, yes. This book ODs on the forces of evil. Seriously, if I were Claire I'd think twice about getting involved with a guy whose brother is practically Voldemort, whose so-called friends would do such appalling things to him, whose business acquaintances hate him with seething yuckiness, whose ex-girlfriend is embittered and delusional.... Really, the picture is bleak, and Neil's judgment is questionable. (Though perhaps Claire's is too: you'd think an empath would drive into town, feel all the eeeeevil running rampant, and step on the gas pedal.)

And then there's Neil's side. Why on earth doesn't he run screaming when he realizes some evil fog/water/spirit wants to have its foggy way with him, Claire, or both? Though I'm willing to suspend disbelief over his actions, because once we start talking psychic fogs, all rationality is out the window. Really it's Claire's unquestioning support for Neil that disturbs me. This guy has a way of attracting creeps. Run, Claire, run!

The updated version

To be fair, I should note the familiar story's been updated since its heyday.

No coerced sex for her own good!
Why am I celebrating this? Because the '80s flashback is that strong in this book. But seriously, At the Edge is an upgrade in several ways: at no point does Neil think Claire's a tramp, lusting after his brother, or caused a loved one's suicide. Nor does he force her to confront her own sexuality (a.k.a. "You hate me for this, but in the end you'll like it"). Both Claire and Neil are pretty modern romance characters on that front.

Paranormal premise!
Though I'm not sure that's so new after all. Paranormals with vampires were rare in the '80s romances I'm thinking of, but ESP did crop up occasionally. In this case the ESP theme is a natural extension of an old premise: "Special woman with extraordinary talent needs isolation from the cold, cruel world... and much gentle coaxing into healthy relationship." All that's required for this setup is a heroine (or hero) with Grave Psychic Wounds.

Heroine has family!
Claire isn't totally isolated with Neil. He's not controlling, and she's not remotely in his power. She has frequent phone conversations with her sisters, and she lets Neil know that she'll always be close to her family. For every time he takes care of her, she does the same for him. Again, a more modern-romance style of relationship than was presented in some of those '80s novels.

The isolated, powerless heroine is sometimes (even now) taken to such extremes that it seems to set up female dependence and long-suffering as the basis for a relationship. I think Jane on DearAuthor is right that the isolated heroine emphasizes a strange dichotomy of "Alone and Miserable or Together and Happy". Fortunately, in At the Edge London puts her characters in isolation but doesn't follow up with the rest of the trope.

Sexy cover!
Way, way deceptive. This was NOT a sexy read. In fact, London lingers so intimately over the gory details of the soulmate connection that when the bedroom door slams shut, it's a shock. I guess Claire and Neil have no modesty about thinking and talking about their inmost needs and fears, but sex? Ew, no, that's private!

Read instead

When I was a teenager I loved this setup. Damaged heroine; initially assholish hero sees the light and coaxes her back to happiness. Wahh! Tissue, please! Sometimes it still works for me. But these days I expect a modicum of character development beyond the Wahh!, and a plot that isn't driven by adding a random psycho whenever the relationship wears thin.

If you want a good wallow, better written but in a similar vein, Elizabeth Lowell wrote some of the best '80s novels of this type. Chain Lightning (1988) had a tortured heroine and a nice emotional range of funny/hot/pathos. Love Song for a Raven (1987) wasn't my favorite but my friends loved the tortured hero. In those books Lowell did the tortured hero/heroine, melodrama and Soul! Deep! Pain!, but also good dialog and good writing in general.

Grade for Edge: D.
Done before, done better.

Tags: books, reviews, fiction, romance, paranormal

Read more...

Show less...

Paula Guran: Best New Paranormal Romance

• On Amazon
• Editor's website

While some of these stories are excellent, none of them resembles what I've previously read as "paranormal romance". Some are romantic; very few are paranormal. I'd call the collection a cross-section of supernatural and straight-up sci fi/fantasy, generally involving significant romantic relationships. I'll review the stories first, then talk about the collection as a whole and Guran's definition of paranormal romance.

[Update: Guran's new anthology is called Best New Romantic Fantasy 2, a much better title if it's like this collection.]

---

The stories

In many of these stories, a crucial part is the reader's unfolding understanding of the magical element. I'll try not to "spoil" that.

Follow Me Light by Elizabeth Bear
Alternately arid and gripping, in part because the story's time moves at varying speeds. At a couple of points Pinky comes into crisp focus with strong physical description; near the end the narrator does too.
Grade: B+

A Maze of Trees by Claudia O'Keefe
A strangely lovely story, full of longing and loneliness and sense of place. An excellent grounding in the physical world sets up a connection between the inner/outer realities that's essential to the story.
Grade: A-

The Shadowed Heart by Catherine Asaro
Straight-up space sci fi, of the dated variety. The characters are drawn in very archetypal male/female constructs: he large, half-machine, a warrior, isolated; she small, frail, a teacher, self-sacrificing, with a loving family.
Grade: C-

Walpurgis Afternoon by Delia Sherman
A drawing-room piece portraying magic as a charming addition to suburban life. Apparently magical people are attractive, nonjudgmental, well to do, content, and desirable neighbors. Not remotely a romance. Geoff and Burney seem to exist solely to express disapproval of (a) lesbianism and (b) magic. One such character in a short story gets the message across; two is the author clubbing me on the head.
Grade: C+

A Knot of Toads by Jane Yolen
Delightfully neo-Gothic. Yolen has a light, deft hand for a hair-raising tale. The 1930s setting adds atmosphere without making the story feel remote.
Grade: A-

Calypso in Berlin by Elizabeth Hand
Hand reaches back to the Odysseus story to evoke the cruel side of love and eternity. The most densely layered story in the collection, Calypso asks what we really love: the lover, or who we are with that person. Mordantly provocative.
Grade: B+

A Hero's Welcome by Rebecca York
Ultra-old-school sci fi. Again, archetypal characters, though better developed than in Shadowed Heart. Technically solid writing, but full of predictable tropes and not a particularly memorable voice.
Grade: C

Single White Farmhouse by Heather Shaw
More charm than plot. I enjoyed the Baba Yaga imagery and the overall concept, but that isn't enough to carry the story; it goes stale before the end. Like Walpurgis, a male secondary character serves as a disapproving Greek chorus over lesbianism and sex.
Grade: C+

Magic in a Certain Slant of Light by Deborah Coates
A well crafted story, just the right length for what it wants to tell. Nora's life is creeping toward predictability, psychically, emotionally, and professionally. Her regaining the magic is a straightforward story but with nice layerings of symbol and meaning.
Grade: B+

Fir Na Tine by Sandra McDonald
Men who burn, and the women who douse them? Something seems a little off in the premise. At its best, this should be a story of longing for the fire but being unable to survive it. But there are too many episodes that don't develop the story; it runs out of gas.
Grade: C+

A Treatise on Fewmets by Sarah Prineas
The only story in the collection that I think needs some attention to basic writing craft. Slightly clumsy prose and characterization. However, quirkiness saves Fewmets to some extent.
Grade: C-

The Hard Stuff by John Grant
Good writing, in an interestingly individual voice. I enjoyed the descriptions, from quotidian details to Fairyland experiences. The cultural setup is angry and exaggerated, but it mostly hangs together as part of the narrator's character and experiences. I was surprised by the almost grafted-on second ending. It's an interesting choice, to end a nebulous chain of events with such certainty.
Grade: B

---

The collection

I enjoyed the atmospheres conjured up by A Maze of Trees by Claudia O'Keefe and A Knot of Toads by Jane Yolen. Some of the other stories didn't seem very fresh or "new" to me. The two space stories in particular were so full of old-school sci fi tropes that I can't imagine why they were included as new, paranormal, or romance.

The writing is consistently high-quality, though a couple of the stories are insubstantial and fizzle after a few pages. Several stories have a strong theme of accepting difference. Magic, myth, and love are varyingly portrayed as a sweet part of everyday life, and as a more chilling power.

Some are love stories, but some aren't even vaguely romantic; I wonder whether simply including so-called feminine concerns (matings, weddings) justified their inclusion. Among the romances, in some the couple end up together; in some the resolution is loving but not necessarily "happily ever after". I appreciated the variety, but many genre romance readers would be taken aback. Similarly, a few stories involve the paranormal in some form, but others seem questionable. Much as Guran tries to define paranormal romance to include her odd selections, the collection really is misnamed.

In another strange editorial decision, two stories had very similar secondary characters: mature men who express nearly-identical views on lesbians. The scenes are remarkably similar. Is this de rigeur in tales of alternate matings? Is this man a stock character expressing societal disapproval? The purely emblematic nature of that character is especially clear in Walpurgis Afternoon, so I wasn't impressed to run across it again four stories later in Single White Farmhouse.

---

Defining paranormal romance

Paula Guran is the editor of fantasy imprint Juno Books and the Dark Echo horror blog, and not a fan of romance. Her introductory essay tries to redefine both "romance" and "paranormal". It's not an easy task (several authors attempted it on DearAuthor a few months ago). I'm more comfortable with Guran's definition of "romance" than her expansive take on "paranormal".

Guran sets out to explore both the "happily ever after" variety of genre romance and a realm of romance that doesn't guarantee the "HEA". I applaud the idea, but the execution is lacking. In particular, while I'm not a staunch defender of the HEA, it can work beautifully when done well. Unfortunately, the stories with the strongest HEAs are the weakest in the volume, laden with old-school conventions from past generations of both sci-fi and romance. I have to wonder whether Guran is trying to show weaknesses in the "happily ever after" convention, or whether she's not up to date on what is considered romance these days. In the book's introduction, Guran says she's "tried a few, but other than Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, Mary Stewart, and the romantic (but not Romance) novels of Daphne du Maurier... I don't recall reading much I liked." I think that statement explains some of the collection's weakness. (She also says "LKH wrote great sex scenes." Coming from sf/f/h, I can see why she'd think so. And I don't entirely disagree... or didn't the first time I read them. But again, does she know the modern romances?)

My larger issue with the collection is on the paranormal side. Guran opens up "paranormal" to include

the supernatural--magic, the occult, ghosts, shapechangers like werewolves, psychic powers, superhuman abilities, travel through time, fantastic or legendary creatures (vampires, fairies, gods and goddesses, angels, demons, and the like), a fantasy world or alternative-Earth or -reality setting, relationships that continue to exist over eras and eons, etc.--or have a futuristic or science-fictional element.

In short, any story not set in current reality. In my view, that definition is much broader than what's commonly understood to be paranormal fiction. Including sci fi and fantasy on that list is the largest problem; those are well-established as separate genres. It's a pity, because there are many sf/f collections out there; a "best of" for true paranormal fiction would be a unique contribution.

Guran's intro and her blog list Laurell K Hamilton, MaryJanice Davidson, Charlaine Harris, Christine Feehan, and Sherrilyn Kenyon as exemplars of paranormal romance--both HEA and other romance. I agree; those are among the names that have shaped the genre. I also really like how Guran characterizes these authors: as "fantasy adventure stories for women", in the style of Robert E Howard's Conan the Barbarian, with "romance as part of life's adventure". However, those authors have little in common with the stories selected for Best New Paranormal Romance. (On the other hand, I appreciate her inclusion of the Elizabeth Bear and Claudia O'Keefe stories: those are out of the ordinary but still distinctly paranormals.)

Guran quotes Kim Wilkins' article The Process of Genre: Authors, Reader, Institutions (2005), which says that "genres are formed in relation to reader reception and expectation" rather than by publishers' definitions. Supporting this, Guran points out that the public uses the term "paranormal romance" in a broader sense than do genre publishers. However, in this collection Guran--as a genre editor--redefines paranormal romance in a way that I don't think would be recognized by most readers of Hamilton, Davidson, Harris, and the rest. My feeling is that Guran has recycled a number of sci fi and fantasy ideas under a different name. As some of the DearAuthor commenters said, it could be a misguided grab to get the romance market reading sf/f. But my sense is more that Guran truly believes that this is a reasonable fit. I disagree.

Grade: The quality varied enormously, so I'll average it. B.
The book at Juno: www.juno-books.com/paranormal.html

Tags: books, reviews, romance, horror, paranormal, fantasy, sci fi, witch, myth, legend, nymph, psychic, love

Read more...

Show less...

Jane Feather: A Wicked Gentleman

• On Amazon

A Wicked Gentleman is dull. It's too bad, because the main characters have potential. Nell seems intelligent at the start, and Lord Harry Bonham sounds delish: man-about-town and codemaster for the War Office. But the plot is seriously tired.

Prologue: A Bad Man hides a Secret Spy Thingy in a London home. Naturally, Harry must retrieve it.

Cut to the countryside, and start counting chestnuts.

Lady Cornelia (Nell) Dagenham is a young widow (1) who's never experienced true passion (2) but has two children and an overbearing father-in-law who exists to give Nell an excuse to go all drama queen whenever the story's starting to move.

Nell and her friends Aurelia and Livia plan a trip to London, only to be stymied by Nell's father-in-law. (He's a horribly unconvincing offstage villain.) In the nick of time, a great-aunt dies. Great-Auntie's will is full of ludicrous codicils (3), but leaves Livia that very same London house (4) that holds the Secret Spy Thingy. So the three young women take possession of the London house, unaware of the Thingy. Harry knows, though, and for a smart guy he makes a total hash of retrieving the Thingy.

Nothing. happens.

Nell isn't the most interesting character, but she shines at instantaneous dislike (5) and lying for no good reason (6). She and Harry keep up the empty hostilities, and for 100 pages nothing new happens. There's some posturing about society, being feisty (7), and illustrating the women's friendships. But no one does anything.

Eventually Harry makes his move on the Secret Spy Thingy and the Untapped Well of Lurve. Nell's all for some lurving, until she remembers her father-in-law. She won't explain her situation, but she's sufficiently woebegone to worry Harry. Not to be outdone, Harry then recalls that he too has a secret sorrow (8).

The hero who drips

I like that Harry's a liar who screws Nell for his spying mission. I imagine most readers would agree more with Jane on this, but to me Harry's a better character because he sticks to his mission and doesn't get all emotional. Unfortunately, as soon as they hit the sheets, Harry starts acting gooey. He even does the Best Sex Ever routine (9): "You have unmanned me, sweetheart.... I had expected to enjoy myself, but not to be so transported." Ah well. Another case of glittery hooha.

Harry also wins points with me later in the book by giving his men permission to kill Nell's cousin Nigel if necessary. It's not a "nice guy" move, but I like it. A lot. I like Harry's jerkiness because (a) Nigel's a twerp, and (b) Harry needs to show some spine. (My enjoyment of Harry's behavior is partly a measure of my boredom with these mealymouthed characters.)

I hate a hero who loses sight of his personal beliefs and goals because he's met a woman who may be The One. There goes everything that made him interesting and unique; now he's just another Fabio doll. Harry's a spy for the War Office; Nigel is helping out the bad guys. I'm glad Harry didn't second-guess himself because of Nell.

Almost as bad as the hero who folds is the hero who drips. He tries to cover up what he's doing, gets caught, and makes excuses. "I changed my mind the moment we met! But I still had to do it! I felt bad though, I swear!" Harry muddled through this scene OK, but I still wished he'd say, "Oh, get over yourself."

Proof positive

The ending is atrocious. Early in the book I'd wondered if I were being overly critical, but the dénouement proved me right and then some. There's a lot to sort out, but it's dead easy: Harry has a lightbulb moment. Both his Secret Sorrow and Nell's father-in-law can be nullified by getting married! I can't be the only reader who thought, Doh, this is great! If only they'd thought to get married... you know, back when they were thinking of getting married! *headdesk*

The pity is, I love Regencies; I love spies (brainy man of action, rowr). I should have been an easy sell. But this was the most boring 474 pages I've read in a long time. And seriously, 474 pages for this? It should have been tightened up to half the length, and published as a Harlequin Regency.

Grade: D+

Tags: books, reviews, romance, historical, spy, espionage, Regency, England

Read more...

Show less...

Megan Hart: Broken, An Erotic Novel

• On Amazon
• Author's website

A lot of people love this book. For me, it's a well-written, rather overdone book with a couple of major disappointments. However, if a book that makes you cry is automatically "great", this one's for you. If you loved Daddy-Long-Legs at 13, then I think you'd love Broken at 20.

Five years ago, Sadie married Adam. Four years ago, Adam was paralyzed from the neck down. Two years ago, Sadie began a slow-moving but sensual affair of the mind. Once a month, she meets Joe for lunch, and Joe tells her--in explicit detail--about his latest sexual conquest. Sadie returns to work and husband, and in private replays Joe's stories and touches herself.

Broken is entirely in Sadie's voice. Each month we hear one of Joe's stories--as told by Sadie. We don't just hear his stories second-hand, we hear them in Sadie's voice, projected into his lover's perspective. Meanwhile, we also get to know Sadi