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Feb. 15th, 2016 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI really committed to vacation-y reading on my vacation this year, and one of the most vacation-y of all was Barbara Michaels' Wait For What Will Come, which ...
....I don't think this book is intentional parody? I thought it was maybe just very early Barbara Michaels, but I just looked at her bibliography and actually it's pretty mid-career. So I don't know, all I know is that it's HILARIOUS.
Wait For What Will Come stars Carla Tregellas, a sensible young woman whose heritage is secretly so Celtic that she's BASICALLY an elf, thinks HER ELDERLY LAWYER: "there was something in her face that was alien [...] a hint of otherworldliness in the wide-spaced gray eyes and sharply cut features. Her ears, exposed by the short, tousled haircut, were small and delicate; [HER LAWYER] might have used the word 'pointed' if his vein of poetry had not been so deeply buried."
Anyway, Almost-An-Elf Carla inherits (of course) a big old Cornish country house under mysterious circumstances, and decides to visit it for herself before selling it off. There she promptly meets the sweet but ominous housekeeper, who warns her about the FAMILY MER-DEMON CURSE that carries off a young woman to the watery depths every two hundred years on Midsummer's Day. Fortunately, says the housekeeper, Carla will be long gone by then, which is a great relief to her mind!
Carla, of course, is immediately like "lol I've just decided to stay the whole summer, DEFINITELY want to be here on Curse Day, PROBABLY bathing in the water where the family mer-demon lives, sorry if that stresses you out!"
Carla also promptly meets not one, not two, but FIVE eligible but potentially sinister bachelors!
Bachelor A: Michael, the housekeeper's grandson, whom she finds weeding her plants and thus reasonably assumes is the gardener, but who in fact turns out to be a FAMOUS BALLET DANCER who has dropped out of performing shirtless ballet and is home performing shirtless gardening for MYSTERIOUS AND MAYBE EVIL REASONS! Michael, for the record, looks like a faun and has eyes that are "like river water with light slipping through it;"
Bachelor B: Alan, her lawyer -- not the same one who thinks she looks like an elf, but a different, hotter, more poetic lawyer with a fragile codependent sister, who looks like Laurence Olivier and sees no ethical problems with inviting his new client out on hot dates around the town;
Bachelor C: Simon, the local doctor, who is really into folklore and ALSO mentions multiple times how much Carla looks like an elf, with strong implications of how much this is a turn-on for him; has eyes "the shade of cornflowers, of Kashmir sapphires, of Siamese cats' eyes"
Bachelor D: Tim, Michael's fun-loving backpacking buddy who pops up to crash at the house a few chapters in and whose backstory does NOT check out; ugly-cute with charm so strong that Carla decides it's more like "subliminal hypnotism"
Bachelor E: the sweet white-haired vicar, who -- well, I'll just quote Carla herself on this one:
Really, she thought wryly, most women would sell their souls for a summer like this one: not one, not two, but four attractive men in close proximity--five, if you counted the vicar, and you certainly could count the vicar, if you liked the gentle aesthetic type. It was almost as if fate had presented her with a sampling of the best of the crop. Alan, handsome, sophisticated, masterful; Tim, deliciously homely, irresistibly friendly; Michael, dark and brooding, with a body like a Michelangelo sculpture; Simon, sweet and blond and dedicated ... it sounds like a soap opera, she thought irritably, and coughed.
(I spent the rest of the book desperately hoping the sweet white-haired vicar would turn out to be either the victorious love interest, or the most sinister villain of them all.)
Bachelor F: King Carter, the cat, who has eyes that are a "pale, clear green, like seawater," and is definitely "a male, and a functional male at that." Look, I quoted plenty of examples above, you tell me whether or not this is clear love interest descriptive language!
Carla proceeds to wander around the town with each eligible bachelor in turn (including the vicar and the cat), since she might as well give each their due. She also discovers the last disappeared girl's conveniently-located diary and judges it inane, poorly written, and boring. Meanwhile, various potentially-sinister potentially-supernatural events occur and people try to convince Carla that someone might be trying to chase her out of town with extreme prejudice; Carla, hilariously, responds by judging the plot's level of commitment ("But it's all so halfhearted!") and focusing on going through the attics looking for valuable teacups to sell on 1970s eBay.
Then the level of drama ramps up very abruptly, some extremely convoluted plots come into play (Carla: "It's the most complicated thing I ever heard!") and half the posse of eligible bachelors are involved in killing or attempting to kill the other half of them. Additionally, Carla, for reasons that do not EVEN seem good at the time, decides to try on the Ancestral Doomed Wedding Dress and wander down to the water for funsies on Family Mer-Demon Curse Day, which goes ABOUT as well as you'd expect.
My personal favorite reveal: the mystery of why dark, brooding, sinister Michael is lurking around the house instead of dancing ballet turns out to be that he threw his shoulder out of whack playing soccer with the boys and he really does just want to settle down and open a B&B!
I LOVE GOTHICS.
....I don't think this book is intentional parody? I thought it was maybe just very early Barbara Michaels, but I just looked at her bibliography and actually it's pretty mid-career. So I don't know, all I know is that it's HILARIOUS.
Wait For What Will Come stars Carla Tregellas, a sensible young woman whose heritage is secretly so Celtic that she's BASICALLY an elf, thinks HER ELDERLY LAWYER: "there was something in her face that was alien [...] a hint of otherworldliness in the wide-spaced gray eyes and sharply cut features. Her ears, exposed by the short, tousled haircut, were small and delicate; [HER LAWYER] might have used the word 'pointed' if his vein of poetry had not been so deeply buried."
Anyway, Almost-An-Elf Carla inherits (of course) a big old Cornish country house under mysterious circumstances, and decides to visit it for herself before selling it off. There she promptly meets the sweet but ominous housekeeper, who warns her about the FAMILY MER-DEMON CURSE that carries off a young woman to the watery depths every two hundred years on Midsummer's Day. Fortunately, says the housekeeper, Carla will be long gone by then, which is a great relief to her mind!
Carla, of course, is immediately like "lol I've just decided to stay the whole summer, DEFINITELY want to be here on Curse Day, PROBABLY bathing in the water where the family mer-demon lives, sorry if that stresses you out!"
Carla also promptly meets not one, not two, but FIVE eligible but potentially sinister bachelors!
Bachelor A: Michael, the housekeeper's grandson, whom she finds weeding her plants and thus reasonably assumes is the gardener, but who in fact turns out to be a FAMOUS BALLET DANCER who has dropped out of performing shirtless ballet and is home performing shirtless gardening for MYSTERIOUS AND MAYBE EVIL REASONS! Michael, for the record, looks like a faun and has eyes that are "like river water with light slipping through it;"
Bachelor B: Alan, her lawyer -- not the same one who thinks she looks like an elf, but a different, hotter, more poetic lawyer with a fragile codependent sister, who looks like Laurence Olivier and sees no ethical problems with inviting his new client out on hot dates around the town;
Bachelor C: Simon, the local doctor, who is really into folklore and ALSO mentions multiple times how much Carla looks like an elf, with strong implications of how much this is a turn-on for him; has eyes "the shade of cornflowers, of Kashmir sapphires, of Siamese cats' eyes"
Bachelor D: Tim, Michael's fun-loving backpacking buddy who pops up to crash at the house a few chapters in and whose backstory does NOT check out; ugly-cute with charm so strong that Carla decides it's more like "subliminal hypnotism"
Bachelor E: the sweet white-haired vicar, who -- well, I'll just quote Carla herself on this one:
Really, she thought wryly, most women would sell their souls for a summer like this one: not one, not two, but four attractive men in close proximity--five, if you counted the vicar, and you certainly could count the vicar, if you liked the gentle aesthetic type. It was almost as if fate had presented her with a sampling of the best of the crop. Alan, handsome, sophisticated, masterful; Tim, deliciously homely, irresistibly friendly; Michael, dark and brooding, with a body like a Michelangelo sculpture; Simon, sweet and blond and dedicated ... it sounds like a soap opera, she thought irritably, and coughed.
(I spent the rest of the book desperately hoping the sweet white-haired vicar would turn out to be either the victorious love interest, or the most sinister villain of them all.)
Bachelor F: King Carter, the cat, who has eyes that are a "pale, clear green, like seawater," and is definitely "a male, and a functional male at that." Look, I quoted plenty of examples above, you tell me whether or not this is clear love interest descriptive language!
Carla proceeds to wander around the town with each eligible bachelor in turn (including the vicar and the cat), since she might as well give each their due. She also discovers the last disappeared girl's conveniently-located diary and judges it inane, poorly written, and boring. Meanwhile, various potentially-sinister potentially-supernatural events occur and people try to convince Carla that someone might be trying to chase her out of town with extreme prejudice; Carla, hilariously, responds by judging the plot's level of commitment ("But it's all so halfhearted!") and focusing on going through the attics looking for valuable teacups to sell on 1970s eBay.
Then the level of drama ramps up very abruptly, some extremely convoluted plots come into play (Carla: "It's the most complicated thing I ever heard!") and half the posse of eligible bachelors are involved in killing or attempting to kill the other half of them. Additionally, Carla, for reasons that do not EVEN seem good at the time, decides to try on the Ancestral Doomed Wedding Dress and wander down to the water for funsies on Family Mer-Demon Curse Day, which goes ABOUT as well as you'd expect.
My personal favorite reveal: the mystery of why dark, brooding, sinister Michael is lurking around the house instead of dancing ballet turns out to be that he threw his shoulder out of whack playing soccer with the boys and he really does just want to settle down and open a B&B!
I LOVE GOTHICS.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 06:03 am (UTC)fine toosecretly a human all along.no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 07:36 am (UTC)I take it he does not turn out to be a mer-demon, which makes me sad, because I would read that novel.
I am also disappointed that the hypnotizingly charming, nothing-to-look-at Tim is not some kind of elf or other supernatural creature himself, because that is basically the definition of glamour, damn it.
I think I am not in many respects the audience for non-genre novels.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 11:23 am (UTC)The first time I read this, it was a pretty heady experience to imagine so many eligible bachelors, even if the overall plot is rather out there. I love Barbara Michaels.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 11:36 am (UTC)OhmiGod, a friend of mine recaps those awful Bachelor/ette shows in hilarious style and this was like that BUT WITH GOTHIC
(I spent the rest of the book desperately hoping the sweet white-haired vicar would turn out to be either the victorious love interest, or the most sinister villain of them all.)
He WASN'T evil?? Boo!
no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 01:15 pm (UTC)He was evil in my HEART!
no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 07:18 pm (UTC)Wait, people actually die during this dating game?
no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 11:16 pm (UTC)unless -- as is entirely possible -- he is actually the family mer-demon curse. THE OPTION'S OPEN and I for one am choosing to have it as my headcanon.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 11:17 pm (UTC)....too many negatives, what I mean to say is, YES, ABSOLUTELY DO
no subject
Date: 2016-02-16 11:19 pm (UTC)