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[skygiants]

The other Barbara Michaels I read on vacation is The Master of Blacktower, which actually was Barbara Michaels' first Gothic, falling squarely into the proud genre known as 'Jane Eyre Lite.'

The heroine of this one is Damaris Gordon, a plucky Victorian (?) lass who decides to hire herself out as a personal secretary/librarian after her father's death rather than marry her boring cousin.

She is eventually employed as a personal librarian by Gavin Hamilton, a DARK, BROODING HIGHLANDER with a SINISTER SCAR, SINISTER BLACK-GLOVED HANDS, and a SINISTER KILT. He lives in a SINISTER SCOTTISH CASTLE with his INVALID DAUGHTER (whom he hates), SEVERAL SERVANTS (who all hate him), and a PERSONAL MINSTREL (degree of affection unclear, because the personal minstrel shows up for Damaris' first dinner at Blacktower, plays a Forbidden Song -- about Mary Queen of Scots! -- to trigger a Gavin Hamilton temper tantrum, and then pretty much immediately DIES. Sorry, personal minstrel!)

Damaris then spends a few chapters befriending Gavin Hamilton's sickly, neglected daughter, who has Unexplained Victorian Fake Paralysis (it's just ... never occurred to her to try to walk! UNTIL DAMARIS COMES ALONG). The book gets like halfway through a cute Secret Garden plotline with her before suddenly deciding that actually Annabelle is annoying and we don't care about her, what we REALLY care about is Damaris' helpless passion for the SINISTER KILT-WEARING TEMPER TANTRUM-THROWING GENTLEMAN who MIGHT BE TRYING TO MURDER HER.

The really remarkable thing about Gavin Hamilton is that he does not have even one single redeeming quality. He's a dick to his daughter, he's a dick to his servants, he's a dick to Damaris during the approximately three or four conversations they have onscreen before she falls madly, passionately, self-destructively in love with him; they don't even have common interests, since he never uses the library and he's not particularly interested in it! He's NOT EVEN HOT. Not unless you're one of Kate Beaton's Brontes, anyway. And even with Rochester, for all his flaws (and let's be clear, the dude has many, MANY flaws) you can absolutely understand why Jane is into him -- he is definitely an asshole, but he brings out the most interesting parts of her and makes her sparkle.

Damaris, on the other hand ... look, the heart wants what it wants and all, but personally I would rather have married the boring cousin, who turns up midway through the book and proceeds to be perplexed and dismayed by the entire situation, as well he should be. "Damaris, why is your boss fighting a duel to the death in the dining room with the next-door neighbor? I DON'T UNDERSTAND AND I THINK WE SHOULD LEAVE." Me too, Cousin Randall. Me, too.

...though on the other hand, it does turn out that a solid chunk of Gavin Hamilton's SINISTER AND MASSIVELY DICKISH BEHAVIOR is the result of him attempting to actually get a divorce from his secretly alive wife before hitting on Damaris rather than riding straight down bigamy highway! 'TAKE THAT, ROCHESTER,' says Barbara Michaels. Joke's on you, Gavin Hamilton; turns out Damaris would have been totally cool with riding down bigamy highway.

Comments

[watersword]

Sinister kilts are the BEST KILTS.

[ceitfianna]

I'm really distracted by the name, Damaris as I'm in a reality tv watching phase and that's the name of a contestant on one of the shows. Jane Eyre never worked for me but I love the cousin who goes this isn't right.

[issenllo]

I think the more Gothic-ish of Barbara Michaels' novels happened earlier in her writing career, and engages the more annoying aspects of romantic novels. I think Micheals made a beginner's mistake of sorts in writing about Gavin that way - the later ones are better... have better male suitors, anyway. :-)

[sovay]

"Damaris, why is your boss fighting a duel to the death in the dining room with the next-door neighbor? I DON'T UNDERSTAND AND I THINK WE SHOULD LEAVE." Me too, Cousin Randall. Me, too.

What happens to him?

[kore]

Gavin Hamilton, a DARK, BROODING HIGHLANDER with a SINISTER SCAR, SINISTER BLACK-GLOVED HANDS, and a SINISTER KILT. He lives in a SINISTER SCOTTISH CASTLE with his INVALID DAUGHTER (whom he hates), SEVERAL SERVANTS (who all hate him), and a PERSONAL MINSTREL (degree of affection unclear, because the personal minstrel shows up for Damaris' first dinner at Blacktower, plays a Forbidden Song -- about Mary Queen of Scots! -- to trigger a Gavin Hamilton temper tantrum, and then pretty much immediately DIES. Sorry, personal minstrel!)

I just want you to know I am apparently hatching a lovely menstrual migraine but this made me laugh for about five minutes straight and I feel much better, largely because SINISTER KILT

[luzula]

...I was just wondering HOW the kilt was sinister.

[pedanther]

a cute Secret Garden plotline

The thought has occurred to me before that The Secret Garden is basically a Gothic anyway, at least to begin with.

I mean, look: It's about a young female orphan who's sent off to live in the remote mansion of her saturnine uncle, which is overseen by a forbidding housekeeper and there's a secret occupant whose moans echo through the halls on dark nights, and later a doctor who may be up to no good.

Only it goes on to thoroughly dismantle the plot arc because everybody - the uncle, the housekeeper, the secret occupant, the doctor, and probably a few others I'm not calling to mind right now - turns out to be basically an ordinary decent human being once you get to know them, and nobody's actually plotting anything.

[dhampyresa]

Sinister Kilts?

Well, okay, then.

[skygiants]

I think the kilt in and of itself would probably be fine ... were it not on Gavin Hamilton's SINISTER LEGS!

[skygiants]

I love Jane Eyre, but, I mean, Jane's cousins were ALSO in their rights to be like "maybe ... don't go back to the attempted bigamist who locked his wife in the attic? Just a thought."

[skygiants]

It's true! Though my favorite is still probably Someone in the House, which has no actual love interest in the end because he's too busy having invisible sex. With the house.

[skygiants]

After Gavin Hamilton goes DUELFACED MURDERPANTS, Randall sensibly heads back to civilization with Damaris, Annabelle, and the only two servants capable of holding a conversation. Then Damaris decides she Must Return To Her True Love Regardless Of His Duelfaced Murderpants Ways, leaves a letter for Randall informing him that she's totally been banging Gavin Hamilton and therefore he should just stop attempting to rescue her (she has not been banging Gavin Hamilton, this is wishful thinking on her part) and heads back into duelfaced murderpants land. The implication is that Randall will probably end up marrying Annabelle, which is fine, maybe with each other they will find better storylines!

[skygiants]

It helped that at the time I was reading this I was on vacation with a party that included my girlfriend's six-foot-tall Scottish-dancing elderly father, who is the last person I saw in a kilt and therefore was the person I envisioned EVERY TIME this was mentioned.

(Also, I am sorry about your migraine!)

[skygiants]

Oh, The Secret Garden is totally a baby Gothic! It's one of the reasons that book is so great. :D THE DARK SECRET IN THE ATTIC is your cousin who's really just kind of a brat and could probably use a buddy.

[skygiants]

In the SINISTER SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS, what else could a kilt be but sinister?

[rachelmanija]

You forgot to mention that the gloves are because he has missing fingers, and Damaris realizes that someone's impersonating him when she grabs his hand (while falling off a parapet?) and feels actual fingers rather than cotton stuffing. Unless that's a different Michaels book.

Michaels' middle period is the best, where she goes all out playing with and reversing Gothic tropes. You have GOT to read Someone in the House, if you haven't already.

[rachelmanija]

Ha ha, never mind, you already read it. Isn't that the best? It's like the ultimate deadpan Gothic parody.

[skygiants]

I totally did forget to mention this! She actually DOES think it's him while she's falling off the parapet, and then when he's trying to prove it's not, he's like, "grab THIS!" and whips off his glove to reveal DRAMATIC FINGER LOSS!!!

It's never actually clear how he did lose the fingers, he's like 'they were sliced off ... in a waterfall ..... or maybe my secret half-brother evil servant chopped them off, idek myself."

[rachelmanija]

This reminds me of the one where the entire premise is that someone turns into a sea demon, who could it possibly be???? And then the sea demon appears! Who is it??? ….and then Michaels seems to forget about that and never mentions it again.

[skygiants]

I had a hell of a time reading it, I can only hope the people around me who were forced to listen to me cackle-shrieking "KEVIN'S AUNT IS STILL CONCERNED ABOUT HIS INVISIBLE SEX" at twenty-minute intervals were as entertained as I was.

[skygiants]

HAHAHA OMG THAT'S THE OTHER ONE I READ ON THIS VACATION, it's the last book I wrote up before this one. Someone in comments suggested it ought to've been an otome game, which is brilliant. In each ending the sea demon is a different eligible bachelor!

[rachelmanija]

In the hidden ending, the sea demon is revealed to actually be a pigeon.

[skygiants]

FULFILL THE PROMISE

[genarti]

NOW YOU UNDERSTAND MY DIFFICULTY WITH EVERY SINISTER KILT EVER.

To be fair, it's not just my dad. I have a large store of elderly Scottish-dancing kilt-wearing acquaintances. (Also a number of non-elderly ones, admittedly.) Some of them I like better than others, but none are mysteriously compellingly broodingly attractive yet sinister. Alas.