skygiants | (no subject)

Listen To the Moon is not my favorite of Rose Lerner's books, but I'm fascinated by it because it's probably the least wish-fulfillment-y romance novel that I've ever read.

None of the protagonists are upper-class, which already is rare enough; the hero is John Toogood, a middle-aged valet with a stellar work ethic who lost his job as a result of the shenanigans in Sweet Disorder, the first book in the series (one thing I really like about Rose Lerner: her willingness to explore the fact that one person's happily ever after might be SUPER UNPLEASANT AND INCONVENIENT for other people) and the heroine is Sukey Grimes, a maid making ends meet with various boarding-house gigs around town.

Soon John is offered a position as a butler in the vicar's house, but the vicar wants his butler to be married for reasons of morals, so John and Sukey must make a marriage of convenience!

...this is pretty much the only tropey thing that happens in the book. The rest of the plot is a remarkably down-to-earth story about navigating a marriage: like, how do you deal when your husband is your boss? What about differences in age, personality, class, background? (Neither of them might be nobles, but the class difference between a trained valet to a high-ranking nobleman and a small-town maid-of-all-work who tidies up for boarders not much better-off than her is in fact NOT SMALL.) How do you make a life for yourself around the edges of a workday that goes from five AM to ten PM, every day, in a job that requires your individuality to be as sublimated as possible? And even if you make a life for yourself, how do you then manage to successfully include somebody else in it?

There's very little escapism in this book; Sukey and John's romance is not going to be magically lift them out of a life of labor, nor would they expect it to. Which doesn't mean they don't find happiness, of course, because it is a romance novel. (Also, Rose Lerner seems determined to make up for the lack of tropiness by putting in about twice as many sex scenes as in any other book of hers I've read.)

I also really appreciated the subplot non-romance, in which a middle-class white man pursues a working-class woman of color who informs him that their relationship is a bad idea, rallies support around her from colleagues who agree that their relationship is a bad idea, and then in fact successfully goes on NOT TO HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.

I am somewhat amazed this got published by a traditional publisher and I hope we will start seeing many more like it. DOWN WITH DUKES.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/437194.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

frayadjacent

Huh, I keep thinking I want to give romance a try, but I never know where to start. This sounds like it could be up my ally!

From:

skygiants

I would recommend any of Rose Lerner's books as good places to start! (Well, that I have read, which is all the ones in the Lively St. Lemeston series about Victorian small-town politics.)

From:

allchildren

Popping in to say I'm a newcomer to romance and I started with Zen Cho's The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo, which is A+ and also available for free on her blog: http://zencho.org/category/my-stories/the-perilous-life-of-jade-yeo/

Another popular starting place (which I proceeded to after the aforementioned) are Courtney Milan's Duchess Affair ($.99 on Amazon) and/or Duchess War (free!): http://www.courtneymilan.com/brotherssinister/

From:

skygiants

Jade Yeo is still probably my favorite romance novel/la of all time.

From:

frayadjacent

Thank you! I appreciate the recs and will be checking those out. :D

From:

sovay

the hero is John Toogood, a middle-aged valet with a stellar work ethic who lost his job as a result of the shenanigans in Sweet Disorder

That's great. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) had many problems, including most of its plot structure, but I loved how all of its problems proceeded from the fallout of the happily-ever-after of Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), which works great in a swashbuckling melodrama and has consequences in anything closer to real life. It was unexpectedly Into the Woods.

From:

skygiants

It's true! I actually remember very little about Curse of the Black Pearl besides Jack Norrington and his longest-of-suffering faces, which is probably for the best because they were amazing long-suffering faces.

From:

sovay

I actually remember very little about Curse of the Black Pearl besides Jack Norrington and his longest-of-suffering faces, which is probably for the best because they were amazing long-suffering faces.

That series (I speak only of the first three movies; I am aware that someday I will want to watch only the mermaid scenes from the fourth, but at this time I am still avoiding it) fascinates me because it ultimately failed in a mode that I have hardly ever seen before: it carried off the myth-arc beautifully, but blew most of the ordinary human interactions, including a coherent plot. That is not the usual order of priorites.

Incidentally, I just realized that I first heard of Rose Lerner when she weighed in on the terrible Nazi romance whose nomination by the RWA consumed most of the internet spaces I read last summer. So that's why her name has been looking familiar to me all this while.

From:

skygiants

I've never seen the three movies all together in reasonably close succession, so my memories of them are highly disjointed. Regrettably, it is probably the fourth one that I remember best.

Most of the things I've seen Rose Lerner say around the internet have been interesting and intelligent; she also did a great list of Jewish Regency romance novel ideas which you may have already seen, all of which I would very gladly consume.

From:

pedanther

Funnily enough, I spent a large chunk of this weekend re-reading On Stranger Tides, the novel that inspired the fourth movie. It's a very different story from the movie - no mermaids, for one thing - but I had the interesting experience that the pirate captain mentoring the naive hero reminded me enough of Jack Sparrow that I had to keep pausing to realign my mental image of him with the way he's actually described in the text.

One of the interesting things about the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie (the writers' commentary on the DVD is fascinating) is that it went through several major revisions as a straight pirate movie where Barbossa attacks Port Royal and kidnaps the governor's daughter for ransom before it got handed to a new set of writers who had the idea of adding all the skeleton-curse stuff and turning it around so that the pirates were after something else and only kidnapped the governor's daughter by mistake. Which means, among other things, that although it was fleshed out as a fantasy movie, it has the skeleton of a pirate movie and is populated by pirate movie characters. All the sequels were conceived as fantasy movies from the get-go, and I don't think they work the way the first one does.

(Which observation doesn't have a lot to do with what you were saying, but I've been looking for an excuse to say it to somebody.)

From:

sovay

but I had the interesting experience that the pirate captain mentoring the naive hero reminded me enough of Jack Sparrow that I had to keep pausing to realign my mental image of him with the way he's actually described in the text.

Makes sense to me. Someone involved in the film's production probably had the same reaction.

Which means, among other things, that although it was fleshed out as a fantasy movie, it has the skeleton of a pirate movie and is populated by pirate movie characters. All the sequels were conceived as fantasy movies from the get-go, and I don't think they work the way the first one does.

Well, they also don't work because they were filmed as they were being written and consequently have no structure to speak of, but that's an interesting shift of narrative priorities and does fit my observations about Dead Man's Chest and At World's End. The sea-myth does work beautifully! I would love the second two movies for Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman alone. The third has the least functional plot, but its underworld is full of gorgeous images: the Black Pearl sailing over a sea of stars, the dead who drift on the glassy currents without a ferryman to guide them, a candle kindled at the fore of each small boat to light their way. But the only thing that holds it all together is the arc that is ultimately the long game of Calypso and Davy Jones. The relationships that come out best are the ones that depend most heavily on the mythos. Everyone else is conveniently disposed of, forgotten, or cut loose to fend for themselves. A stronger spine of actual piracy could only have helped.

(Which observation doesn't have a lot to do with what you were saying, but I've been looking for an excuse to say it to somebody.)

I didn't know it, so I don't mind!

Edited Date: 2016-02-28 06:27 pm (UTC)

From:

genarti

So much of this book sounds really, really super interesting!

From:

skygiants

There are many aspects I think you would like! All the parts about the downstairs community, especially. And NORA KHALEEL (the vicar's cook, who is not Christian, and who is really not interested in marrying a missionary no matter how many sad faces he makes about it.)

From:

sovay

NORA KHALEEL (the vicar's cook, who is not Christian, and who is really not interested in marrying a missionary no matter how many sad faces he makes about it.)

Holy blap, in her place I would not marry a missionary, either.

From:

skygiants

You'd think the reasons this would be a poor idea would be obvious to him, AND YET.

From:

cahn

...this sounds awesome. Would I have to read the first two to read this one?

From:

skygiants

Not at all! The main characters from previous books appear very minimally. (I mean, it's spoilery for certain aspects, such as who marries who, but ... they're romance novels ...... so it ain't like you don't know who's gonna get married from the back cover.)

From:

ceitfianna

I recently read Lily Among the Thorns which I liked a lot better than Sweet Disorder. Neither of them really follow the normal tropes and she seems to like poking at them. They're not perfect books but when I start reading one of her books, I'm all in for the characters and story.

From:

skygiants

I should get around to reading the two of her books that I haven't read!

From:

jinian

New Rose Lerner? SOLD.

From:

skygiants

That tends to be my reaction too. :D

From:

oracne

ZOMG THIS SOUNDS TERRIFIC. Especially since I already like Rose Lerner's books. I've been out of the romance-reading mood for a while but this might work to put me back in it.

From:

skygiants

It was a pretty cool and unique Romance Novel Experience!

From:

rymenhild

Sadly, Lerner's traditional publisher announced today that it's on the slow track out of business.

I am intrigued by and also dubious about Listen to the Moon. The Jewish con artists book was great, but Lily Among Thorns lost my suspension of disbelief somewhere in Lady Serena's backstory and never found it again. (Aristocratically-titled ex-prostitute detective innkeeper, aged twenty-five or so, who can terrify career criminals with the slightest wave of her pinky finger? That's just too much, Rose Lerner.) The power differentials in Sukey and John's romance as described are also not my scene. But the idea of a romance between servants who never stop being servants is fascinating.

From:

skygiants

Oh no! Did I jinx them? D:

I haven't yet read Lily Among Thorns or - what's the other one? - In For a Penny, which I think were the first two she wrote. Anyway, suspension of disbelief is definitely not a problem for me in this book. The power differentials, however, are absolutely a thing, although a thing that is addressed and well-handled. (One of I think the strongest and also the most difficult scenes involves the hero taking the heroine to see a play for the first time -- Midsummer Night's Dream -- which is something she's wanted since she was a kid. And then, of course, among other things, the realization that the rude mechanicals are played with her Suffolk accent, and that in and of itself is supposed to make them funny. It's a really good scene, and it works because, like, as a reader, one expects Midsummer Night's Dream to be a delight, it IS a delight, and you don't think of all the ways even a play like that can and does punch down until you're there.)

It definitely didn't have anywhere near the id-appeal for me of True Pretenses, but I'm glad she wrote it.

From:

pseudo_tsuga

The whole book sounds amazing but I admit I'm most astonished that the secondary storyline is one where they DON'T get together. It can be done, romance novels!

From:

skygiants

It was extremely exciting for me! She doesn't want to get together, and he doesn't win her around, because sometimes a person doesn't want to be won around! WELL DONE, BOOK.

From:

izilen

DOWN WITH DUKES.

This sounds like exactly the sort of romance novel I have been wanting to read for ages, and I will in fact read it as long as I feel willing and able to read a million sex scenes again.

You didn't even mention the marriage of convenience!! Tropey start that then goes on to be treated COMPLETELY SERIOUSLY. What joy.

<3

From:

skygiants

Yeah I mean, definitely don't do it before you're prepped for LITERALLY A MILLION sex scenes; a big chunk of the middle of the book is 'we're both bummed because we're having SO MUCH sex and yet SO LITTLE communication outside that ....'

But that said, otherwise, yes, it is exactly the sort of thing you want to read! I am very much looking forward to hearing your thoughts :D :D :D