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Feb. 25th, 2016 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsListen 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.
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.
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Date: 2016-02-27 03:55 am (UTC)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.
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Date: 2016-02-27 04:32 am (UTC)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.