(no subject)

[skygiants]

I have read my first Jennifer Crusie! It's Maybe This Time, which I understood to be a rom-com novel loosely based on Turn of the Screw but which IN FACT, hilariously, turned out instead to be straight-up Turn of the Screw fanfic.

So Our Heroine, Andie, gets tapped by her stressed-out lawyer ex-husband North to go take care of his wards who refuse to leave their creepy and potentially-haunted house.

Andie has a semi-hemi-demi-fiance and ... hypothetically an actual job that she's just quit at a moment's notice? I guess? I'm not sure if it's even mentioned? .... but suspension of disbelief is not relevant here, what's relevant is THESE TERRIBLE CHILDREN NEED AN ADULT WHO LOVES THEM and also maybe ghosts, and two of the maybe ghosts are, spoiler alert, named Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, because this house was literally ported over stone-by-stone from England by an eccentric millionaire SOLELY IN ORDER to allow for hilarious Turn of the Screw fanfic.

Andie bonds rapidly with the terrible children, and is actually pretty OK with handling the maybe ghosts! She is less OK with dealing with the sudden screwball comedy home invasion in the second half of the book, featuring:

- the semi-hemi-demi fiance
- the ex-husband
- Andie's terrifying force-of-nature mother
- the ex-husband's terrifying force-of-nature mother
- the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother
- the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend
- the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend's cameraman
- the long-suffering professional ghost debunker hired by the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend
- the even more long-suffering medium hired by the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend

PLUS the two terrible children! PLUS all the maybe ghosts!

For the most part it is all generally rollicking good times except for one EXTREMELY JARRING thing which is when one of the ghosts possesses an unlikable character and then uses her body to sleep with several men in what the character thinks is a dream, which -- I mean, it is explicitly called out as rape, which I guess is something, but I did not expect that in the middle of my screwball comedy. :/

Comments

[sovay]

but I did not expect that in the middle of my screwball comedy.

I did not expect a screwball comedy based on The Turn of the Screw!

[skygiants]

NOBODY DOES

... I was trying to pull together a clever 'No one expects the Spanish Inquisition' joke here based on turning screws but it was a bad idea, it is a bad idea, I'm just going to stop.

[intothespin]

The thing with the reporter made me so furious! I wasn't at all happy with how the characters or narrative treated it.

[skygiants]

When I hit it I was kind of like 'well, I should have known, this feels very much like a 40's screwball and EVERY 40's screwball has at least one awful YIKES moment!' Except of course this was not written in the 40s. >:(

[intothespin]

I just wasn't expecting victim-blaming from my reliable feminist romance author. :(

[intothespin]

Also, seconding other recommendations: my two favorite Crusies are Faking It and Anyone But You.

[jadelennox]

Oh, I'm looking forward to seeing your opinions of any others you read, because that's one of the weakest of her later books, IMO. I adore Faking It (which is technically a sequel to Welcome to Temptation).

[lnhammer]

Both parts of this.

[skygiants]

Yes, but are any of the others secretly romantic screwball fan fiction of 19th-century literary classics? PLEASE TELL ME YES

[annotated_em]

Yeah, that one is... the thing with the reporter bothers me. I mean, the character is written to be despicable, but it's still gross and a jarring note.

I'm fairly fond of Welcome to Temptation, which hits my Overly Responsible Sibling Taking Care of Everything buttons, and Faking It is fairly delightful.

[skygiants]

It's kind of worse because the character is written to be despicable, honestly -- like, everyone thinks she's awful so we're not supposed to care that much? BUT I CARE. >:(

[brownbetty]

I just want to let you know this is not really a *representative* Crusie, except in that it is funny.

also, the ghost rape, where they're like "...uh, was that rape?" and someone's like "Well, you know, she probably would have been up for it," and everyone's like. "Welp, true!"

But my goodreads followers list of people who have read this book is pretty much a big "wtf ghost rape?!" discussion.

My favourite Crusie is Anyone But You, AKA The One With Fred.

[skygiants]

"OH WELL IN THAT CASE IT'S PROBABLY FINE THEN." >:( wtf ghost rape!!!

I mean that said I did really enjoy the other 90% of the book, IT'S JUST.

[bookblather]

I'm agreeing with just about everything here, including the ghost rape (???), the fact that this is not Crusie's best, and the fact that Faking It clearly is.

[skygiants]

Yes, I have heard this about Faking It! I should get around to reading it but honestly I was lured in by the amazingly weird Henry James fanfic angle.

[kathmandu]

Maybe this Time is so not screwball comedy. It's really foefic - she wrote it because The Turn of the Screw bothered her, for years, until she pinned down the problem as 'the governess has no reasonable resources for going up against ghosts, this is not fair' and wrote a version where the governess has a name and backstory and allies.

I believe Bet Me is the best Crusie ever, but if you're looking for screwball comedy, What the Lady Wants or Manhunting or Faking It are better bets.

Her writing has improved over time, so the older books are more light fluff with simple plotlines, and the later ones are more complex. Bet Me is a tour de force in which we see competing theories of romantic love go up against each other, and they *all work.*

[saramily]

Also this is 100% correct, Bet Me is delightful and as far as I remember, no one gets treated that badly, even the "romantic obstacles." I can reread that one endlessly, it's really charming.

[skygiants]

It can be both screwball and foefic! I stand by my literary diagnosis of screwball comedy; any time you get a bunch of wacky personalities trapped in a house together with suspiciously comic timing then it counts as screwball, I think. But it does sound like I have a lot more delightful Jennifer Crusie ahead of me!

[saramily]

Ugh, I'd mostly forgotten about the ghost rape, I think because I was blocking it so hard. Cruise is usually pretty good about NOT doing things like that, but... there it is. I enjoyed the other bits a lot but I suspect that's why I have fainter, less fond remembrances of this one.

[skygiants]

It really came out of left field! hijinks hijinks hijinks SUDDENLY, THIS. (And, I mean, there wasn't even really a reason to have the Terrible Journalist be a villain anyways, the ghosts were already villains enough.)

[evewithanapple]

I just read this one on your recommendation and enjoyed it a lot- it was exactly the kind of light fluff I was looking for. I was slightly less bothered by the ghost rape, just because the ghost in question is clearly meant to be a villain- possibly the villain, given that she causes most of the problems Andie has to deal with (and that her other greatest hits include slapping a small child) and Andie does repeatedly call it rape. I do wish she'd been slightly more sympathetic towards Kelly- I get that she was meant to be a Nancy Grace analogue and therefore just as despicable, but the whole thing seemed kind of unnecessary to the plot.

(Also, I think ghost possession was a plot point in the original story? Can't say for certain though, since I've never read it. But Crusie could have sidestepped the whole issue by just shifting the focus to Miss Jessel and Peter Quint instead of May.)

[skygiants]

Yeah, I was like 'well ... at least she did call it rape ....?' but then IMMEDIATELY after that is the slut-shaming of the 'well, she would've done it anyway! ghosts can't make anyone do things they don't want to do!' and then when that is disproved nobody actually comes back around to rethink their assessment of Kelly or be even the slightest bit sympathetic towards her. I mean, I enjoyed pretty much everything about the book except that! That's just the bit that stands out.

(It sort of is? It's very ambiguous in the original story whether there really are ghosts, whether they're possessing anyone or just lurking ominously, what their sinister influence even entails ... there is a whole strain of literary criticism that's like 'THE GOVERNESS IS JUST PROJECTING HER OWN PSYCHOSEXUAL FRUSTRATION,' which I'm sure is part of what Crusie's engaging with.)