skygiants | (no subject)

The Fortune Hunters is very far from the weirdest Joan Aiken gothic I've read, but that doesn't mean it's not at all weird.

Our Heroine Annette has had a rough year: she lost her beloved father, picked up a lingering illness, and got dumped by her fiance, all in relatively short order. Also she's inherited an unrelated huge amount of money, which is in fact a giant additional stress factor! All this has left her with a lot of post-illness complications, including intermittent convenient Gothic amnesia.

Fortunately or unfortunately, her work friend Joanna has helped her spend some of that money by fixing up a nice house in the countryside for an extended rest period while Joanna takes over Annette's responsibilities at her job. In the first chapter, we learn that Annette is theoretically grateful but also finds Joanna an extremely exhausting person and is deeply worried that Joanna will be a bad boss to Annette's direct reports, in intensely specific and relatable ways that meant that I too spent the whole book extremely worried about Annette's direct reports.

Joanna also introduces Annette to her local Famous Painter cousin, who promptly gets very intense about Mentoring Annette In Art. This, it transpires, is Bachelor A. Bachelor B is a visiting archaeologist from New Zealand who is actually in town on the Secret Mission of investigating Bachelor A, who was very intensely Mentoring Bachelor B's Baby Brother In Art before the baby brother committed suicide in mysterious circumstances.

There is also a sinister house next door that houses two sinister women, one of whom is an Unreasoning Attic Madwoman in the classically ablist Gothic style and indeed attempts to strangle Annette in the very first chapter. However, the increasingly amnesiac Annette immediately forgets this event, and the two sinister women next door are very confused when Annette continues to show up throughout the book making polite attempts to be neighborly.

Everything builds to a head when someone turns up murdered, and Annette has been so intermittently amnesiac that she starts to worry that she herself committed the crime!

In the end, it turns out
- the famous painter cousin has history of hypnotizing other painters into compliance and memory loss so that he can seduce them and plagiarize their art (it's not explicitly stated that the seduction part happened to Bachelor B's brother but, like, one can assume)
- as a result, introducing Annette to famous painter cousin so that he can hypnotize her, seduce her and plagiarize her art was all part of an elaborate plot established by Evil Work Friend Joanna so that Annette would be too hypnotized to worry about what's going at work and Joanna can bully all her employees into leaving and rebuild her department from the ground up .... the long con! as a Gothic motivator this is actually extremely funny, more office politics Gothics please
- the sinister ladies next door were, respectively, famous painter cousin's abandoned first wife and daughter
- the daughter is the Attic Madwoman and her mother has spent her entire life training her to throttle her father on command if she ever gets a chance to meet him; the attempted throttling of Annette was merely an unfortunate misunderstanding
- however, evil painter murders them both (along with cousin Joanna, in a breach between partners in crime) and sets their house on fire before His Crimes Are Revealed :(((
- Annette, freed from hypnosis, goes away to New Zealand for a long rest cure with Bachelor B
- we never get closure on what happened with the direct reports whose work lives Joanna ruined and I'm still very concerned :(((

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

genarti

I hit "her mother has spent her entire life training her to throttle her father on command" and just started cracking up. JOAN AIKEN!!!

From:

marginaliana

"her mother has spent her entire life training her to throttle her father on command" - sure, sure, seems legit

From:

brownbetty

the daughter is the Attic Madwoman and her mother has spent her entire life training her to throttle her father on command if she ever gets a chance to meet him; the attempted throttling of Annette was merely an unfortunate misunderstanding

This! This is the detail where I lost it. Like. Operant conditioning? American Ninja style throttling course? (Hypnosis???) I don't care, all amazing possibilities.

From:

sovay

- the daughter is the Attic Madwoman and her mother has spent her entire life training her to throttle her father on command if she ever gets a chance to meet him; the attempted throttling of Annette was merely an unfortunate misunderstanding

Does Annette look like her famous painter cousin? Does the sinister house just not get that many visitors?

From:

whimsyful

her mother has spent her entire life training her to throttle her father on command if she ever gets a chance to meet him
AMAZING. The sheer dedication involved for something that could never happen!

all part of an elaborate plot established by Evil Work Friend Joanna so that Annette would be too hypnotized to worry about what's going at work and Joanna can bully all her employees into leaving and rebuild her department from the grown up
Also incredible. I'd totally want more Gothic villainy driven by office politics instead of trying to steal someone's inheritance/money (which was where I thought this was going).

From:

rachelmanija

her mother has spent her entire life training her to throttle her father on command if she ever gets a chance to meet him; the attempted throttling of Annette was merely an unfortunate misunderstanding

Of course.

From:

landofnowhere

Wow, Joanna is the Worst. Except for her evil painter cousin, but he sounds much more generic.

From:

musesfool

Those poor direct reports. I hope they get a good boss eventually!

From:

chestnut_pod

If this isn't weird, I can't imagine what is weirder!

From:

aamcnamara

Please write the fanfic that's just a series of the direct reports' increasingly desperate memos to HR.

From:

asakiyume

Me too! Long games all around in this novel apparently! "Ah, a healthy baby girl! Very good, very good. In but ten years and eight, my love, you will help me exact my revenge while keeping my own hands clean... yes, your luck failed you in both parental units, it appears."

From:

asakiyume

I mean!

(I'm seeing this is everyone's favorite line in the review, for good reason.)

From:

asakiyume

IDK evil painter cousin's abandoned first wife also seems to have problems with exploiting folks...

From:

asakiyume

I love this idea.

From:

asakiyume

At first I thought "Fortunately or unfortunately" was going to be my favorite line, but soon I came across my actual favorite line, which is the same as everyone else's.

What causes Joanna and famous painter cousin to fall out?

From:

genarti

It's just such a specific revenge plan! "I know, my dear! Your evil deadbeat father deserves throttling! Oh, no, I'm not going to do that now, or the next time he comes to town. I'm going to train you to do it so that if you ever successfully spot him, you will be READY. Not going to train you to tell the difference between him and a random lady who moved in next door, though. Just, get that grip strength good and ready, my child!"

From:

asakiyume

ROTFL --specific, and yet with serious errors in planning 😂

From:

rmc28

A couple of friends of mine are working their way through the original Star Trek; one of them is an HR professional, and they spend some time after each episode discussing what Starfleet HR would make of the situation, what memos would need to be sent round, what notes in Kirk's files, etc etc.

(Sadly this is all verbal and while occasionally I get texted highlights, I have yet to persuade either of them to actually write it up)

From:

superborb

I, too, am mostly concerned about direct reports :( They seem wholly innocent! What did they do to deserve an Evil Manager?

From:

skygiants

she tried so hard and got so far and in the end it didn't even matter :(

From:

skygiants

revenge is a long game!!

From:

skygiants

Winner of the All-Derbyshire Junior Throttling Competition ten years running!

From:

skygiants

It actually happens while she's giving the Attic Madwoman and cousin a lift home -- the daughter is sitting right behind her in the car and something (I forget what) sets off Throttling Protocols. The mother is like, I'M SO SORRY I'm so sorry thank you so much for the lift. Sorry about the attempted strangulation. We will walk the rest of the way. Let us not meet again.

But then of course Annette immediately forgets the encounter, so she goes next day to politely introduce herself to the neighbors and the mom is visibly like "I have no idea what the social norms are in this situation? Are both just pretending the accidental strangulation did not happen??"

From:

skygiants

There's a bit of inheritance/money stuff involved -- the fact that Annette is rich is a VERY nice bonus for the evil painter in the hypnotize/seduce/plagiarize plot -- but it's very clear that that's a secondary motivation! Both of them just want to take advantage of Annette's talent and professional success!

From:

skygiants

She was only supposed to throttle the truly deserving!

From:

skygiants

There's a scene where Annette's secretary comes to visit and details all the ways in which Joanna has been a nightmare boss who's destroying department morale, and Annette is horrified and determined to visit the office to try and sort it out and then forgets it 24 hours later because of the temporary amnesia, and I have never been so stressed in a Gothic in my LIFE.

From:

skygiants

ME TOO. I am appalled that they were left out of the happy epilogue!

From:

skygiants

I am always going to cherish a deep fondness in my heart for the ones with

a.) the killer bees, the incredibly helpful terrorists, and the heroine who solves all her dilemmas by thinking 'what would Esther from Bleak House do?'
b.) the exploding cans of soup, the box of poisonous spiders, and the kidnapped baby named Shrubsole

From:

skygiants

Yuletide request ....

From:

skygiants

Please tell them that if they do they would have an avid audience!

From:

skygiants

As is inevitable, they quarrel over money -- the Famous Painter is, of course, planning to take advantage of Annette's riches, and Joanna wants a cut. What's important here is of course that Joanna didn't think to ask for a cut before embarking on the evil plot with the famous painter cousin, it was truly an afterthought to all the office scheming!

From:

skygiants

Even before Joanna's Evil is Revealed, Annette's concerns about her taking over are all really sympathetic and relatable things like "[x] and I have worked out non-standard hours because they're caretaking a sick family member, what if Joanna doesn't allow them any schedule flexibility?" Extremely effective way to set Annette up as a good boss and and establish stakes for her employees!