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Aug. 9th, 2021 11:10 pmI am currently at ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti's family lake cottage in New York, one of the best features of which is a bookshelf crammed full of her grandmother's old yellowing waterstained paperbacks. Obviously as soon as I arrived I went spelunking for Gothics and emerged, to my delight, with Victoria Holt's The Shivering Sands, an INCREDIBLE example of the form, which features:
- a mysteriously disappeared sister
- a dead husband, a dead brother, AND a dead wife
- ghostly lights in the chapel
- tragically separated young lovers
- no less than THREE young lady wards of ambiguous parentage
- a great deal of romantic dialogue along the lines of "have you ever known anyone else who killed his brother?" / "no" / "doesn't that make me UNIQUE?"
- a lot of vaguely thematic archaeology
The heroine of the book is Caroline Verlaine, whose selfish but charismatic concert-pianist husband has just tragically died of a heart attack after entirely absorbing her own musical career into his own. This has left her heartbroken and relatively penniless but did give her the opportunity to reconnect with her pragmatic archaeologist sister Roma --
(-- Caroline's pre-widowhood tragic backstory, for the record, is that the rest of her family is all archaeologists and considered archaeology the ONLY career worth pursuing --)
-- until Roma mysteriously vanishes on a dig near the big ominous Stacy house! This is why every family needs an archaeologist heir and a spare; someone needs to investigate when the first one disappears.
Coincidentally, Caroline is soon offered the opportunity to teach music at the big ominous Stacy house, so she decides to go Undercover as Definitely Not The Sister Of The Missing Archaeologist to Investigate while also attempting to make brilliant pianists out of the three aforementioned young lady wards:
- the Eldest Ward, a sweet and timid heiress whose parents were family friends of the house or something (I kept expecting her parents to be relevant and they never were); Sad And Talented At Piano
- the Loudest Ward, an illegitimate granddaughter of the lord of the manor; Does Not Care To Practice The Piano
- the Littlest Ward, the quiet and imaginative preteen daughter of the mysteriously widowed housekeeper, who's being raised with the upper-class young ladies For Some Mysterious Reason; Dutiful But Ungifted At Piano
It also contains Napier Stacy, the younger son and heir of the master of the house, who was Banished after an unfortunate incident in which he and his universally beloved elder brother were playing with guns thirteen years ago and he shot his brother! and then his mom went into the woods and shot herself with the same gun!!
Every conversation between Napier and Caroline goes like this:
NAPIER: You and I are alike ... we are both haunted by our pasts ... yours in which you are hung up on your bad dead husband .... and mine in which I MURDERED my PERFECT BROTHER and CAUSED my MOTHER'S DEATH ....
CAROLINE: ummm leaving aside your rude personal remarks about the husband I am grieving, I'm pretty sure you shot your brother by accident?
NAPIER: EVERYONE WILL TELL YOU I MURDERED HIM AND I ALSO AM TELLING YOU I MURDERED HIM
CAROLINE: accidents could happen to anyone?? please stop being so dramatic???
Napier is also rude, unpleasant, unattractive, a bad father to his daughter the Loudest Ward, and prone to doing things like deliberately scheduling Caroline to play the music that her dead husband played on his last concert before his fatal heart attack in an attempt to help her get over him psychologically. Obviously, Caroline finds him strangely compelling.
Caroline, vaguely aware of her own bad taste: What sort of future would any woman have with such a man? Some might be able to deal with it. Some might find it exhilarating, in a repellent sort of way.
Alas, Napier is already in an arranged marriage -- to the Eldest Ward, who is terrified of him and in love with the tiny frail curate down the road!
In addition to all these scions, the household also contains Napier's dying elderly father, the aforementioned mysteriously widowed housekeeper, and Napier's creepy elderly artist aunt who claims she can paint pictures of people's futures.
CREEPY AUNT: I hate my murderous nephew Napier and the ghost of his Perfect Brother haunts this place to this day!!
LITTLEST WARD: Yeah! I see lights in the far-off chapel at night and it is DEFINITELY ghosts.
CAROLINE: Perhaps my sister was killed for investigating the ghost lights ...
CAROLINE: But ghosts! As if she would worry about them! "What," I could hear her voice demanding, "have lights in chapels to do with archaeology!"
( Now the stage is set; the rest is spoilers )
genarti's family lake cottage in New York, one of the best features of which is a bookshelf crammed full of her grandmother's old yellowing waterstained paperbacks. Obviously as soon as I arrived I went spelunking for Gothics and emerged, to my delight, with Victoria Holt's The Shivering Sands, an INCREDIBLE example of the form, which features:- a mysteriously disappeared sister
- a dead husband, a dead brother, AND a dead wife
- ghostly lights in the chapel
- tragically separated young lovers
- no less than THREE young lady wards of ambiguous parentage
- a great deal of romantic dialogue along the lines of "have you ever known anyone else who killed his brother?" / "no" / "doesn't that make me UNIQUE?"
- a lot of vaguely thematic archaeology
The heroine of the book is Caroline Verlaine, whose selfish but charismatic concert-pianist husband has just tragically died of a heart attack after entirely absorbing her own musical career into his own. This has left her heartbroken and relatively penniless but did give her the opportunity to reconnect with her pragmatic archaeologist sister Roma --
(-- Caroline's pre-widowhood tragic backstory, for the record, is that the rest of her family is all archaeologists and considered archaeology the ONLY career worth pursuing --)
-- until Roma mysteriously vanishes on a dig near the big ominous Stacy house! This is why every family needs an archaeologist heir and a spare; someone needs to investigate when the first one disappears.
Coincidentally, Caroline is soon offered the opportunity to teach music at the big ominous Stacy house, so she decides to go Undercover as Definitely Not The Sister Of The Missing Archaeologist to Investigate while also attempting to make brilliant pianists out of the three aforementioned young lady wards:
- the Eldest Ward, a sweet and timid heiress whose parents were family friends of the house or something (I kept expecting her parents to be relevant and they never were); Sad And Talented At Piano
- the Loudest Ward, an illegitimate granddaughter of the lord of the manor; Does Not Care To Practice The Piano
- the Littlest Ward, the quiet and imaginative preteen daughter of the mysteriously widowed housekeeper, who's being raised with the upper-class young ladies For Some Mysterious Reason; Dutiful But Ungifted At Piano
It also contains Napier Stacy, the younger son and heir of the master of the house, who was Banished after an unfortunate incident in which he and his universally beloved elder brother were playing with guns thirteen years ago and he shot his brother! and then his mom went into the woods and shot herself with the same gun!!
Every conversation between Napier and Caroline goes like this:
NAPIER: You and I are alike ... we are both haunted by our pasts ... yours in which you are hung up on your bad dead husband .... and mine in which I MURDERED my PERFECT BROTHER and CAUSED my MOTHER'S DEATH ....
CAROLINE: ummm leaving aside your rude personal remarks about the husband I am grieving, I'm pretty sure you shot your brother by accident?
NAPIER: EVERYONE WILL TELL YOU I MURDERED HIM AND I ALSO AM TELLING YOU I MURDERED HIM
CAROLINE: accidents could happen to anyone?? please stop being so dramatic???
Napier is also rude, unpleasant, unattractive, a bad father to his daughter the Loudest Ward, and prone to doing things like deliberately scheduling Caroline to play the music that her dead husband played on his last concert before his fatal heart attack in an attempt to help her get over him psychologically. Obviously, Caroline finds him strangely compelling.
Caroline, vaguely aware of her own bad taste: What sort of future would any woman have with such a man? Some might be able to deal with it. Some might find it exhilarating, in a repellent sort of way.
Alas, Napier is already in an arranged marriage -- to the Eldest Ward, who is terrified of him and in love with the tiny frail curate down the road!
In addition to all these scions, the household also contains Napier's dying elderly father, the aforementioned mysteriously widowed housekeeper, and Napier's creepy elderly artist aunt who claims she can paint pictures of people's futures.
CREEPY AUNT: I hate my murderous nephew Napier and the ghost of his Perfect Brother haunts this place to this day!!
LITTLEST WARD: Yeah! I see lights in the far-off chapel at night and it is DEFINITELY ghosts.
CAROLINE: Perhaps my sister was killed for investigating the ghost lights ...
CAROLINE: But ghosts! As if she would worry about them! "What," I could hear her voice demanding, "have lights in chapels to do with archaeology!"
( Now the stage is set; the rest is spoilers )
