Irreconcilable Differences?

A Civil Contract
Georgette Heyer

My one foray into romance novel genre occurred about ten years ago, during a family vacation to the Outer Banks. It was rainy, I had already finished the book I brought with me, and so I found myself perusing the shelves at our rented beach house. My choices were between assorted Michael Crichton (boring) and Stephen King (scary), and a lone romance novel featuring a picture of Fabio on the cover and the curlicued title, The Courtesan's Folly. About half a chapter in, when King Alessandro and his beautiful sex slave Jade had embarked on the third of their multi-page explicit love scenes, and nary a plotline was in evidence, I finally gave up, and picked up The Shining, instead. Never again, I vowed to myself. Never, ever again.

My mom owns probably one of the largest Georgette Heyer collections outside of a library, and she's been trying for a while to get me to read one of her books, but I always put it off because of remembered squick. And also, I guess I have to admit that I'm a snob, and despite my love of Sweet Valley and some chicklit, always considered genre fiction a little beneath me. And I have an extremely short attention span, and I like to be taken for twists and turns by my plots, and can't deal with formulaic writing. I can't even read Agatha Christie, because I know that the first suspect is never the one who did it, the second one dies, and the third one is unjustly accused before the real killer is revealed. It's why I can't watch House. Or Law and Order. I just feel like I'm wasting my time. It's not my bag. At the end of the book I don't want to be going, "Yeah, I sort of knew it," I want to be gasping, "OH MY F-ING GOD. FOR REAL?"

But I see now that I was wrong to write Heyer off, and I was wrong to lump her in with the rest of the writers in this group. First of all, since the books are set in Regency England, all sex takes place offscreen, for which I am supremely grateful. Second, Heyer can actually write, and third, Heyer really knows her stuff, and has researched this time period well. Put altogether, I really did enjoy A Civil Contract--far more, at least, than I expected I would.

At first glance, the plot is traditional romance-novel fare: Adam Deveril's father, the Viscount Lynton, dies leaving the family in debt, so Adam has to come home from fighting in the Peninsular War and retrench. He's in danger of losing his estate, Fontley, which has been in the family since the Conquest, and naturally that's a hard pill to swallow. Adam's in love with Julia Oversley, but when her family refuses to ler her marry her newly poor lover, Adam bids for the hand of shy, plain Jenny Chawleigh, the only daughter of a vastly rich London merchant. Jenny's father, Jonathan, wants his daughter to have a title, and Adam needs the money to fix up Fontley. So they enter into a marriage of convenience.

Ms. Heyer if you're nasty.

But the thing that keeps the above plot from being too tired is what Heyer does with it. I was already rolling my eyes when I opened the book, because I knew, knew, that "plain" Jenny Chawleigh was actually going to end up being a secret beauty, like, once she crimps her hair and gets some confidence, she is actually far more beautiful than anybody else, ever and Adam falls in love with her on the spot. But it is not so. Jenny is plain. And chubby. And frowsy. Which surprised me. I was willing to overlook the fact that Heyer makes her so sugary-sweet nice that Melanie Wilkes would say, "Jenny Chawleigh? That mealy-mouthed goody-goody," if she ever heard of her, just because Heyer didn't choose to have her be secretly beautiful. And though Julia is a total bitch, Jenny's niceness and wifely virtue doesn't immediately make Adam stop loving her, and that was nicely realistic, too. And I don't want to spoil you (can you be spoiled for a book like this?) but even the ending, and the resolution of this tangled love affair, is not as over-the-top as it could have been. It's more of a casual acceptance of new relationships, a mature and subtle realization that things are as they should be.

There's a fair amount of history in the book and that was nice, too. I know I'm going to get flack from Austenites for this, and I love Jane in general, but you have to admit that sometimes her books are dry to the point of barrenness. Heyer's characters confront each other and it's not like, "Do you see how she called her 'ma'am' instead of 'your ladyship?' That's a subtle indication that she has thrown off past conventions and is slighting the Baronness." (At the same time, though, when Julia Oversley offers in not-at-all veiled terms to become Adam's mistress, I almost vomited from shock and disbelief, and had to go read three pages of Elizabeth Bennet's smilingly polite bitchfest with Lady Catherine to take the taste out of my mouth.) I guess what I am trying to say is that Heyer's Regency England is only a slightly souped up and unrealistic version of Austen's.

Heyer is smart, too, because she realizes that in a romance, you can't do too much with the primary characters, which have to at least resemble the archetypal hero and heroine--but the secondary characters can be loaded down with humor and irony and bitchery and bluster. There are heaps of such characters in this book, Adam's pathetically melodramatic mother, Jenny's loud, gauche, shocking Uncle Matthew of a father, the disapproving housekeeper, the two Deveril sisters, one sweet and placid, one silly and fun. You have the idea that they all have their own lives, that exist outside of the scene they're currently in, and so they never feel specially created to advance the action of the story.

The only thing I can say I really minded was that--unexpectedly!--I wished there had been a little more romance in this book. The ending is so quickly resolved--and Jenny is so nice to Adam, and he's really kind of a dick to her for the majority of the story--and maybe one tender, romantic scene would have been nice. I don't think these characters even kiss in the whole book! And I know kissing wasn't the thing back then, but this is a husband and wife!

In short, I don't know that I will read more Heyer immediately, but I probably will sometime, and I'm glad I read this. And I love--LOVE--the cover of this book, which was published in 1961, and apparently stars Twiggy as Jenny Chawleigh, which makes me smile and smile.

Rating: 3 of 5 stars.