It will surprise no one here that I am a reader of the works of Georgette Heyer, in particular her Regency romances.
Alert readers will, in fact, recall me saying on more than one occasion that I read these works, with considerable enjoyment, as comedies. There are, of course, the occasional exception, such as, oh — These Old Shades, which is, as everyone knows, a melant’i play, written in the High Style, but, by and large I address these stories as very light reading.
When I was recovering from my mastectomy, Steve read to me every night, and, my attention span being what it wasn’t, he did a lot of re-reading. One night, he pulled Friday’s Child off of the Heyer shelf and showed it to me, expecting — as who would not? — an enthusiastic agreement.
Instead, I burst into tears.
“I can’t, I can’t! I mean, I know that Gil will take Kitten to his grandmother and Sherry will come about, but I just — the beginning, where neither one of them has any — and they just about ruin themselves, and I just can’t!”
Steve put the book back on the shelf, and very likely picked up a Pratchett, and we moved on.
And, though clearly it’s a story I knew well, and I still adore Gil, and hope he found someone who deserved him — I’ve never read Friday’s Child again,
I just can’t.
Now, honestly? I figured this to be a one-off, born of the effects of surgery, radiation, drugs, and being scared half to death, but . . .
Just the other day, I re-read Sylvester, which I’ve re-read many times, though it’s not among my most favorite Heyers. That fact meant that I hadn’t read it for a number of years had probably influenced my decision to have it down for a re-read.
I was settling in nicely, enjoying the introduction to Our Hero, in which his character, and the style and state of his family is sketched in, including the fact that Sylvester was the eldest of two boys, the younger brother having died.
And I said to myself, “Oh. I forgot that Harry had been Sylvester’s twin. Losing a brother is one thing, but losing a twin is — something else again. Did Heyer not know that?”
Which is when I started reading as a writer. Because, of course, Heyer did know that — an author so gifted in characterization couldn’t not know such a thing, nor could she fail to use that fact to inform Sylvester. The loss of his twin is illuminated in each flash of ill-temper, every deflection eloquent of protecting his wounded center, and the glimpses of the man he had been, when he is engaging, kind, and humorous, a little frightening because you don’t know — not even at the HEA — if he’s going to ever win back to who he ought to have been.
All this to say that — it’s not a bad book; it’s quite a good book, and I’m glad that it’s in my life. But I put it back on the shelf next to Friday’s Child, and I may not read it again.
