About fifty years ago,
while recuperating from a rather severe bout of flu, I ran out of reading
material and, desperate for entertainment, picked up the only book available, a
novel by Georgette Heyer. Having devoured it, I then went and acquired all the
Regency Romances and gifted myself hours of delightful entertainment.
High-brow, literary
minded folk who only read ‘serious’ stuff may raise a supercilious eyebrow or
curl a cynical lip, but those who haven’t read The Grand Sophy -- one of my
favourites -- have missed out on a vastly entertaining account of a strong
female protagonist’s adventures in Regency England. Sophy is independent minded
and unafraid, a skilled horsewoman and an excellent shot, who is not intimidated
by domineering men in a male dominated society. When she decides to resolve a complex
set of family tangles, she goes about it with skill and courage and the resulting
tale is a superbly written, vastly amusing and lighthearted romance.
Heyer writes very well
indeed and that itself is a good reason for reading her books. Trashy romances –
the old Mills and Boon variety -- were poorly written pieces dashed off by
incompetent scribblers to help pass the time. That is simply not true
of Heyer’s work .She did not set out to create a Roskolnikov or write War and
Peace; she set out to entertain in a particular genre and she did it very skillfully
indeed. Her plots normally require a complete suspension of disbelief, but so
do the novels of Lee Child and the Mission Impossible and Star Wars movies; and
we don’t sneer at them -- we consume them eagerly with enormous pleasure.
That holds true for
Georgette Heyer’s Regency Romances too.
And quite often Heyer
comes up with characters that are actually more than caricature and storylines
that go some way beyond titillation.
The love story of
Justin Alastair, the Duke of Avon and Leonie, the Parisian waif, related in
These Old Shades, is one example of a romance novel that, at one level, is just
another tale of an ageing rake who falls in love with an engaging young girl. But
somehow, every couple of years, when one needs to get away from it all for a
short while, that is one of a small set of books that one reaches for.
Heyer’s romances are
the hot chocolate sauce on the double scoop of vanilla ice cream, the chilled
glass of sweet nimbu-paani after a
sweaty summer walk, the stolen slice of pizza in the middle of a
rigorous dieting program.
Just a trifle sinful
and enormous fun!
Happy reading.
