What Janine is Reading (and Seeing at the Theater) in Late Winter 2017
B+ Reviews / B- Reviews / Book Reviews / C Reviews / C- ReviewsReading lists10 Comments
Unforgiven by Mary Balogh
Recently I reread Balogh’s 1997 release, Indiscreet, and found that it still works for me. Since I’d never read the other two books in the Four Horsemen trilogy and they had all been recently reissued, I then decided to move on to book two, Unforgiven.
Unforgiven follows the courtship, if it can be called that, of Kenneth Woodfall, Earl of Haverford, and Moira Hayes, whose father was a baronet. Kenneth and Moira are neighbors who had been sweethearts in their youth but are now enemies. Not only does the enmity between their families go back three generations, it is bolstered by a more recent contretemps between Moira’s late brother and Kenneth’s sister. Moira’s brother has since perished in the Napoleonic Wars and Moira blames Kenneth for his death.
Moira, now 26, has turned down all suitors and when her father’s heir, a distant cousin named Sir Edwin Baillie, proposes, Moira accepts because if she doesn’t, she and her mother will be left homeless and destitute.
Not knowing the full story of the enmity between their two families, Sir Edwin insists that he and Moira patch things up with Kenneth. After dragging Moira to a Christmas party at Kenneth’s country house, Edwin departs early to visit his ailing mother. Moira tries to walk home but is caught in a bad snowstorm. Kenneth finds her and they take shelter in an old, uninhabited hermit’s hut, where they share body heat to keep from freezing to death.
What happens next had my mind boggling. Even huddled together in blankets they are so cold that Kenneth decides sex is necessary to their survival. To say this felt like a contrived plot twist is to understate the case. After the deed is done (twice), Kenneth realizes he should have thought of some other way to keep warm! He offers to marry Moira the very next morning but she turns him down, although she insists she will call things off with Sir Edwin.
The ludicrous basis for sex wasn’t the only issue I had with this book. The reasons for Moira’s repeated refusals to marry Kenneth even after it became clear she was pregnant weren’t explained well, but worse than that, she couldn’t seem to have a conversation with him without picking a fight.
It’s not until the last third of the book that Moira and Kenneth start putting real effort into making their relationship work, and not until the final ten percent that they put an end to the sniping. As much as I usually like Balogh’s writing, and despite some moving scenes midway that had me crying, I don’t think I’ll be rereading this book. C-/C.
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A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner
In my last reading list column, I mentioned that I started rereading the Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner in preparation for the May publication of book five, Thick as Thieves. Now I come to book four, A Conspiracy of Kings.
Sophos, a character last seen on page in the first book, The Thief, is reintroduced to readers here in a new role. Readers of the first book may remember him as the boy Gen once referred to as “Useless the Younger,” a slightly bumbling but kind-hearted apprentice to the King of Sounis’s Magus – trusting, loyal, and prone to blushing. Sophos is still all three of these last things, but he’s older and instead of being useless, he is now filled with a sense of purpose.
What altered his course is a story Sophos relates, a story that begins with his own mishandled kidnapping. As with all of Turner’s books, to say too much about the plot of the book would be to spoil it.
As I related in my last reading list post, during my most recent reading of The Thief, The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia, I enjoyed these books even more than I had the first time I read them. This fourth book, however, was a little less enjoyable the third time around.
I noticed that the two Mede ambassadors, Akretenesh and Melheret, were similar to Nahuseresh, the Mede ambassador who appeared in The Queen of Attolia, and also picked out a few inconsistencies in this book. A couple of plot turns late in the novel came across as contrived. Another issue is that although likeable, Sophos, the main character here, simply isn’t as amazing and fascinating as Eugenides, whom we only see in short glimpses in this novel, and who conceals himself for much of that time.
There is still a lot to like here, though. Sophos is both interesting and appealing, and it’s great to see him finally come into his own. His dreams are intriguing (I can’t say more so as not to spoil), and his long-hinted at romantic relationship with Helen finally gets some play here and is quite touching. There’s also some nice humor, a few great scenes with Eugenides, and a resolution that is satisfyingly twisty. The first time I read A Conspiracy of Kings I gave it an A-; this time it’s a B+.
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I’ve also seen some good movies this winter:
Hidden Figures
This was a well-written, well-acted and well-directed movie with a very fresh angle on the space race. It chronicles the professional lives of three of the African-American, female NASA employees in the 1960s. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae were excellent in their respective roles as mathematical calculator Katherine Johnson, supervisor Dorothy Vaughan, and engineer Mary Jackson.
The movie depicts both the racial discrimination that the women had to fight and their successes in the face of it. There is careful attention to period details, and as a friend of mine said, even Kevin Costner wasn’t as annoying here as he usually is. It is a triumphant, feel good story and my only criticism is that while the story material was fresh, the screen storytelling techniques were pure Hollywood. But I liked it a lot. B+.
Lion
This movie tells the story of Saroo Brierley, an Indian boy who is lost as a child and is then adopted by an Australian couple. As an adult, Saroo is haunted by his memories of the family he left behind as a child and begins a search for them via Google Earth.
Sunny Pawar who plays Saroo as a child is particularly good, but Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and several other actors were excellent too. There was some nice cinematography, and the film was highly emotional. The second half felt a bit claustrophobic, which couldn’t be entirely helped, since the story was more interior there.
One weakness is that the secondary characters felt limited by the screenplay to strictly their purposes in the story, and no other function. I didn’t get a feel for their lives outside those roles, such as their jobs or their secondary concerns, and this made them feel less true-to-life. I still liked Lion a lot, though. B.
A United Kingdom
Director Amma Asante’s film based on the real life interracial courtship and marriage of Prince Seretse Khama of Botswana (David Oyelowo) and Englishwoman Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) in the late 1940s was both romantic and moving. These two people had nations opposing their marriage, but they persevered in fighting for Botswana and for their love.
Oyelowo’s Seretse was wonderful in his love for his people as well as for Ruth. And wow, can this actor deliver a speech. Pike was equally effective and moving as Ruth. Among the supporting cast, Vusi Kunene as Seretse’s uncle Tshekedi, Terry Pheto as Seretse’s sister Naledi, Laura Carmichael as Ruth’s sister Muriel, and Jack Davenport as Sir Alistair Canning, the man who does all he can to separate Seretse and Ruth, were particularly good.
In addition to its focus on social justice, A United Kingdom is a very romantic movie, and I enjoyed it a great deal. B/B+.
Conspiracy of Kings was solid, but didn’t wow me like the previous books. I think I gave it a B rating. I’m looking forward to the new book.
I’m laughing about Kenneth’s sex line in Balogh’s book. If my husband got wind of that line, he’d use it every night. LOL.
@Eggletina: It’s safe to say that Megan Whalen Turner’s new book is my most anticipated book of the year.
Re. Kenneth’s line. The mind boggling thing was that it wasn’t a line; both characters genuinely believed that having sex would save their lives. That was a bit much for me to swallow, especially since they didn’t even seem to like each other at that point in the book.
The only book in the Horsemen trilogy I’ve read is Indiscreet (back in the print-only days when Balogh’s books were hard to find second hand). Be warned that it also features an insufferable martyr who is determined to be miserable until the very last moment. She annoyed me even back then when I had a higher tolerance for such plot contrivances. I gave up on Mary Balogh long ago because even though her books have their touching moments they are outweighed by the things that irritate me.
@oceanjasper: Oh, I loved Indiscreet. Given what had happened in Catherine’s past, I thought most of her actions were completely understandable. SPOILER SPOILER Indeed, for the first half, per the terms of her agreement with her father, she had little choice but to reject Rex, or she would have lost her livelihood. END OF SPOILER.
I used to have a similar irritation problem with Balogh when I first started reading her; it took reading at least four or five of her books for me to get used to her style. And I know someone who loves her newer, less angsty books but can’t read the older ones, as well as someone with the exact opposite issue.
Unforgiving is hard to like but I always understood Kenneth’s ‘warmth’ idea as a way to rationalize what they both wanted/desired to happen. Not defending it (well, I guess a bit) but I always took it like something they knew it was just so they were able to let go of their issues. Or maybe that’s how I rationalized it, hahaha. I am a Mary Balogh fan.
@Claudia: I did get that out of Kenneth’s thoughts about that happened. There’s a moment the next day when he thinks he should have had them run in place to keep warm instead, but somehow last night sex was the only thing that came to mind. I took that to mean that Kenneth thought of sex because he really wanted Moira, even though he didn’t admit it to himself.
It was Moira’s part of it that was harder for me to go along with. She didn’t blame Kenneth for the sex because even afterward, she wholeheartedly believed that he had no other choice and had done it to keep them both alive. She even blamed herself for what happened, thinking that if she hadn’t ventured out into the storm then there would not have been the same necessity for sex.
I can’t read that as anything but completely swallowing Kenneth’s excuse and thinking she had no other choice. And that makes me think less of Kenneth if he rationalized it simply because he wanted her, because then Moira consented under false pretenses. That’s quite morally shady on Kenneth’s part, but he wasn’t portrayed as in any way amoral.
Even if I could make myself okay with that, which I can’t, there’s also the fact of Moira’s engagement to Sir Edwin. Sir Edwin was pompous and pretentious, but he could have cast Moira and her mother out of their home and married someone else. The fact that he asked Moira to marry him showed that he had compassion and honor. So even in a scenario where both of them rationalized the sex because they wanted to be together (which is not something I saw in Moira’s thoughts), they would have been treating Sir Edwin in shabby way.
I consider myself a Balogh fan too–there have been so many of her books that I have loved, but this is a weaker one IMO.
Definitely weaker — among my least favorite MB for sure.
I remember someone saying (in jest, of course) that Kinsale’s Seize the Fire existed to show that even two thoroughly screwed up people deserved a HEA. That’s how I think of Unforgivable sometimes.
@Claudia: Hmm. If Seize the Fire exists to show that even two thoroughly screwed up people deserve a HEA, Unforgiven must be an indication that even two asses who refuse to communicate deserve some kind of marriage.
@Janine: Oh sorry! I meant Irresistible! That book has a heroine who’d rather die in a ditch than ask for help from the hero, and she’s so cool in her manner that the hero has no idea that she’s in love with him. I haven’t read Indiscreet but it definitely sounds better.
@oceanjasper: Good to know. I have Irresistible in my TBR pile and I’ll still get around to it one of these days but I’ll go in knowing what to expect. Indiscreet is one of my favorite Baloghs. Balogh can be hit-or-miss for me but her hits are so good that I keep coming back despite the misses.