REVIEW: The Golden Collar by Elizabeth Cadell
Henry Eliot’s future seemed well and truly settled: on the personal front, with his engagement to Marly, on the professional front, as an architect in the employ of Sir Bertram Tranter, Marly’s incredibly rich and powerful father. He had promised his daughter a strip of Portuguese coast for a wedding present. When matters did not move with the speed he liked, Henry was packed off to finalize them. Marly went too on this mission which created havoc in all the well-laid plans. Suddenly for Henry, life began to open out again, to look uncertain, exciting, full of perplexing but delightful possibilities.
Review
I needed a print book to read in case Winter Storm Fern knocked out my power and, looking at my selection sitting on my desk, there was this book. In many ways it reminds me of “The Friendly Air,” which Cadell wrote a year later and which is also set in Portugal and deals with an English person discovering they like the laid back way of living there.
Henry Eliot has been sucked into a life working for a wealthy man and being engaged to that man’s spoiled daughter. Now Sir Bertram wants Henry to negotiate the purchase of some beach front property in the Algarve. Henry is smart enough to know he doesn’t really love his fiancee Marly nor does she love him. He reached for who he thought was unobtainable and Marly – for shits and giggles? – said yes. Arriving in Portugal, Henry sees this place that Sir Bertram is So Determined to get as a wedding gift for his daughter and also realizes that this beautiful place will be the golden collar around Henry’s neck and also that Marly’s plans will ruin this unspoiled spot. But Sir Bertram’s Portuguese lawyer has already told Henry that he doubts the owner will sell at any price. How far will Henry go to obey his orders?
The book is packed with wonderful characters – and I include the assholes in that since Cadell crafts and describes everyone so well that I can see them all perfectly. As I mentioned, the bloom is off the romance rose before the book even starts. Marly and Henry have been engaged less than six months and Henry has seen that he’s done all the changing to fit into Marly’s world but knows she will never even try to fit into his. So really, don’t worry about whether or not this relationship will last.
Henry is an honorable man though and if he’s given instructions to do something by his boss, then he will try. As he quickly discovers, life here is very similar to what he knew growing up in Brazil and though it’s not outright mentioned, I can feel Henry slowly reverting and then slotting into the pace of life he remembers. He also hates to see the tourists and new expats flooding in then taking over and ultimately changing what first attracted them to the area and what has been there for ages.
What Sir Bertram and Marly don’t understand, or frankly care about, is the languid way of life that the owner of the land is determined to preserve. This is a way that might rub people the wrong way today but also is one that has worked for centuries. Senhora Silva knows her home and her people. She is deeply devoted to both, knows everyone’s name, and provides jobs, homes, and certainty. She doesn’t care how much money or blank checks are waved at her. She knows that it’s her duty to see to those who depend on her.
I’ll be honest and say that when Henry first arrives on his own at the Quinta and meets the Senhora’s niece, he doesn’t come off that well. But Henry also has an “in” to the Quinta do Infante through a relative of the Portuguese lawyer, shapes up, and slowly begins to be sucked into his future. If the fragile mother of the relative decides that Henry is a suitable driver to take her over there – at about 10 miles per hour – for a visit, then what can Henry do but graciously acquiesce to ferrying this woman and her son to a place where they are loved and where the household will turn itself inside out to welcome them? Would Marly do this? Hell, no. Marly shows her ass the first time she meets Senhora Silva and manners are something these people don’t take for granted.
There are two other great characters in the persons of other English people looking to settle in this area. They are older, no nonsense, ‘call it like it is’ people. Henry deals politely with them – something which will pay off later. Because really the book is about Henry discovering what he wants, what he will put up with, and what his limit is. Still there is sand in the Vaseline of a HEA and it will take Henry’s bold idea and some capital to see everything to the end. There are romantic elements here but the book ends, and rightly so for reasons Henry is honest enough to lay out, with a HFN and big plans for the future. The book makes me think of how so many cities and regions today are starting to try and reign in tourism and maintain areas for those who live there. B
~Jayne
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