Recent reading
Dec. 5th, 2020 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaSir Isumbras at the Ford by D K Broster (1918)
Oh, this was quite enjoyable! It's a typical Broster book with her usual lovely writing, though with no slash this time: instead the misunderstandings and hurt-comfort and dilemmas over honour are in the het relationship. I quite liked Raymonde (the woman) as a character! She definitely got to have her own dilemmas and choices, though I wish she had had a larger role in the book.
I think it would have been a stronger and more interesting book if, like Flight of the Heron, there had been characters on both sides of the war (the French revolution). There's Mme de Chaulnes, who is a Republican, but she only gets a very brief exchange about politics with the main character. But even though all the main characters are Royalists, Broster does not exactly paint a very flattering picture of their cause. I mean, yes, the main characters are all very noble, but their leaders are all incompetent and are clearly using the Breton peasants as cannon fodder, to the point where you wonder why the main characters still stay loyal! Of course, all this is in the service of putting the main characters through angst. Wow, so much feinting as to whether various characters will live or die.
There's also an important child character, and while he is rather precious (Broster's strength is not writing children...), I did quite enjoy all these men (his father, his grandfather, La Vireville, to a lesser degree Lt Tollemache) falling over themselves to take care of him and be good father figures to him.
Oh, this was quite enjoyable! It's a typical Broster book with her usual lovely writing, though with no slash this time: instead the misunderstandings and hurt-comfort and dilemmas over honour are in the het relationship. I quite liked Raymonde (the woman) as a character! She definitely got to have her own dilemmas and choices, though I wish she had had a larger role in the book.
I think it would have been a stronger and more interesting book if, like Flight of the Heron, there had been characters on both sides of the war (the French revolution). There's Mme de Chaulnes, who is a Republican, but she only gets a very brief exchange about politics with the main character. But even though all the main characters are Royalists, Broster does not exactly paint a very flattering picture of their cause. I mean, yes, the main characters are all very noble, but their leaders are all incompetent and are clearly using the Breton peasants as cannon fodder, to the point where you wonder why the main characters still stay loyal! Of course, all this is in the service of putting the main characters through angst. Wow, so much feinting as to whether various characters will live or die.
There's also an important child character, and while he is rather precious (Broster's strength is not writing children...), I did quite enjoy all these men (his father, his grandfather, La Vireville, to a lesser degree Lt Tollemache) falling over themselves to take care of him and be good father figures to him.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-06 08:11 am (UTC)I did think Mme de Chaulnes was intriguing, and it would have been great if she or other Republican characters had had a larger role.
Heh, I agree with your assessment of Broster's portrayal of the Royalist cause... that's something she seems to have got better at later on (and perhaps was especially interested in wrt the Jacobites), balancing her portrayal of the characters' political loyalties with a bit more pragmatism.
Wow, so much feinting as to whether various characters will live or die.
I know, right (almost literally up until the last page..!) It made a really interesting comparison with FotH, actually, the way they both suggest a 'fated' ending with one character dying and another surviving, and then dramatically swerve away from it, but in different ways.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-08 05:27 pm (UTC)I also thought it was interesting how La Vireville also was betrayed by a woman in the past, like Keith! Though he reacts to it rather differently. And he also lacks Keith's endearing sense of humor. : )
It made a really interesting comparison with FotH, actually, the way they both suggest a 'fated' ending with one character dying and another surviving, and then dramatically swerve away from it, but in different ways.
Yes! And of course, The Yellow Poppy doesn't shy away at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-08 06:19 pm (UTC)Aww, that's a great idea—I'd definitely read the fic too!
Yes, I did think La Vireville was an interesting stage in the development of the Keith character type, as it were—and I especially liked that the canon romantic relationship is the one with the most obvious parallels to Ewen/Keith, heh :)
And of course, The Yellow Poppy doesn't shy away at all.
Indeed! Keeping the readers on their toes with these endings...