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GIULIA TORRE

~ reading and writing romance

GIULIA TORRE

Tag Archives: romance reviews

Review – The Everywhere Man – Victoria Gordon (1981)

31 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Giulia Torre in feminism, Giulia Torre, Harlequin Romance, vintage romance review

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category romance, Harlequin, harlequin romance, Mills and Boon, romance, romance novel reviews, romance reviews, sexual harassment

In honor of all the women who in 2017 fundamentally changed the conversation around sexual harassment, in honor of all the women who for a hundred years prior tried and failed, and in honor of those of us to come who will still speak truth to power, even in the face of new ASAP legislation (I speculate here) that will make accusing a white man of anything at all a criminal offense…I give you The Everywhere Man.

the everywhere man

Because, even if she claims she doesn’t, every woman wants a stalker.

Set in Australia, Alix is an architectural draftswoman with a talent for design and training German Shorthaired Pointers. Alix lost both her parents to a bushfire two years before, a sad fact that serves to motivate our heroine, at the awfully familiar sound of an Australian bushfire, out of the bush onto a busy highway at warp speed. She swerves into a ditch to avoid the hero. In the midst of an angry man rescue, she faints (ffs).

“Obnoxious, arrogant, conceited” Quinn Tennant pulls her out of the ditch. After Alix fails to show proper gratitude, Quinn asks, “Is it part of some Women’s Lib programme to be ungrateful, stroppy, and generally disagreeable?” (p. 17). Expressly claiming payment, he kisses her with “no crude savagery. Only a vast knowing” (p. 18, italics belong to the author). She tries and fails to claw-slap him (“Naughty, naughty” he chides), which is followed by laughter: “Why not relax? You’ve only one more kiss to finish the debt” (p. 19).

The professional rapes described in the story are metaphoric in scope. Victoria Golden, author of Always the Boss (1981) and Age of Consent (1985), among other 80s category romances, is presumably familiar with the issues of sexual predation in and out of the workplace.

Alix’s former fiancee and co-worker, a threadbare stereotype, steals her designs. New hero Quinn Tennant is not only her judge in dog shows, the landlord of her rented cottage, but also her boss. I won’t go into the details of the now-dated professional set-up for the central love scene. It includes a hotel suite, a drink in the boss’ face, a naked roll across the vast bed, an “athletic” dismount from the mattress, followed by a “sprint for the doorway”  (p. 114). Alix’s virtue remains intact because heroines can be out-and-out shrews when confronted with deflowering.

Fast forward through more dog shows to the happily-ever-after: The two are engaged to be married, and Quinn reveals he’s rescued Alix’ stolen designs. She promptly rips the short stack of drawings in half and quarters, saying “these are from the past; they don’t matter now” (p. 189).

What woman would rip up her original drawings? Who would expect her to?

It may mean nothing, but author Victoria Golden is a man, and the a.k.a. was born in response to the publisher’s claim that “no man” could write Harlequin category romance: “Gordon is widely believed to be the first man to seriously meet the challenge.”

I ask myself: is it one thing when readers consume toxic romance narratives imagined by other women, but another thing entirely when they’re crafted by a man (pretending to be a woman)?

My students tell me that it seems sometimes that I love these books, and sometimes that I hate them. Rarely in life am I this conflicted. True, someone can offer me one drink or another, and, faced with a hard choice, I’ll end up with both.

So I’ll end up with both here…

I love romance.

I hate this book.

 

Review – Liberated Lady – Sally Wentworth (1979)

04 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by Giulia Torre in feminism, Giulia Torre, vintage romance review

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category romance, feminist romance, romance, romance novel reviews, romance reviews

 

liberated lady wentworth.jpgThis is science folks. And a romance novel from 1979 titled Liberated Lady…? It could be the motherlode. The size of the TV studio camera on the cover screams Lacanian gaze, and Sally Wentworth is celebrated for 101 books on Goodreads. It’s the perfect storm. Talk to me, Goose.

Going in, here are my boy-crazy-yet-feminist (mark my epitaph) hopes for this love story:

  • some consent language, really erotic stuff, that will, you know, teach me to put what I want into words
  • a behind-the-scenes look at a TV studio in 1979
  • really good prose
  • not rape?

I’m not optimistic. First sign of trouble is the inside cover, a total turn on for us rape fetishists who are titillated by forced seduction…

Don’t try to deny what’s between us.

Alex took a purposeful step toward her as Sara raised her hands in a futile attempt to ward him off. But he merely caught her wrists. Briefly she tried to struggle, but he said harshly, ‘It’s too late, the fight’s over.’ And he pulled her into his arms.

His mouth covered hers hungrily, claiming possession, allowing no resistance. Desperately, Sara tried to break free, but she couldn’t escape the passionate torment of his lips, searching, demanding a response.

She made a little sound, deep in her throat an the hand she’d raised to hit him instead sank slowly onto his shoulder and crept around his neck…

That’s right. Just let it go, sisters.

For the entirety of the book he’s mad she won’t admit he turns her on, but then when they can finally agree that she’s totally hot for him, he gives her a job, a part-time PR gig because “she knows something about computers.” Bam. HEA.

*sigh*

the male chauvanist sellers

I need a hero.

But “sensitive, liberated men” aren’t in the cards for mainstream romantics. Take as another example, Silhouette Intimate Moments (1985) The Male Chauvinist by Alexandra Sellers. First off, I love camp shirts, but is he wearing jorts?

Language is important. Liberation, chauvinism. These things need words, and having them makes talking about the issues easier.

Andreas…seemed to epitomize the attitudes Kate had fought to escape–but his potent sensuality drew her into his arms. No “sensitive, liberated” man had ever had that effect on her.

See how we did that? We found the words to explain that male chauvinists are actually hotter.

Review – Dear Tyrant – Margaret Malcolm (1953)

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by Giulia Torre in Harlequin Romance, vintage romance review

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category romance, Harlequin, harlequin romance, Mills and Boon, romance novel reviews, romance reviews, romance writing

 

dear tyant malcolm

First published as Beloved Tyrant in 1953.

Thirty-five Ithaca College undergraduates are taking my first-year seminar Reading Popular Romance. In the footsteps of Carol Thurston and Janet Radway, we leaf through hundreds of roughed-up, red-edged books and mine the texts for what they are: artifacts of popular culture. One collective expression of an unarguably female imagination. The very act of reading is everyday citizen science. We ask ourselves, whatever will these women say next?

Don’t think it matters? Ithaca College’s ivy league neighbor, Cornell University, enrolled hundreds (~) of its undergraduates in a seminar to watch pornography. Students called it “the porn course.” My “trash class” is therefore in good company.

So what have we learned from Dear Tyrant? For one thing, something about a woman’s professional life in the 1950s. Goodreads reports that Margaret Malcolm wrote over 100 romance novels at Mills & Boon from 1940 to 1981. By the time Beloved Tyrant was published in 1953, she’d already written ten.

You’d think after reading hundreds of romance novels that by now the pleasure would be, you know, expected. But it was an unexpected pleasure to see in the pages of Margaret Malcolm‘s Dear Tyrant (1975) reference to Jane Eyre. It’s not unusual for authors of these old category romances to follow Brontë’s lead. Thousands of paperback romances were written before women could be issued credit cards in their own names, while marital rape was legal (legal until 1993 in all 50 states, my friends), when access to the Pill was decades away. One of the few jobs available to Harlequin’s heroines – or for women in general for that matter – was as a caretaker for homebound invalids or children. It shouldn’t have moved me overmuch when the character sees her own reflection in governess Jane Eyre. Still, I was tickled.

Because even in her eleventh book, Margaret Malcolm was having fun. Not only does her heroine laugh at the image of herself as Jane Eyre, but she also attends a masquerade ball, has to leave by the stroke of midnight, and loses a shoe in the throes of her speedy departure. A nod to Jane Eyre, and a wink at Cinderella.

Eleven books in, with eighty-nine to go? That’s about time a career romance writer taps her nose and says I got this, too.

 

 

 

 

REVIEW – Kiss of a Tyrant – Margaret Pargeter (1980)

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Harlequin Romance, Hero Archetypes, Romance Cover Art

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1970s harlequin, 1980s harlequin, 1980s romance, best romance novels, Boon Harlequin, category romance, contemporary romance, cover art, giulia torre, Harlequin, hero, hero archetype, retro romance, retro romance novels, romance book review, romance cover art, romance novel cover art, romance novel reviews, romance reviews, romance writing, romantic hero, vintage romance

Kiss of a Tyrant PargeterKiss of a Tyrant by Margaret Pargeter
Harlequin Romance #2375

The virgin’s vindication. One of my favorite tropes. If you don’t know of it yet, it’s a good one. It culminates with the hero – an angry man of the highest order – as his head snaps up to look in mute horror to study the face of the maiden beneath him after he’s inadvertently stolen her virginity. The inadvertent part is important.

But not as important as the hero’s grim belief that the heroine is not a virgin. And dammit, she should be.

What if I asked you to prove you’d never belonged to another man?

Such is the way with Kiss of a Tyrant.

Sloan Maddison is an Australian alpha male who finds himself in the English countryside where his widowed mother contemplates returning to live. In a country inn, he meets interior decorator Stacy Weldon. Stacy is “on leave” from her career, helping her mother and sister at the inn after being nearly raped by her boss. She is wounded and angry and not optimistic about her future.

Sloan is attracted to her. Pretty sure he wants to marry her. So uses his mother’s illness as an excuse to carry her off to Australia. But on the way out the door, he gets wind of that “affair” with her boss. And he’s hopping mad about it. She must have asked for it, and along the way, collected other affairs that now debases their own kindling desire.

The hero’s she-must-have-asked-for-it motivation is a hole in the plot that has widened over time. But it’s easy to jump across. Because Sloan is sexy in the way only an angry pants hero can be. Mean, misguided, and hard to get. Oh, but in love nonetheless.

The wrap-up is a bit holey, too, and would have been for readers even in 1980. Sloan is mean to Stacy up until the final moment, but claims he had known of her innocence for the preceding two whole days before the final page. He wanted to see if she could really adapt to his remote Australian way of life. Huh.

Sloan is mean as a billy goat. But, alas, sexier. So I can forgive the holes, even if Mr. Angrypants can’t.

REVIEW – The Angry Man by Joyce Dingwell (1979)

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Harlequin Romance, Hero Archetypes, Romance Cover Art

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1970s harlequin, Boon Harlequin, category romance, contemporary romance, cover art, giulia torre, Harlequin, hero, hero archetype, retro romance, romance book review, romance cover art, romance novel cover art, romance novel reviews, romance reviews, romance writing, romantic hero, vintage romance, wolfe island

The Angry Man Joyce DingwellThe Angry Man by Joyce Dingwell (1979) Harlequin Romance #2318 The Angry Man. How could I not?

First, a detour to cover art. I am working with an artist on the cover of book two of the RiverLust series, Simon’s Story. It’s called Swan Bay. I don’t believe you can paint a handsome man on the cover of a romance novel. Beautiful heroines? Yes. But the heroes always come off wrong.

Point in fact: The Angry Man cover hero is bleak. Crocodile Dundee with a longer face and shadowed, sunken cheeks. His hair is some kind of a poofy gray 70s mullet. Go ahead. Take a look at the cover of The Angry Man. Does he look angry to you? See that slight lift of his upper lip, over there on the right? The way his brows are furrowed together as he regards the heroine? Yes. The lovely doe-eyed one.

He is not angry; he’s sardonic, bemused. The man on this cover looks more perturbed than angry. Which is the perfect summation of Joyce Dingwell’s hero in this book.

English Polly loved her neighbor, who loved her sister, so her uncle sent her away. To Australia. Where after working on a statistics team as the resident non-statisician, she is told she has to stay another six months, because her former lover’s courtship of her sister is going more slowly than anticipated. So she takes the position of paid companion to Mrs. Clemance, young and beautiful wife of Thorn Clemance. Thorn is an ag specialist for a pharmaceutical company. A medical herbalist. But the beautiful Mrs. Clemance is not his wife. It’s his cousin’s widow. The hero is, in fact, not married. We learn this as the heroine does, and it’s a breathless beat.

Look at me, MissKendall, look at me, tell me what you see.’ ‘I-I don’t understand you.’ Polly tried to retreat a step, but he advanced, and at once they stood barely an inch apart. I think you do understand. I think you see a man who is a no-half-measures man. I think you see a man who would not be put off with subtleties, evasions and half-truths from any woman he made his wife. I think you see a man who would demand an entirety, a fulfillment, a conclusion, a completion.’ A pause. ‘I think you see a man who would be demanding four, not eight walls.”

Oh, dear. Here’s looking at you.

The ultimate logic of conflict? Unknown.

There is an ancestral puzzle requiring a flow chart to comprehend. And, for some reason, Thorn couldn’t tell Polly about his cousin’s widow’s recent sanitarium visit, her convalescence in his home, or the will that required that before she inherit, she must remain unmarried for two years. Which would have explained Polly’s charge to keep the young woman away from men.

The hero is in fact exactly like his picture (and the reader). Confused and frustrated. Not an awful book. Joyce Dingwell (b. 1908) wrote 80 of them. She knew how to write.

But for this one, in the end, I am left with only a single, bright nugget: Upon first introduction, her toes were dipped in the river until he found her and hauled her out. A shark had taken the hero’s dog from that very rock, only a week earlier.

There is no cure for a shark attack…When you put your gear on we’ll get back.’ ‘Gear? I’ve only removed my shoes and my pantyhose!’ He shrugged, saying almost uninterestingly: ‘Put ‘em on.’ Incensed, feeling a fool, hoping at least he would look away as she did so, Polly complied. It was not easy to wriggle discreetly into pantyhose, and she wished he would wander off. A tactful man would have. But he didn’t, he stood there right to the final hitch.

The final hitch? This whole line of books is worth reading for the settings. These girls get to go everywhere.

REVIEW – Riddles and Rhymes – Joan Elliott Pickart

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Loveswept Reviews

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#sexysentences, 1980s romance, bantam books, Bantam Loveswept, best historical romance, category romance, contemporary romance, joan elliott pickart, loveswept, retro romance, retro romance novels, romance book review, romance novel cover art, romance reviews, romance writing

Riddles_Rhymes_cover_artRiddles and Rhymes #317 – Joan Elliott Pickart (March 1989)

Cover Art: Ed Tadiello

Meetup: Hero walks into a used bookstore the heroine had just inherited from her eccentric aunt, and with a ray of sunshine dancing off his blond hero hair, they fall immediately in lust, followed promptly by love.

Conflict: Hero is a painter, and painting has been his mistress. Though he’s ready to commit, heroine doubts his love will withstand his next gallery show. Also, there’s a detective story running through this one, with guns, federal agents, and references to Hart to Hart.

80s standouts: She’s a high school English teacher on summer break, who, had she not inherited the used book store (if not anachronistic enough), would have spent the summer delivering telephone books.

His fashion: One yellow knit shirt tucked into faded jeans. Not too terrible.

Her fashion: Turquoise dress. Appropriate only for mother of the bride dresses, or dresses for women who were in their 20s in the 80s.

The Penetration Station:

He kissed her once more, then lifted his head to watch her face as he entered her with a smooth power, filling her, bringing to her honeyed haven all that he was as a man

Yes, that’s right. Her honeyed haven.

Survey Says: Another one of Joan’s fun romps. References to Fletch throughout warmed my heart.

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REVIEW – The Windflower – Laura London

31 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Dukes, Pirates

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best historical romance, laura london, pirate romance, robin james, romance reviews, sharon and tom curtis, Windflower

The WindflowerThe Windflower by Laura London
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Someday I will write an essay on this book. It has a cult following, and I am one. Incredibly full characters, rich description, unique settings, and the old pirate romance somehow morphing into an aristocractic one. Brilliant! Plucky heroine. Sexy hero. Great love scenes. Memorable secondary characters. Literary at the sentence level. For those romance readers who have not yet read this book…lucky you! It was my vacation read last February in Vieques, Puerto Rico. The book rocked as much as that vacation.

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