Nurse Harriet Goes to Holland - 1970 Discussion Thread

Let's just dig right in, shall we.

• Title changes - fortunately the annoying habit of changing titles for the American market only lasted a few years...1973's "Winter of Change/Surgeon in Charge" is the last example I find.


• "Haughty Harry" - a petite gorgeous blond...that would be Betty Neels Type 3 (the Outlier). I am fascinated by her pocket knife. It has a variety of blades, a tin opener, "a corkscrew and that small instrument for digging stones out of horses' hooves." Yes, our small dainty heroine carries the 1970's version of a Leatherman with her - "I've a knife I usually carry around." Shades of Crocodile Dundee "that's not a knife, THIS is a knife".
[Betty Keira] It would most certainly be confiscated by airport security now.

• Friso - yeah, he's a git (British word alert!). I don't care what he looks like, he's a git. But a git with CARS. I have never personally seen an AC 428 Fastback...but from the picture Betty Keira posted, it must be related to Dr. Who's time machine - the TARDIS. "It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside"...because if Friso is a typical Betty Neels hero (tall and vast) his vastiness does not look like it would squeeze into the AC 428 Fastback. Betty mentions no less than eight cars by name in this novel--four of them before page 30. One Dutch sentence reads: De jeep van Friso when the Land Rover arrives.


• Turbans. Unlike Betty Keira, I am old enough to remember that particular fashion faux pas. This is not the only Neels heroine to wear a turban...as late as 1977, in "The Hasty Marriage", a bride is caught wearing a turban hat. Turbans on women...it always says medical condition to me - and those darn English nurses should have known that. Only matrons of a certain age and disposition (50-ish and managing) are allowed to wear turbans. For all others they ought to only be donned after showering. [Betty Debbie] Does this mean that if I work on my managerial skills I too could get away with wearing a turban? Thanks, but no.


• Fun with Frisian names, for a thousand, Alex. Yes, we hit the daily double with "Wierd", but trust me, the list is long. Femke, Grietje. Hajo, Jelle, Joukje, Sikke, Tiede, Wiebke....the list goes on and on and on.

• Taeike (teenage mischief-maker) is probably the youngest "Other Woman Wannabe" in Neeldom...but she is not alone in her ability to break up the happy couple and not have any repercussions. Was La Neels too nice a person to administer poetic justice...?? I don't know. She does bear a slight resemblance my second grade teacher, Mrs. Rosemary Cruickshanks (yes, that was her name) - who wielded punishment in the form of a ping-pong paddle on the 7 year old miscreants in her class. (one wonders if perhaps in another 10 years or so Taeike will run off and marry a middle-aged American tycoon from Florida - as this seems to be as tough as Betty gets on the bad girls) At one point the couple dances to "If you go away" and the lyrics are alluded to as having meaning for the young(ish) lovers. But she never gives them so here is a link to the song. (Of course I had to choose Julio Iglesias's version.) Maybe she never thought that forty years hence people (obsessed people) might still be reading her books and wouldn't get the cultural reference.

• He has two dogs. One 'Flotsam' (presumably rescued from a watery grave) and one bulldog named J.B. (I have to assume it is short for John Bull--but she never says). Add Moses (also rescued from a watery grave and you've got a full house.

• Food: She eats marrons glaces, Cambridge punch, Bovril toast, pot-au-feu, onion soup (laced with lots of Brandy), wienerschnitzel, 'sprits', rolpens met rodekool, poffertjes, oyster soup, filletsof sole Maconaise, and saddle of lamb

• At one point she bathes and dons a nightgown "under Anna's motherly eye". Dude, if I want to crawl into bed just leave me be. Maybe it's a British thing, but as for me, I would like to take a bath alone - kindly housekeepers, family retainers, upstairs maids, stay out!