Heaven is Gentle begins with such a cute premise that it makes what follows all the more disappointing. Professor Christian van Duyl and Doctor McOldFart are discussing hiring a nurse to run an experimental asthma clinic for several weeks in the Scottish Highlands. Several names on the list are discarded simply because they sound frivolous and incapable
(just as hearing the name Tiffani Amber Thiessen could only possibly conjure the image of Tiffany Amber Thiessen) until they reach the name Eliza Proudfoot--surely a battle-ax of a woman, a buxom warrior princess fit for managing Beta-male asthmatics.
Er...for men of science they make some pretty silly suppositions as Eliza, though 28 and the capable Ward Sister of Men's Medical at St. Anne's, is small, shapely, blonde and has men falling over themselves for the chance of having their proposals turned down by her.
Now let's skip to the bit where they meet. She's driven herself up in a rattle-trap of a Fiat over roads that closely resemble a pony track, it's sheeting rain and the 'lodge' is forbidding. Knock, knock, knock on the door. "Hey, it's raining down my back out here...why are you standing there with a moronic look on your face?"
Christian is surprised and initially (in the first 30 minutes or so) disposed to find the whole thing funny. They were expecting Boadice
a and they got Helen of Troy. More fool them.
Eliza isn't very impressed with the place. Someone has written 'dust me' in the layers of grime and dirt on the mirror, her asthmatics live in a converted WWII Nissen hut (actually quite cozy but there's no escaping the sardine can comparisons), nobody seems at all convinced that she's good at her job and if only Christian would wipe that nasty, sneering look off his face she could get down to brass tacks.
Scotland (the Other Woman in this phase of the book) does not sell herself as anything pleasant or vacation-worthy. I love grotty weather, myself, but this seemed particularly dour.
Christian, in between being very nasty (To him, her presence is not funny anymore. He's attracted to the Fair Eliza and terrified.), asks the men servants to make her a good tea everyday. He probably tells himself that it (his consideration) is nothing.
Eliza, for her part, charmingly sets to making the Scots wilderness a home. She adopts a pregnant cat--over whose delivery Christian and her call a
truce--and settles into her allegedly comfortable cottage. As for the lodge, a housekeeper is found, rugs are beaten, charming smudges of dust are sported. But I wouldn't put it past Eliza to have done this as an elaborate ruse for getting into Christian's room to look at his picture of this 'high-minded' woman he's engaged to.
What?! He's engaged?
That's right. Doctor McOldFart tells Eliza that Christian is gettin' hitched and it isn't until she's 'cleaning' his room (and holding the picture of Estella which Christian catches her at) that she realizes that her preferred brand of catnip is a potent mixture of scorn, insults, off-hand consideration and ice.
When Scotland, that saucy minx, sends a storm of Biblical proportions cascading through Eliza's cottage, it's Christian to the rescue! She thrusts a broom into his amused arms and they stem the tide together. At last! A half hour of mellow dialog (wherein he discloses that his hometown was once the site of the Hanseatic Empire and a Summer residence of Charlemagne while she discloses the precise GPS coordinates to her parent's Regency house) finds them in uncharacteristic charity with one another. I think this calls for a tortured and grudging kiss...
Because of that kiss, Christian probably feels angry at himself and a little guilty (though only a little) so, naturally, she has earned his icy disdain. Which introduces a little episode I like to call, Why Did You Hike Up the Mountain Alone You Barking Idiot? A Storm Was Coming and You Didn't Tell Anyone? Also, You Had Been Told Not To--Which Seemed A Reasonable Request in the Scottish Highlands in Winter. Why? Why? Why?
I have little patience with Little Miss You Can't Tell Me What to Do. Still, he isn't horrible to her and she is quite sporting. This constitutes progress. Take your pitiful crumbs, be grateful and don't ask for seconds.
Eliza toys with the idea of taking Christian away from the frigid cardboard figure of his fiancee'. (Which is a little presumptuous and mean if you think about it. She can tell from a single photo that Estelle deserves her contempt? Harsh.)
On a trip into the bustling shopping town of Ullapool she is pestered by a rat-faced man and hauled across the coals by Christian for it. Tears. Apologies. Grudging admission of her attractiveness wrung from him. Around and around we go...
As the end of the asthmatic experiment looms, Christian wonders what Eliza will do with the kittens and offers to take them.
She: Oh really? I thought that Estelle would probably drown them in a lake, as like as not.
He: No. She'll have to like it or lump it.
She: She sounds like a crushing bore!
Yeah, that last bit was real. Eliza is playing some dirty pool.
But the good news is that as they leave Scotland behind, some of The Great Betty's usual awesomeness begins to shine.
In a wayside inn on their last day together, he calls her into the coffee room for some postmortems which I won't spoil. Sufficient to say, he cowers behind glasses, lists her attributes (A Scout is loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous...), tells her he's glad she's leaving and gets one of the best tongue lashings in all of Neelsdom.
Editorial Note: The Venerable Neels can be a little parsimonious with her showdowns. Mercy and forgiveness for all sort of evils flow freely. Heaven is Gentle is a different kettle of fish and, if I've been hard on this book, I genuinely love this part.
Christian is not so chastened that he doesn't kiss the tar out of her anyway.
Since this is only page 124, you know we have to have a medical emergency to bridge the gap between meet-cute, exposition and the glorious end.
Doctor McOldFart is chosen to play the part of deathly-ill romantic facilitator. His asthma attack brings Christian and Eliza together. But none of it is very interesting until she takes Doctor McOldFart to Holland (to visit Christian and work on that asthma study).
Let's look inside the brain of our fair maiden:
A word about Estelle: I don't hate her. She doesn't want any more pets. She treats Eliza like a nurse. She has salt-cellars for bosoms. (Thank you, Betty!) She wants to run the house her own way when she gets married (instead of her future mother-in-law). She kisses another man during her engagement--hey, wait. Erm...didn't Christian? Her future MIL is cheer-leading the opposition. She and he are incompatible but she's not beneath contempt.
It isn't long before Christian finally (FINALLY) decides to cut bait with Estelle. (Champagne all around!) Estelle, for her part is inching closer to a certain Doctor HandyLips (and his interest in Roman ruins).
Christian makes some earnest attempts at wooing, is cute-put-out when she can't come to dinner with him, defends her to Estelle ("I like small women..." ) and turns himself into quite a likable fellow.
It only wants Eliza catching Estelle and Doctor HandyLips clinching in the shrubbery for gaskets to be blown to kingdom come. Engagements are broken at last.
Christian wastes no time getting Eliza alone. Come into the study...and I will ask you to marry me in a manner which you will never forget as long as you live.
The End
Rating: Heaven is Gentle is a head scratcher. I honestly almost loathe the beginning. Scotland is sodden and dire and bleak--even when it's not raining it lays there like a damp blanket. Christian and Eliza's relationship borders on cruel. Still, here and there I find some flashes of genius. ('Dust me') The middle is middling--Christian's mood is described too often as sneering and icy but we're making progress. The end is smashing. Love, love, love it. Twenty pages from the finale, Betty tells us that they went to lunch together and were 'taking with the enthusiasm of two people who have discovered each other for the first time'. That's when it struck me--All the rest of it was written not as a love story but as the Anatomy of a Bad Break-up. Only when Estelle the Inoffensive seems poised to leave him does Christian settle down to wooing in Fair Eliza in earnest. The prelude to that was merely a dissection of his inner turmoil at being attracted to Eliza and attached to Estelle. I'm going to give this the cheese board because:
Food: Hot soup and sausage rolls, saddle of lamb, apricot upside-down pudding, lovely macaroni and cheese and a cherry cake (which both repels me on the matter of cooked fruit and attracts me because I love cherries).
Fashion: To Scotland she packs thick sweaters and slacks, a long cloak, old anorak, an old rose mohair skirt and cashmere top. She wears Wellington boots and knitted gloves to tramp about the countryside. Our hero rescues Eliza in a great socking sheepskin jacket. She also owns a high-necked brown jersey. Also, much hay is made of the fact that she doesn't travel with an evening dress to Holland.
(just as hearing the name Tiffani Amber Thiessen could only possibly conjure the image of Tiffany Amber Thiessen) until they reach the name Eliza Proudfoot--surely a battle-ax of a woman, a buxom warrior princess fit for managing Beta-male asthmatics.Er...for men of science they make some pretty silly suppositions as Eliza, though 28 and the capable Ward Sister of Men's Medical at St. Anne's, is small, shapely, blonde and has men falling over themselves for the chance of having their proposals turned down by her.
Now let's skip to the bit where they meet. She's driven herself up in a rattle-trap of a Fiat over roads that closely resemble a pony track, it's sheeting rain and the 'lodge' is forbidding. Knock, knock, knock on the door. "Hey, it's raining down my back out here...why are you standing there with a moronic look on your face?"
Christian is surprised and initially (in the first 30 minutes or so) disposed to find the whole thing funny. They were expecting Boadice
a and they got Helen of Troy. More fool them.Eliza isn't very impressed with the place. Someone has written 'dust me' in the layers of grime and dirt on the mirror, her asthmatics live in a converted WWII Nissen hut (actually quite cozy but there's no escaping the sardine can comparisons), nobody seems at all convinced that she's good at her job and if only Christian would wipe that nasty, sneering look off his face she could get down to brass tacks.
Scotland (the Other Woman in this phase of the book) does not sell herself as anything pleasant or vacation-worthy. I love grotty weather, myself, but this seemed particularly dour.
Christian, in between being very nasty (To him, her presence is not funny anymore. He's attracted to the Fair Eliza and terrified.), asks the men servants to make her a good tea everyday. He probably tells himself that it (his consideration) is nothing.
Eliza, for her part, charmingly sets to making the Scots wilderness a home. She adopts a pregnant cat--over whose delivery Christian and her call a
truce--and settles into her allegedly comfortable cottage. As for the lodge, a housekeeper is found, rugs are beaten, charming smudges of dust are sported. But I wouldn't put it past Eliza to have done this as an elaborate ruse for getting into Christian's room to look at his picture of this 'high-minded' woman he's engaged to.What?! He's engaged?
That's right. Doctor McOldFart tells Eliza that Christian is gettin' hitched and it isn't until she's 'cleaning' his room (and holding the picture of Estella which Christian catches her at) that she realizes that her preferred brand of catnip is a potent mixture of scorn, insults, off-hand consideration and ice.
When Scotland, that saucy minx, sends a storm of Biblical proportions cascading through Eliza's cottage, it's Christian to the rescue! She thrusts a broom into his amused arms and they stem the tide together. At last! A half hour of mellow dialog (wherein he discloses that his hometown was once the site of the Hanseatic Empire and a Summer residence of Charlemagne while she discloses the precise GPS coordinates to her parent's Regency house) finds them in uncharacteristic charity with one another. I think this calls for a tortured and grudging kiss...
Because of that kiss, Christian probably feels angry at himself and a little guilty (though only a little) so, naturally, she has earned his icy disdain. Which introduces a little episode I like to call, Why Did You Hike Up the Mountain Alone You Barking Idiot? A Storm Was Coming and You Didn't Tell Anyone? Also, You Had Been Told Not To--Which Seemed A Reasonable Request in the Scottish Highlands in Winter. Why? Why? Why?
I have little patience with Little Miss You Can't Tell Me What to Do. Still, he isn't horrible to her and she is quite sporting. This constitutes progress. Take your pitiful crumbs, be grateful and don't ask for seconds.Eliza toys with the idea of taking Christian away from the frigid cardboard figure of his fiancee'. (Which is a little presumptuous and mean if you think about it. She can tell from a single photo that Estelle deserves her contempt? Harsh.)
On a trip into the bustling shopping town of Ullapool she is pestered by a rat-faced man and hauled across the coals by Christian for it. Tears. Apologies. Grudging admission of her attractiveness wrung from him. Around and around we go...
As the end of the asthmatic experiment looms, Christian wonders what Eliza will do with the kittens and offers to take them.
She: Oh really? I thought that Estelle would probably drown them in a lake, as like as not.
He: No. She'll have to like it or lump it.
She: She sounds like a crushing bore!
Yeah, that last bit was real. Eliza is playing some dirty pool.
But the good news is that as they leave Scotland behind, some of The Great Betty's usual awesomeness begins to shine.
In a wayside inn on their last day together, he calls her into the coffee room for some postmortems which I won't spoil. Sufficient to say, he cowers behind glasses, lists her attributes (A Scout is loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous...), tells her he's glad she's leaving and gets one of the best tongue lashings in all of Neelsdom.
Editorial Note: The Venerable Neels can be a little parsimonious with her showdowns. Mercy and forgiveness for all sort of evils flow freely. Heaven is Gentle is a different kettle of fish and, if I've been hard on this book, I genuinely love this part.
Christian is not so chastened that he doesn't kiss the tar out of her anyway.
Since this is only page 124, you know we have to have a medical emergency to bridge the gap between meet-cute, exposition and the glorious end.
Doctor McOldFart is chosen to play the part of deathly-ill romantic facilitator. His asthma attack brings Christian and Eliza together. But none of it is very interesting until she takes Doctor McOldFart to Holland (to visit Christian and work on that asthma study).
Let's look inside the brain of our fair maiden:
- He's rich! I can't steal him from that frigid bag-of-bones now!
- Estelle gives me indigestion!
- She doesn't bore him to tears? How can she not bore him to tears!
A word about Estelle: I don't hate her. She doesn't want any more pets. She treats Eliza like a nurse. She has salt-cellars for bosoms. (Thank you, Betty!) She wants to run the house her own way when she gets married (instead of her future mother-in-law). She kisses another man during her engagement--hey, wait. Erm...didn't Christian? Her future MIL is cheer-leading the opposition. She and he are incompatible but she's not beneath contempt.It isn't long before Christian finally (FINALLY) decides to cut bait with Estelle. (Champagne all around!) Estelle, for her part is inching closer to a certain Doctor HandyLips (and his interest in Roman ruins).
Christian makes some earnest attempts at wooing, is cute-put-out when she can't come to dinner with him, defends her to Estelle ("I like small women..." ) and turns himself into quite a likable fellow.
It only wants Eliza catching Estelle and Doctor HandyLips clinching in the shrubbery for gaskets to be blown to kingdom come. Engagements are broken at last.
Christian wastes no time getting Eliza alone. Come into the study...and I will ask you to marry me in a manner which you will never forget as long as you live.
The End
Rating: Heaven is Gentle is a head scratcher. I honestly almost loathe the beginning. Scotland is sodden and dire and bleak--even when it's not raining it lays there like a damp blanket. Christian and Eliza's relationship borders on cruel. Still, here and there I find some flashes of genius. ('Dust me') The middle is middling--Christian's mood is described too often as sneering and icy but we're making progress. The end is smashing. Love, love, love it. Twenty pages from the finale, Betty tells us that they went to lunch together and were 'taking with the enthusiasm of two people who have discovered each other for the first time'. That's when it struck me--All the rest of it was written not as a love story but as the Anatomy of a Bad Break-up. Only when Estelle the Inoffensive seems poised to leave him does Christian settle down to wooing in Fair Eliza in earnest. The prelude to that was merely a dissection of his inner turmoil at being attracted to Eliza and attached to Estelle. I'm going to give this the cheese board because:
- Eliza plays dirty. She could very easily be written as a villainess--scheming to marry Christian, snooping in his things, hating Estelle without provocation, calling Estelle names to his face, etc. That's not cricket.
- Running off to the mountains was unforgivably stupid. She is plucky thereafter but still...
- I somewhat enjoy watching The Travails of Christian as he struggles with his attraction but he's often jerky.
Food: Hot soup and sausage rolls, saddle of lamb, apricot upside-down pudding, lovely macaroni and cheese and a cherry cake (which both repels me on the matter of cooked fruit and attracts me because I love cherries).
Fashion: To Scotland she packs thick sweaters and slacks, a long cloak, old anorak, an old rose mohair skirt and cashmere top. She wears Wellington boots and knitted gloves to tramp about the countryside. Our hero rescues Eliza in a great socking sheepskin jacket. She also owns a high-necked brown jersey. Also, much hay is made of the fact that she doesn't travel with an evening dress to Holland.
As always, Betty Keira, you hit the nail on the head and while reading your review - it struck me! Betty Neels characters should just stay in the house - never , ever, ever, go out for a walk. Can you count how many storms, ravines, lochs, ditches, dog leashes and rabbit snares our Betty Neel gals have gotten caught in? Too numerous to count! If they just stayed indoors, they would be just fine - but wait! Now I'm thinking of all the attics they've been caught in, old dutch floor boards they've fallen through, etc. Let's face it, these ladies are awfully accident prone - but then that is what makes a Neels novel and I love them all.
ReplyDeleteBetty Barbara here--
ReplyDeleteOne comment re; salt cellars. Technically (if you want to call it that), salt-cellars are those cavities above the collar bones. So if our Estelle has noticeable salt cellars then she is one skinny lady. An actually historical type salt cellar is quite capacious. So saying salt cellar bosom could mean she had a big chest(!) But then again, those little salt thingies in a formal Victorian place setting were quite tiny.....
This Betty will stop now. She is too confused...
I hadn't known about the collar bones reference, Betty Barbara. But I am laughing to think about a big-bosomed Neels villainess. Maybe La Neels is connoting a concave look?
ReplyDeleteIf you want to see what the North American cover looks like, notice my avatar because this is MY FAVORITE Neels book! Has been since teen years.
ReplyDeleteDon't let Betty Keira fool you--this is a ton of fun. I think I like it the most because, to me, it is so quintessentially Neels for a non-downtrodden heroine. This guy's no weenie, and he is not actually nasty (see Horrible Reilof of "The Hasty Marriage") very often. Even when Betty states it, it's not particularly true--goaded and vexed and frustrated and smart-mouthed, but it's not as if Eliza can't take it.
Speaking of Eliza, she's great--a tough little fairy who men underestimate because of her looks. You go girl! She's not intimidated by Christian even when he is Desperately Trying To Scare Her Off by peering down at her through his reading spectacles (yep, I said spectacles).
The Walk In Beastly Weather actually makes sense (if still foolish) in the context, and the rescue (along with his later explanation) is a rather lovely scene. The rat-faced man incident is exciting and vividly written.
I don't think Eliza plays dirty--Estelle IS as insipid as her photograph (Christian in essence describes that way). I would have looked too. (If I clean his whole blooming lodge, I at least get to look at The Ice Block's picture). Of course, Betty being Betty can't let that lapse of morality go, and Eliza gets caught. Remember the man is not married only engaged. Whereas that made men off-limits to me in my single days, I never met Christian.... And, let's face, although she said she would try to take him away, she never actually did anything about it consciously.
The dog barking comment is funny (I've used it for years), and it's not like she can't take it (unlike Gentle Laura of "The Hasty...").
As for Scotland, I thought it sounded great, and this book is in part why I (though not a very ambitious world traveler myself) was determined to get there (and indeed loved it). Both the characters obviously do too because the lodge is clearly being refurbished at the end for their use.
In summary, my lashings of whipped cream are dumped on Betty Keira's head while she enjoys the cheese *laugh.
p.s. I don't care where the salt cellars are in reality--whenever I see a bony, angular woman with a sour face to go with it I call her "attributes" salt cellars and laugh silently.
I agree that Eliza is plucky. She mostly 'can take it' and doesn't get too fussed by Christian's grotty mood. I also loves that she smacks him down at the inn. High fives, Eliza!
ReplyDeleteAnd he IS nasty. Betty JoDee and I part ways on the subject of Reilof and The Hasty Marriage (I think Reilof's disillusionment and anger is at least understandable as he was jilted and contracts a loveless MOC.) and Christian (I think that his nasty mood has a much smaller reason for existing.--he's got to break an engagement!)
Scotland was not enough 'sitting cozily around in the firelight' and too much 'marching asthmatics in the damp'.
That said, I love that Christian hides behind his glasses and that they're refurbishing the lodge (--go make some great memories!).
Also, I'm not really in any doubt that they will have a great married life as I felt all his nastiness came from his sheer flummoxedness at finding the girl of his dreams at the wrong time in the wrong place.
I love that the Bettys are passionate about defending our favorites and I am swimming in the lashings of whipped cream you've dumped on my head...;0)
Need picture of Errol Flynn flying into the breach--The Founding Bettys and I have a long-standing feud over the difference between male nastiness (see "Shouldn't Have Picked the Chit in the First Place" Reilof of...) and a male snide dry sense of humor against a worthy female opponent (see our sword fight over "The Gemel Ring").
ReplyDeleteChristian was knocked sideways the first time he laid eyes on her and never quite recovered even by the end (he's clearly still enchanted in "Philomena's Miracle" *sigh).
Enjoy your whipped cream bath, Betty Keira!
Okay, I've obviously known for months that this is Betty JoDee's favorite book. So I was feeling more than a little trepidation at rereading it. I must have read it several times, admittedly all in the last millenium, but I barely remembered it. Now I know why -- it's not very memorable. (Okay, now it's memorable, but only because I'll always think of it as "Betty JoDee's favorite; be very careful what you say about it...")
ReplyDeletePlus, I must now negotiate two extremes: Betty Keira who only liked the end, and Betty JoDee, who adores the whole thing.
Predictably (because I am cursed with the "can't-be-like-anyone-else" gene), I have very mild feelings about the whole book.
On the slightly-better-than-neutral side, I have the Scottish experience, which I enjoyed. I'm pretty sure -- because the medical terminology for the care & treatment of asthmatics is so detailed and apparently accurate -- that The Great Betty's husband must have been asthmatic. (No other disease in The Canon gets this level of expertise, not that I can think of.) I like the Lodge, and I like the little breadcrumb hint at the end when Hub tells Eliza that the Lodge will be refurbished, which makes no sense because Estelle doesn't like Scotland. (You have to figure that, with Estelle's interests in Roman ruins, she's dead bored as soon as she goes north of Hadrian's Wall.) I also didn't have a problem with the walk up the hill -- she can still see the Lodge, so she knows she can get back. And it's not like Christian said, "The trouble with walking around here is that freak snowstorms can crop up with no warning, so best to stay home." He was better with the orders than with the explanation of why the order was necessary.
On the slightly-worse-than-neutral side, I am not a fan of the RDD-already-engaged device for keeping the couple apart. It gets the job done -- I'll concede that -- but it just says all kinds of bad things about the hero. 1) No sense of what makes for a happy life; 2) No willingness to wait for the right woman to come along; 3) No problem letting his marriage shrivel his heart down to the size of a raisin. Then, when he meet the Love o' His Heart, he doesn't do the smart, ethical, honest, appropriate thing and break off the engagement immediately. No, instead he kisses the heroine (which is just tacky. Not "Here, honey, a couple tickets on the 16:30 train to Brighton; meet me at Victoria Station" tacky, but definitely in the "there's no excuse for such goings-on and didn't your mother raise you to treat women better than that?" tacky range) and taunts the heroine with mentions of the fianceé and all around behaves like an arse. (I didn't like this in The Fifth Day of Christmas either. And in both of them, the implication is that the RDD can't break the engagement - say what?! - but has to line up a suitable substitute for the fianceé to fall for instead. Which always strikes me as a high-degree-of-difficulty stunt under the circumstances.)
After that, it's all neutral. Cute animals: check. Faithful servant: check. Benignly Avuncular Plot Device with twinkling eyes: check. Honking huge house AND a Bentley: check. Nice Mother-in-Law waiting in the wings: check.
Frankly, there's nothing objectionable, but I've read better elsewhere: better RDDs, cuter animals, pluckier heroines, and so forth. Maybe it's the only book in The Canon with a Nissen hut...?
This book is almost fifty years old. At what point is it considered a period romance? In fifty years hence will readers be horrified that people were dumped by a social media status update?
DeleteWe don't have a problem with the RDD-already engaged plot device (though we would in a contemporary M&B) as we think its purpose (apart from keeping the lovers apart for 190 pages) is to illuminate the hero as an honourable man that will keep his word at the cost of his own personal happiness.
Until 1970, in the UK a person could be sued for a breach of promise (broken engagement) until the passage of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1970. Not a common occurrence in the 1950s and 1960s, nonetheless, Neels wouldn't want one of her heroes as been seen as dishonourable so it is important plot-wise that the fiancee is the one who breaks the engagement off (and finds someone more suitable).
We disagree with point two above. Often the RDD has waited but he has larger social obligations to consider beyond his own gratification hence the convenient engagement(and intended marriage). It what makes these storylines so angst-ridden. In his heart of hearts, Christian doesn't consider himself emotionally engaged to Estelle as never proposed with the family heirloom.
We would place this one in the top ten. Eliza and Christian have a charming chemistry and he is so smitten with her straight away.
My quibble with this book is what HR horrors these professors are.
One question: I thought those were called Quonset huts?
ReplyDeleteWiki says they are. I've always called them that so I had to check.
Never heard nuttin' bout no Nissen hut.
me<><
Betty Cindy--
ReplyDeleteAha! Nissan Huts came first--UK design circa WWI. Quonset Huts were the US built WWII version. So, basically--the same sort of building whose name changed depending on who built it and where it was used.
FWIW, my 4th grade classroom in Hawaii was a Quonset Hut.
Betty Barbara