When Annis (whose name I adore) meets a seaplane pilot he says, "...lovely surprise - hefty, strong as a horse and never turns a hair." Ah, the cultivated manners of Nordic strangers. When I was 18 I spent a summer gutting and grading salmon at an Alaskan fish processing plant. There, I learned the unofficial state motto for this remote land full of bachelors. Alaska: Where the odds are good but the goods are odd.Annis is a plucky nurse-cum-housekeeper-cum-cook. She gets a 'frying pan as large as a football field' to work with--which doesn't faze me much but the heating element needed to heat it? That might faze me. (How Green was My Valley, How Big was My Aga...)
Annis is given the gift of a fossil TWICE on Spitzbergen. I guess if you can't say it with flowers, say it with fossils? This actually reminds me of those antarctic penguins (Adelie penguins) whose mating ritual involves dropping pebbles in front of their beloved. Spitzbergen is awfully far north for flowers, so I suppose this is simply a matter of male creativity. (Fish gotta swim, birds gotta eat, men gotta make passes...) Anyway, Annis has two so maybe she could fashion earrings?
Come with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove...
Come with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove...Ola is confused about what is 'cricket'. I daresay that any man married to one woman and snogging another has 'cricket' issues.
Annis wears dark glasses at work to disguise her puffy eyes. Our mom always wore dark glasses during allergy season for the same reason. She would be the only
person at church wearing sunglasses during the service. Those glasses (massive Audrey Hepburn glasses) would go on every Memorial Day like clockwork.I don't look a thing like my mother. She had dark hair, I have mouse. She has delicate features, I have round. Dad game me my eyebrows, I'm sure of it. Still, I'm sure we're related because May, June and July are an unending misery for me as well.
Towards the end Annis wants to buy a grey dress because it won't date...Our hero throws himself in front of the bus and tells her that they're not buying for posterity. Love that. My husband and I have that problem with artwork in our house. An odd quirk of being a Humanities major (aside from being ridiculously unfit for supporting a family) is that I always want to fall in love with what I put on my walls. My husband just wants to fill up the blank space...quickly...with something more or less inoffensive. I am, on the other hand, immobilized by the question of 'Will I love this until the day I die'?
"the odds are good and the goods are odd"
ReplyDelete*snort*
Love the names. Like the story pretty well, love the last bit of her running away "to get rational," and the ending.
ReplyDeleteMostly, I think this is one of the best Neels covers ever. I think it represents the story very well, and there is quite the chemistry between Jake and Annis.
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/n/betty-neels/midnight-suns-magic.htm
Betty Laurel
The problem I have with the book (besides the fact that I never--never--missed the ruggedly handsome tall competent guy in charge for the superficially charming pretty boy--even to point of pining away to no avail so I can't relate to Annis) was that I kept thinking about cooking for all those men in addition to nursing. That's ALOT of work, even if someone else is doing the washing up. The meal planning alone....Count me out.
ReplyDeleteI didn't really like this book when I first read it, when I was younger. And the cover, I didn't like their faces, even though everything else fit.
ReplyDeleteBut now that I am older, I am liking Annis more and more and definitely I am liking Jake more.
First of all, now, I am realizing how unrealistic the story is. Annis is 26? I believe and still not married, even though she is tall, buxom, and striking. Lots of men prefer a buxom woman to someone BN describes as fashionably thin.
In addition, I now realize that Jake is also quite unrealistically the most perfect guy I've met!!!! LOL In every way. Fabulous character, and very loving!!! What could a woman want more????!!!! He is fabulous. The reason I find it unrealistic, is that he had no women in his life! He 35!!!!! Still single, gorgeous, tall, vast, dark, and super duper rich. Why aren't there lots of those BN thin superficial blondes chasing him at his doorstep every night????? Why aren't they parked in front of his home and office every day? I do not understand this. Are wealthy eligible 35 yo bachelors who are vast tall and dark very very common in his town? Are there men who are better than him in every way in his town? I do not get this. Perhaps in those days, when she wrote this, there were tons of eligible older single men compared to nowadays.
Next point. I am finally starting to like Annis because BN makes her human and femininely faulty. :) She does "foolish" things that very feminine women do, instead of doing the "common sense" thing she should be doing. LOL I love how BN makes the heroine realize this and how she angsts over it. LOL
Another thing. Did you notice, that at the end, she only wants the requisite 2.2 children???/ I was shocked at BN. Only one of each!!!!! OMgawrsh. For a gal who is super rich and can afford nannies and lives in a big house with lots of room for nurseries etc., they could easily afford 6!!! Minimum!!!
I didn't really like this book when I first read it, when I was younger. And the cover, I didn't like their faces, even though everything else fit.
ReplyDeleteBut now that I am older, I am liking Annis more and more and definitely I am liking Jake more.
First of all, now, I am realizing how unrealistic the story is. Annis is 26? I believe and still not married, even though she is tall, buxom, and striking. Lots of men prefer a buxom woman to someone BN describes as fashionably thin.
In addition, I now realize that Jake is also quite unrealistically the most perfect guy I've met!!!! LOL In every way. Fabulous character, and very loving!!! What could a woman want more????!!!! He is fabulous. The reason I find it unrealistic, is that he had no women in his life! He 35!!!!! Still single, gorgeous, tall, vast, dark, and super duper rich. Why aren't there lots of those BN thin superficial blondes chasing him at his doorstep every night????? Why aren't they parked in front of his home and office every day? I do not understand this. Are wealthy eligible 35 yo bachelors who are vast tall and dark very very common in his town? Are there men who are better than him in every way in his town? I do not get this. Perhaps in those days, when she wrote this, there were tons of eligible older single men compared to nowadays.
Next point. I am finally starting to like Annis because BN makes her human and femininely faulty. :) She does "foolish" things that very feminine women do, instead of doing the "common sense" thing she should be doing. LOL I love how BN makes the heroine realize this and how she angsts over it. LOL
Another thing. Did you notice, that at the end, she only wants the requisite 2.2 children???/ I was shocked at BN. Only one of each!!!!! OMgawrsh. For a gal who is super rich and can afford nannies and lives in a big house with lots of room for nurseries etc., they could easily afford 6!!! Minimum!!!
Betty Francesca -- For what it's worth, both Betty Henry (my first British husband) and Betty Ross (my current US/British husband, aka USB Hub 1.0)(had to show off my geek humor) were sitting around the UK -- rich, smart, well-educated, gainfully employed & with all their own teeth -- and no one had so much as nibbled on their toesies when I showed up.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what's wrong with the women in the UK! Oh, well, their loss has definitely been my gain! LOL!!
I might point out that Brit Hub 1.0 is single, handsome, and comfortably well off. Are there no lovely-eyed nurses in Philadelphia?
ReplyDeleteBetty JoDee -- Here's the problem with fixing Brit Hub 1.0 up with someone. Well, two problems -- the second being that anyone he ends up with has to like me or at least put up with our distinctly platonic relationship. But as I'm a sweetheart & I know exactly how Brit Hub 1.0 works, that shouldn't be hard...
ReplyDeleteSo back to the first problem: he's a bit of a Renaissance man: he binds books, builds steam trains, is a crackerjack patent attorney, and still thinks he's going to paint all the rooms in a 5-bedroom side-hall Victorian townhouse himself. In other words, he's busy.
I would say the critical thing is the steam trains. Whoever takes Betty Henry on needs to have some interest in mechanical engineering. My mother raised me to be able to talk intelligently on *any* topic for 30 minutes -- I spun that training out to 7 years of marriage! But when Louisa (in Heaven Around the Corner) wonders how Simon can build bridges so the middles don't fall down -- well, if it was Henry she put that question to, he would answer it. In some detail. He's nothing if not sincerely interested in the way the world works.
But sure -- if anyone knows someone quirky, closer to 50 than 20, mechanically inclined, in the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, who'd like to go out with a Brit with a rather disarming tendency to know everything (and no conceit at all), let me know. (And he's loaded. I'm just saying...)
I think that it takes a special kind of person to be able to love engineers. (That's me! That's me!). Not only am I married to an engineer, so far four of my boys either have or are in the process of earning one kind of engineering degree or other.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm going to think about this...(Aren't there some more Pennsylvania Bettys out there? Anyone with eligible relatives?) I found him to be quite charming--and I hasten to point out that while he could have solved the Bettysday crossword puzzle in a couple of nanoseconds he graciously reined himself in so that we could perpetuate the image of my keeping my end up on the solution. How cute is that?
ReplyDeleteI have an almost 40 year old niece (who looks about 25 - seriously!) who is single - has an 18 year old son and her own home, which she seriously thinks she's going to remodel all on her own. ;-)
ReplyDeleteShe works for the Headstart Program, assessing and monitoring playground safety. Pretty good work for a girl with a degree in Business Communications! She is on the road a lot, but heads toward Altoona, not Philly. But she's also a black belt in karate and goes to Philly often for competitions.
BTW, she didn't want to be a single mom - her jerk of a husband (who happens to have Greek God type genes which he generously passed on to their son) left after the baby was born - he wanted to be a controlling husband, but Not a Dad.
Breaks my heart that this beautiful, ambitious, hardworking girl is single. She deserves all the best in life. I say we hook 'em up!
:)
me<><
Betty Cindy -- Okay, so mention to your niece that through some friends you know a guy, mid-50s, patent attorney in Philadelphia, British, definitely quirky (not in any bad way, just in a sort of "narrow end of the bell shape curve" way), good looking (tall, bearded, not-bald, and -- I happen to know this -- seriously muscled) and rich. See what she says. Altoona's not close, but if she's in Philly, she might like to meet him.
ReplyDeleteAn example of Betty Henry's sense of humor: When we were married, I'd caution him about meeting strange (*cough*) women in bars while on business trips. He agreed, but then remarked that the cliché wouldn't work. In his case, he'd have to say, "On the contrary, my wife understands me all too well..."