Monday, January 10, 2011

All Else Confusion - 1982

Cover art? Betty Debbie suggests that she looks like she's wearing a Dolly Parton wig and is set to take to the Grand Ole Opry stage to sing the heart out of some honky-tonk song.  Betty Debbie is kind of awesome.

Annis Fothergill, 22, is the kind of country girl you might find in a Ralph Lauren print ad where the languidly affluent pretend to muck about in wellies and prohibitively expensive flannels--the sunlight glistening through their artfully tousled hair.
Jake Royle, 35, (whose very name annoys me in an Alpha Male pin-striped way) crests the hill on his tediously magnificent steed. ('Maidens ho!')
Mr. Royle is not a doctor. He is a businessman. A CEO. He owns a factory. In New Zealand. It manufactures who knows what. We never find out. Betty never tells us. (I have just one question: Is he or is he not employing Oompa-Loompas?)
No matter. He sees our beautifully rumpled heroine and makes himself invisible--watching as she greets her childhood friend Matt, fusses over a broke-down donkey, and promises her birthday money for veterinary hoof treatment.
In all his life, Jake has never met someone like Annis.
Annis has never met anyone like Jake.
On one side there is attraction and curiosity and on the other instant antipathy--a defense mechanism as useless as 'duck and cover' in the event of a nuclear bomb.
Annis takes a temporary job as companion to Mrs. Duvant (Jake's godmother) while she settles into her house in Bath. Of course Jake is pulling the strings here--arranging to keep an eye on Annis and breeze into town to chat her up. (Which ought to indicate that he loves her but it doesn't so don't get too excited.)
But back to chatting up. Boy does he. They have a date and she thanks her lucky stars that she had time and money enough to splurge on a knock-out out-fit. She has a lovely time and when he kisses her soundly at the close of the evening it seems only sporting to kiss him back.
Mrs. Duvant dies. Yeah. Dies. No one bothered to tell Annis about the incurable and imminently terminal cancer that renders her redundant. Still, it is worth a pause to mention that the old lady was carried off at the height of her frippery-purchasing, bridge-playing life and you can't do better than that.
Jake dispenses with all business of death and then takes Annis (who is finally in love with the dingus) for a drive into the country...to meet his parents and grandmother and offer her a proposal of sorts. It's a very casual proposal attached to a mill-stone of elephantine proportions. Some girl, what's-her-name, threw me over when I was poor-ish and young so now I am doomed to walk the earth cursing the name of womankind and hoping I might find a companion to share my wealth but not my bed. Yes. Well, almost. I believe the exact words are 'Six months if you like. See how we get on, getting to know each other, becoming friends, nothing more if you don't want that...That's a promise.' It's a wonder he doesn't offer her a receipt and ask her to sign for delivery.
Editorial Note:
But the part that sticks in my throat is his grandma (whom we are told to like but I stubbornly refuse) disliking the fuss of a big wedding. 'Annis had no doubt in her mind that his granny had had a wonderful and very grand wedding--white satin, orange blossom, bridesmaids, the lot.' And that's when it seems all very cruel (though nearly the same set-up in other books doesn't strike me the same way)--taking an unaffected country girl in her dreamy youth and marrying her because she's very nice to look at and 'fills the bill'. (I know that there are forces at work that he hasn't put his finger on yet--that he recognizes someone he can love--but he doesn't know that when he asks for her hand in marriage.) He can't be bothered with noticing that she told him that the only reason to marry was for love (and that she agrees to do it) and he can't be bothered to notice that she gets a sick pit in her stomach every time he calls her darling--a word which in the wilds of the countryside means cherished sweetheart and in a London flat means 'Thanks for passing the olive tray.' So Jake Royle has a lot of catching up to do before I like him.
They take off to Lisbon for a sort of business/honeymoon which is also Annis' first trip out of the country. He manages to squeeze in time for shopping (a lot of shopping) in between sessions of ignoring her at breakfast and running his multi-national chocolate-making empire in the afternoon. Still, she does the best with what she has--performing all sorts of acrobatics in her new clothes (short of loosening indecorous buttons) only to have her enthusiasms snuffed out by his prodigious apathy.
She sees him one afternoon with a lovely Senora. Jealousy, like that white tiger in the Sigfried and Roy act, turns on her ferociously. To pay him back, she rashly dines in The. Hotel. Dining. Room. (Roxanne! You don't have to turn on your red light.) Jake's hot, swarthy business partner, Roberto Gonzalez (Here, I imagine my caliente Mexican/Dutch husband. You may find your own mental candy. I recommend Andy Garcia. You're welcome.), asks to join her. Enter a furious Jake (bent on tossing a few crumbs of affection (read: money) at his wife). This isn't really an important episode but there are un-pretty feelings all around and no implied conjugal relations to disperse them.
Back in England they settle into the flat (ugh--which in any other book than a Neels one I wouldn't find so objectionable) and Annis divvies up the chores with the daily help--she's to do the shopping and ironing. (Don't you just love her?)
He reminds her that their social obligations will be starting soon and when she expresses misgivings he answers her, 'I shouldn't worry about that, darling, you're pretty enough to get away without making any effort at anything.'
'Oh, do you think I'm pretty?'

(Prepare yourself for the caddish and offhand answer.)
'Why else should I have married you?'
And Annis does carry off the social side without much of a hitch--though readers are given vague generalities when a well-settled cross-over character/future BFF would have suited nicely, indicating that she really will be happy and find friends there. When she has time on her own (to navigate the strange and jarring city life) she does charmingly simple things like stand with a crowd of people to watch a society bride go into a church. These things she doesn't share with her husband, assuming he won't be interested. (And in her defense, he might be beginning to be interested in her but probably not in those little darling details that remind him what a simple and dreamy young girl he married.)
The time comes for Jake to make an extended business trip (Who can take the rainbow, wrap it in a sigh, soak it in the sun and make a groovy lemon pie? The Candyman can...) and he suggests that Annis go to her parents' house for the duration--contrary to his expressed expectations at the time of his 'proposal' (oh, yes. It deserves the scare quotes I'm giving it.).
Don't I fit in with your life in London? Don't your friends like me?' comes the desperate plea from a love-starved wife.
That's when he quotes Tennyson (From that early feminist tract, The Princess, that I mentioned here) with less happy results:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;

All else confusion

(I'm pretty sure that the person in the poem saying it is the one who is supposed to be speaking rubbish.)
So she goes home and is miserable and when he comes again she has have him help rescue her little sister from frightening tinkers. And then Jake hears her telling Nancy (the broken burro) that she'll just have to tell Jake. And how can she when he's given her and her family all those lovely things?
Erm. Tell Jake what?
That she loves him.
But that's not what he thinks.
So he leaves her and goes to Naples...where she follows him!
They take a run out to Pompeii (a partially buried city, frozen at the moment of a single cataclysmic event--as good a symbol of his ability to love as any) and after much sight-seeing she gives him her news.
He tells her that he fell in love at first sight (a nigh-on-indigestible morsel of information) but didn't know it right away. (That's right. It only occurred to him on the drive to the volcano!)
Kissing and a promise to start a conjugal-relations Honeymoon toot sweet.
The End

Rating: I'm not crazy about this one. Our heroine is quite likable--she's got a bit of sauce to her even if she has to swallow her pride in marrying a man who looks through her like she's a plate glass window. She's awfully down-to-earth and charmingly scheming and always says 'sorry' when she's done something mean.
It's Jake that bugs me. Jake and his conventional Harlequin-esque-ness. Business tycoon? Marries a babe? Nurses an imagined slight by an insignificant and lost-to-the-sands-of-history female into semi-misogyny? Lives in a posh London flat? Swanks about with anonymous blondes? (Which would make a great name for a girl-band if you like.) Spends money like it's monsoon season and the tap is running?
I salute her trying out a new paradigm but, at the end of the day, I don't think The Great Betty goes far enough. Annis is the kind to make Jake healed and happy--she's just adorable that way. He'll come home late from his business meetings, have his whiskey, and thank his lucky stars that Annis shed all that baby-weight so quickly. But can he make her happy? The jury is out. He's got a lifestyle I imagine her tolerating but she's clearly the 'run-down cottage in the country with a couple of derelict sheds wherein they might house foundling donkeys' type and I can't help but think she's going to wish she'd held out for Jake's college chum from Zierikzee (with a medical practice and time for snogging) or, failing that, Roberto Gonzolez might do (though I confess that Gonzalez is my least favorite of the Hispanic 'ez' names--for the first week of knowing him, I thought Mijnheer van Voorhees' last name was Gonzalez and I had to really consider if I thought him cute enough to take it.  He was.  But I was more than happy to be a Dominguez instead.).
But I read this more than a week ago and I'm probably being way harsh on the poor man (and honestly, writing the review just egged me on to find all his most awful parts). He gate-crashes adorably at one point and if we'd only got something definite in the way of a dawning realization I'd have liked him much more. So, it's not really bad (if it were a random Harlequin by another author I might have liked it quite well)...I just didn't love it. Madiera Cake.

Food: Chilled melon, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and sprouts ('...very English,' says Betty). Charlotte Russe, oyster soup, spiced chicken with apricots, mac and cheese, lobster patties, tournedos Rossini (which makes me think of weather events and opera all at the same time), pommes de terre Berny, dried cod souffle, balo de mei (on their no-implied-conjugal-relations-honeymoon), beef en croute (!), sherry trifle, steak and kidney pie, souffle Harlequin (twice, I think), and medallions of beef...mmmmm, beef.

Fashion:
Her mid-West farmer's daughters outfits comprise wellies, an old coat, flyaway hair, a blue velvet dress (on the dowdy side), and a tweed suit. She buys a blue dress with a ruffle and bronze sandals ('going cheap but nonetheless elegant') for her date with him in Bath. She makes her own wedding dress. Their Shopping Spree of Surrogate Affection yields a good many treasures: pale green crepe de chine, a 'blue thing with pleats', organza in patterned green with a pie-frill neck, a Jaeger three piece of cotton jersey in cream and lime green, a black satin (which tells you as much as anything that Jake is no staid RDD), and a silvery crepe dress (turn that into a pant-suit and an RDD's mother would have snubbed her).

22 comments:

  1. Hmm. I liked this one rather better than you did, despite its embarrassing resemblance to a Harlequin Presents set up ("The Antipodean Tycoon's Unsophisticated Redheaded Bride").

    For one thing, there's lots of hero/heroine time together, which I like, and they have nice places to go and nice things to do, which I like, and she's quite animated, which I like -- and which Jake likes, hence his comments about her hair catching fire, which I like (the comments, not the hair *actually* catching fire).

    But mostly I approached it from a different perspective than you did. I assumed that he *had* fallen in love with her and used all the London-style brittleness ("darling" and "of course I don't love you") as a cover so that he didn't have to admit he was vulnerable to her. So every time he quashes her spirit (hah! let him try -- she's not a redhead for nuttin') or sends her away it's (in my fevered imagination) the only way he can deal with being in close quarters with such a babe.

    But I daresay the reality is somewhere between your assumption he's a cold so-and-so, and mine that he's a passionate man passionately in love and trying to pretend he's not...

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  2. I think you're right. I didn't like it because I didn't see him as in love and I didn't like what their life was going to look like.

    But really,as mentioned, I didn't hate it (that whole thread about the 'darling' was as deft and revealing as anything Betty has written) but it just wasn't in my line.

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  3. Also, I was unconvinced that his Great Disappointment merited blighting a young girl's life like that. (I get how you would not find it blighting if you think of him as in love...)

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  4. Betty Barbara here--
    I was generally unimpressed. I really liked Annis, but I kept waiting, waiting, waiting for her to tell Jake that he could take his Tennyson and stuff it!
    I tried really hard, Betty Magdalen, to see Jake as you did--but it didn't work for me. Yeah, the whole 'blighted in youth by love gone wrong' was soooo weak; it made a pathetic excuse, especially as, for once, Our Betty didn't supply any juicy details!
    But the rotter couldn't even slip the engagement ring on her finger, for Pete's sake! That's not putting on a show, that's cold and callous!
    There was some very good writing in this one and I appreciate Our Betty trying a non-medical story, but.....
    Betty Keira, I am assuming that once the first little 'pledge of affection' comes along, the London flat will be traded in for a country weekend place--healthier for the children, don't you know, and a full size house in one of the better neighborhoods of London (so his commute to the office won't be too time-consuming).

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  5. Betty Barbara again--
    Ha! Just realized that the hero and heroine of this book have the same first names as the main characters in Midnight Sun's Magic.

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  6. Sorry I can't comment much. Betty Ariel is living with me for a few weeks and quite unknowingly, the last two books she's picked were the ones you reviewed. I go to get them and there not there. And she took this one with her to visit the son in S. Bend!
    Fortunately, I nabbed Only by Chance and have finished it before she got it! She's reading Summer Idle right now, so don't review that one next week!
    So, while I wait for the next two Betty books, I'm reading the 3rd book in Patrick Taylor's Irish Doctor series, An Irish Country Christmas. It came to me from a book swap site right before Christmas. A cool unexpected Christmas present. The first two were An Irish Country Doctor and An Irish Country Village. These have been fun for me with their Northern Ireland location. Betty Brigid lives in Cavan which is on the border with the North. My Son I.L. looked at the 'glossary of slang term' in the back and gave them his stamp of authenticity. They take place in 1965, a little more innocent time, but still in book two there was at least one trip to Brighton, nothing explicit, but still a bit of a disappointment. There are two romances, one for the young doctor and one for his older mentor doctor. And both are just getting steam up in book 3. There's at least one more in the series (An I. C. Girl). I like his style. He's kind of an earthy James Herriot. He uses bad language but it's Irish so it doesn't seem like swearing to me. {{{tee hee hee}}}

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  7. The odd thing about this book is that the hero is the Outlier rather than the heroine--not really because of his profession but rather his personality.

    I liked this book better reading again after tagging along for a doctor's appointment of Professor van der Hertenzoon last week (he's okay but evidently had a bizarre allergic reaction to an antibiotic that caused claustrophobia, a racing heart, swollen hands, and anxiety attacks--fun week). Anyway, when his doctor entered the exam room he commented, "Oh good, I'll get the truth." Responding to our puzzled looks, he explained, "You have to remember that most men are really eighth grade boys. You ask,'How are you?' 'Fine.' 'What's going on?' 'Not much.' 'What brings you in today.' 'Oh, it's nothing.' When he gets home, 'Honey, what'd he say?' 'Nuthin.' I know when the wife comes with him I'll get the truth and will save another appointment in two days when she sends him back."

    Perhaps the real fantasy of the RDD is that he's not an eighth grade boy. Jake is. Annis (while chronologically quite young) is still more mature than Jake. And one can't quite shake the feeling that he sorta purchased a bauble when he married Annis. I think well before Pompeii he figured out what all the grown-ups around realized very quickly that they were well matched and destined to fall in love, but in a dose of dawning maturity he realized that he was in a pickle (not the least of which was his proximity to a really hot wife with whom he had made a hands-off deal).

    The funny thing about this hero is that whereas I want the banns read and have his conjugal consequences with the RDDs (and RBDs), I want to box Jake's ears like a big sister on an idiot little brother.

    I so love her hair that I love the cover.

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  8. Betty Marcia here: What is an Outlier? So sorry if this has been answered before.

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  9. Hey Betty, what a very good question.
    A Veronica is a tall, statuesque beauty.

    An Araminta is a short, mousy plain-Jane.

    An Outlier is neither here nor there.

    If the term applies to the hero than it means that he is other than a tall, vast Dutch or English doctor.

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  10. Aha! Thanks for the clarification. I just assumed a Veronica was code for "the dastardly other woman who is trying to make trouble." You know, like Veronica of Betty & Veronica from the Archie Comics Series. Perhaps I date myself. No matter, love this site!!

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  11. But you are right Betty Marcia, in that a Veronica is the nasty other woman, as well as being gorgeous but usually flat chested.
    The Olivia is the noble beauty - long of limb and of splendid shape.
    Very Nice to meet you,Betty Marcia.
    I'm glad to have others ask things I don't know. That gives me the push to look up things I've been wanting to ask, too. I'm a newer Betty, so there are lots of terms here that I'm still learning. hee hee hee

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  12. Betty Marcia
    Welcome, and you are right! Betty Keira is obviously suffering major Brain-Fade.
    Veronica is indeed the "other woman"!
    Olivia is our tall, gorgeous Neels heroine with a stunning figure and Araminta is Miss Mouse (even though there is a book where the heroine is named Araminta and she's a stunner!).
    See HERE for the original discussion.
    Betty Barbara signing off and going back to the Super Bowl.

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  13. 'Oh my gosh,' I exclaimed when I read my mistake. (slaps forehead) I'm working three weeks ahead on reviews since I'm expecting a large group of family this week and I've been muddling things right and left. Thank heavens, with my fellow Bettys to save me, I'm never working without a net... :0)

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  14. I always get the monikers confused as well because I think of Araminta as Araminta in The Edge of Winter, who is not plain and quiet.

    Jake as The Outlier I meant that he isn't very together, is immature, can't read her mind, and is fairly superficial--different from the usual RD/BD.

    I always the think the Veronica (versus Betty) bit is funny (I read alot of the comics too).

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  15. In my further defense (because such a bone-headed muddle needs one), we've had three weeks of barfing flu at our house. I feel like South Vietnam in Eisenhower's Domino Theory--everyone else has fallen and I'm waiting to get it (fever, chills, weakies, vomiting) myself. Not one stinking one of us overlapped, dang it. Just when I was digging out of the laundry such a thing produces, the next domino would fall.

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  16. Not Oompa-Loompas. If his factory is in New Zealand, he's unquestionably hiring Hobbits and Dwarves. :)

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  17. I think part of the problem is that he isn't a doctor - if he were he would be snatching the odd moment while working himself to death saving many, many lives and so worn out he couldn't get his message across whereas this hero is just making money . . .

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  18. I have to agree with most said here already. I read this Betty a long time ago, and he is one of the only 2 heroes I don't like. How Annis can give a row of pins for him, I do not know!

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  19. This is the only Betty that I NEVER reread. Never. The hero is such a, well, a Nick. Can't stand him! Betty Britt

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  20. Oh TUJD you have taught me a valuable lesson. Having created a brilliant and insightful comment on this most dreadful book, I stared in horror as it disappeared into the ether. Now I must attempt to recreate it, knowing that it can’t possibly equal the original. Naturally, in the event that the original should reappear in all of its banal glory, I shall claim, in the manner of all current American politicians and Hollywood celebrity types, that my account was “hacked “ and my original dumbed down.

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    Replies
    1. So hard to be brilliant in just the same way! But I see (below) that you managed it just fine.

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  21. Ugh. This one had my vote as Worst Betty ever.i felt like I was reading the Betty version of “Sleeping with the Enemy” only without the sleeping, because you know, Betty. The age difference didn’t work for me. I couldn’t even mentally age her because she was just soooo 22. I think Betty Anonymous was right about the doctor thing. Without the heroic life-saving interruptions he’s just a neglectful husband throwing his money around as if that makes up for it. When she asked him about his promise to take her with him when he traveled and he said “that was before we were married” I wanted to punch him. Was that before or after he told her he only married her because she was pretty?

    Even the inevitable “Little Sister Rescue” was lame; at least the 4th invasion of the tinkers and 2nd tinker animal abuse rescue (Caroline’s Waterloo did it so much better) Remember “ungrateful tinker having a baby in a tent” and “Tinkers with Typhoid?” I think at least two involved Vicar’s/Rector’s daughters. I bet there was a Betty and the Tinkers event in the Betty origin story.

    Was that Dr. Kevorkian who treated the Aunt when she wanted to talk to Jake and got the knock-out shot of death instead?

    I won’t be reading this one again, but I love your reviews. You even have me considering a reread of “Winter Wedding” which I deleted as soon as I finished it. (Seriously though, “You gave the babies Seconal-you should be drawn and quartered. What? It was the pretty sister? Oh, babies can be so trying,. Let me date her some more so that we can discuss. Louise, You poor dear. You will have to tell your sister, but not until I date you some more. Ever been to Brighton?”)

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