The Saturday Morning Post (No.141)

 

In the back of my Gutenberg copy of Daddy-Long-Legs, they included all the original ads for other books by the publisher you often find in old books. I browsed through them, and picked out one of them to read next. It is said to be a romance.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Lavender & Old Lace by Myrtle Reed  C

Ruth Thorne, a newspaper reporter, is asked by an aunt she had never met, Jane Hathaway - not that Jane Hathaway - (Showing my age?), to look after her house along the ocean while the aunt goes on a guided tour of Europe for six months. Needing a break from her work, she takes the job and retires to this house on the hill. We meet some of the local inhabitants, including an exotic elderly (55 years old) lady down the hill from the Hathaway house, who it is hinted had a sad romantic past, but remains determinedly cheerful. Soon, another newspaper man, Carl Winfield, whose eyes need months of rest, turns up, sent by Jane's old boss. After a rocky start, there is a romance. Which you might think would be the main plot of the book. But you'd be wrong.

One of the things I enjoy about these old popular novels, is the sense of not only place and time, but of society and its expectations. Plus, it is interesting how these authors wrote their stories. This one was I found rather strange. There are lots of mysteries involving old and sad love affairs, lights in the windows, and the courtship of Ruth and Carl. The aunt returns early, and Ruth then moves in with the lady in the house below the hill. And well, the plot tends to expand to other characters, and eventually to the past for a melodramatic ending. This is another book where the reader is likely ahead of the characters, characters who seem to act, well, rather strange at times. As I said, a rather strange book, with rather strange characters.