{"id":1479,"date":"2018-08-15T21:00:22","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T21:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=1479"},"modified":"2021-09-01T09:58:55","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T09:58:55","slug":"review-frederica-by-georgette-heyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2018\/08\/15\/review-frederica-by-georgette-heyer\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Frederica by Georgette Heyer [Trad]"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"After a run of 5* Heyers, this one lost a star for a rash of silliness. Too many of her books depend for their climactic disaster on characters behaving in positively bird-witted ways, without an ounce of common sense, and so it is here. Fortunately, the hero and heroine rise above the foolishness, there\u2019s a lovely slow-build romance going on, too, and the humour is as well-developed as always.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: the Merriville family descends on London so that beautiful Charis can make her come-out. To ensure this, older sister Frederica calls upon a distant relation, the Marquis of Alverstoke, to help launch Charis into society. Alverstoke is a bored, over-indulged and selfish rake-about-town who is unaccustomed to lifting a finger, even for much closer relations, but the chance to infuriate his own sisters spurs him to agree to hold a ball for Charis, and his sisters\u2019 daughters.<\/p>\n

So far, so meh. Alverstoke is, at this point, an unappealing character, entirely self-centred, and Frederica isn\u2019t much better, being an overly managing and verbose spinster, completely caught up in the affairs of her family to the exclusion of any other consideration. But luckily Frederica has three brothers, and the younger two, sixteen-year-old Jessamy and twelve-year-old Felix, are the glorious, and very funny, heart of the book. Felix is obsessed with mechanical devices of all kinds and is charming enough to succeed in dragging a very reluctant Alverstoke on a trip to examine a foundry, amongst other delights. Jessamy is trying to study to be a worthy clergyman, in time, but would really rather be out on horseback. And both of them have a great propensity to get into deep trouble, whereupon they promptly turn to Alverstoke for help.<\/p>\n

And so, by very gradual degrees, Alverstoke learns to care for someone other than himself, and Frederica learns to depend on someone other than herself, and by even more gradual degrees they fall in love. We see this more clearly in Alverstoke, and I loved the careful way he protected Frederica from gossip by not paying her too much attention, and being very casual when he\u2019s with her, so that she isn\u2019t seen as merely the latest flirt of a confirmed rake. With the downside, of course, that she never quite realises his intentions and he never quite finds himself in a position to raise the issue.<\/p>\n

This aspect of the book is faultless, but of course it wouldn\u2019t be a Heyer without at least one silly ingenue. Here, it\u2019s Charis who fulfils the role, aided and abetted by the handsome but equally empty-headed Endymion, Alverstoke\u2019s heir. They manage to create the usual end-of-book crisis, which is fortunately resolved rather quickly here. An honourable mention at this point to Alverstoke\u2019s secretary, Mr Charles Trevor, who creatively solves every dilemma, and a dishonourable mention for Lufra, the Baluchistan hound, who sadly turned out to be a mere plot device, for he was barely mentioned after his magnificent performance in Green Park. A good four stars.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a run of 5* Heyers, this one lost a star for a rash of silliness. Too many of her books depend for their climactic disaster on characters behaving in positively bird-witted ways, without an ounce of common sense, and so it is here. Fortunately, the hero and heroine rise above the foolishness, there\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-1479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-heyer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3875,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions\/3875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}