{"id":3407,"date":"2021-04-25T09:43:41","date_gmt":"2021-04-25T09:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=3407"},"modified":"2021-08-26T08:33:12","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T08:33:12","slug":"review-friends-and-lovers-by-joan-smith-1978","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2021\/04\/25\/review-friends-and-lovers-by-joan-smith-1978\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Friends and Lovers by Joan Smith (1978) [Trad]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"This book infuriated me. I think it was meant to be whimsical and amusing, but I just found it weird. I slogged through the first half purely to see how on earth the author was going to bring about a romantic ending for two characters who rarely met and seemed to hate each other with a passion. Somewhere around the midpoint it livened up a bit and became genuinely funny, only to fall flat again at the end. It managed three stars only because I laughed so much at the roof incident. There were few other redeeming features.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Wendy Harris\u2026 no, let\u2019s pause there, because I hate this name so much. I suppose the author gets away with it since it\u2019s short for Gwendolyn, but the name Wendy was officially invented in 1904 for Peter Pan. Ugh. Anyway, Wendy Harris lives in genteel poverty with her widowed mother in a grace and favour cottage owned by Wendy\u2019s brother-in-law, Lord Menrod (another horrible name; I actually wondered whether the author had originally given him a sensible name, then found out at the last minute there was a real lord by that name and had to change it. But I digress). His lordship insists on them keeping everything in their cottage exactly as it is, with no changes, no matter how inconvenient, since it\u2019s historical. They are all awaiting the arrival from India of Wendy\u2019s orphaned niece and nephew, whom she hopes to raise herself, but Lord Menrod decides he\u2019s going to raise them. Wendy thinks he\u2019s unfit, on account of the string of mistresses, the constant travelling around and the fact that he\u2019s arrogant and tyrannical. Lord Menrod gets interim custody, so Wendy engages an attorney to fight the case.<\/p>\n

Now, written out like this, you\u2019d imagine that Wendy\u2026 no, I can\u2019t keep writing that. Let\u2019s call her Miss Harris. Anyway, you\u2019d imagine that Miss Harris would be a sympathetic character, a put-upon spinster only wanting the best for her nephew and niece. But no, she\u2019s a pretty horrible person, actually, who\u2019s determined not to give Lord Menrod any credit for proper feeling, or admit that actually the children will be better off with him, on account of the whole rich lord thing. She\u2019s also incredibly rude about Mr Everett, a rich lumber merchant with a vast mansion stuffed with expensive but tasteless Stuff, who is simply an easy-going guy who wants to marry her.<\/p>\n

Lord Menrod is also a pretty unpleasant character in the early part of the book, being just as tyrannical as described. It\u2019s only when the children arrive and he is forced to spend more time at the Harris\u2019s cottage that he begins to mellow a bit. In fact, he becomes the most sensible character in the book, still determined to have the children, but prepared to adjust his lifestyle accordingly. And he never tries to cut the Harris ladies out of their lives. In fact, he is all sweet reason, if a little grumpy when Miss Harris continues to be obnoxious.<\/p>\n

He also discovers for himself all the deficiencies of the Cottage That Must Not Be Changed, with unusable fire irons, a dangerously dark stair, a smoking chimney and a decaying thatch roof. By the time he\u2019s burned himself, been smoked out of the house and fallen through the roof (a glorious scene!), he\u2019s become rather a fun character, especially when he lounges around the cottage all day to avoid a persistent lady admirer.<\/p>\n

The ending is sadly typical of this era, that is, there are one or two oblique hints of a change of heart on his part, a reference to hate and love being two sides to the same coin, after which he sweeps her into his manly arms and kisses her, whereupon she says: oh, all right then. The end. Very, very annoying. I confess, though, that the biggest problem I had throughout the book (apart from obnoxious Miss Harris, who never does redeem herself – run away, Lord M!) is that I never worked out Lord M\u2019s age. He\u2019s described in such terms early on that I imagined he must be an elderly man, or at least middle aged, but it only gradually dawned on me that he\u2019s possibly only meant to be thirty-something. It\u2019s quite an adjustment to make.<\/p>\n

So this really didn\u2019t work at all for me. Nevertheless, if you don\u2019t mind the old-fashioned and rather dry approach to romance that was standard at the time, and are brighter than I was in working out Lord M\u2019s age, it\u2019s a well-written tale with some fun characters (I particularly liked Mr Everett and the mother, and the children were amusing too; oh, and Lady Whotsit who was pursuing Lord M; and the attorney was funny; in fact, in retrospect it seems far more fun than it was when I was reading it). But for me it\u2019s only three stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book infuriated me. I think it was meant to be whimsical and amusing, but I just found it weird. I slogged through the first half purely to see how on earth the author was going to bring about a romantic ending for two characters who rarely met and seemed to hate each other with […]<\/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":[37],"class_list":["post-3407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407","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=3407"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3739,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407\/revisions\/3739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}