{"id":4225,"date":"2022-03-09T11:43:32","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T11:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=4225"},"modified":"2022-03-09T11:43:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T11:43:32","slug":"review-the-wastrels-daughters-by-arabella-brown-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/03\/09\/review-the-wastrels-daughters-by-arabella-brown-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Wastrel’s Daughters by Arabella Brown (2021)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"I knew after reading the first Regency by this author (A Detestable Name) that this one would be different. Arabella Brown is such an original writer that it couldn\u2019t be otherwise, and I was not disappointed. It\u2019s perhaps not quite as witty as the first book, but the glorious writing is present and correct, along with an array of likeable and intriguing characters.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Harrogate residents Polly Selby and her sister Anne are left more or less destitute by their father\u2019s death (the wastrel of the title). Discovering that even the house is mortgaged, they let it out and seek employment for themselves. Anne, the much younger sister who\u2019s had some education, becomes a governess. Polly, at thirty-two, becomes a companion to a tartar of an elderly woman, who\u2019s driven off innumerable companions. Both of them find themselves courted by unlikely suitors, and there are a couple of side romances, as well.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s deal with Anne first. Her post is one where the governesses are invariably dismissed within months (or even weeks) because of the husband\u2019s roving eyes. Dismissed she is, but not before she\u2019s made a friend of the rakish Mr Hallam. Seeing the governess sitting in an unobtrusive corner in case she\u2019s needed, he sees her as easy prey, but she understands what he is and gives him a piece of her mind. He agrees to behave properly with her, and in fact rescues her from any harm from the lecherous husband. She\u2019s still dismissed, though, but this is such a regular occurrence that the housekeeper has arranged for her to be looked after until she can be found new employment. The doctor and vicar take turns, seemingly, to look after the dismissed governesses!<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Polly is getting on like a house on fire with the tartar, who turns out to be a great big pussy cat after all. But then Polly receives some bad news, swoons and is carried home insensible by a stranger whereupon she falls into a life-threatening fever for weeks (no doubt channelling Marianne from Sense and Sensibility). Anne is summoned home to nurse her, and take over her duties as companion until Polly recovers.<\/p>\n

And here the two unlikely suitors appear fully on stage. Rakish Mr Hallam returns, newly chastened and reformed by Anne\u2019s upbraiding and the ministrations of a friendly Jew running a sponging house in London. A sponging house is a sort of unofficial prison where the gentry go to be locked up until they, or a long-suffering relation, get round to paying their debts. Mr Solomon, the Jew in question, teaches Mr Hallam how to manage his affairs, and with the prospect of clearing all his debts in time and thereafter leading a blameless if boring life, he pays court to Anne with great determination.<\/p>\n

And here I have to take issue with him. No gentleman should be courting a lady and trying to win her affections unless he\u2019s in a position to marry, which Mr Hallam isn\u2019t. He might well be, one day, but he\u2019s a long way from that point, so I disapproved very strongly of his actions.<\/p>\n

The other unlikely suitor is Mr Ledsham, the gentleman who rescued Polly when she fainted, and became intrigued by the mysteriously insensible lady. After calling every day to enquire after her health, he eventually gets to meet her, and he too begins to pay court to her\u2026 or does he? What precisely are his intentions? Polly isn\u2019t at all sure, and frankly, I wouldn\u2019t be either. A more restrained courtship would be hard to imagine. There were times when I wanted to box his ears and tell him just to get on with it – to declare himself, or show a bit of passion. But he never does, until the final pages of the book.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to be honest here. I love this author, because she can write – boy, can she write! And she thinks outside the (Regency) box. Here we are in Harrogate, getting a fascinating glimpse into the differences between High Harrogate and Low Harrogate, tiptoing round the fringes of the gentry (like the tartar and Mr Hallam\u2019s family) and trade (like Mr Ledsham with his mines). There\u2019s no season here, no Almack\u2019s or Vauxhall\u2019s or Hyde Park, no debutantes or wilful heiresses, no elopements or seductions or kidnappings. Not very much happens, but it\u2019s all interesting.<\/p>\n

But the structure of the story is all wrong. Anne goes off to one household to be a governess, then (very briefly) another before returning to Harrogate for good. Those two families are not mentioned again. There\u2019s a wastrel of a brother, whose only purpose seems to be to inflict a debt-collecting heavy on his sisters. He\u2019s then callously written out of the story altogether. I kept expecting him to turn up again like a bad penny, but he never did. It seems he\u2019s gone for good. There\u2019s the mystery of the missing valise, supposedly containing some treasure from the wastrel father which was never found. Instead of trying to find it, the sisters simply shrug – oh well, they say, I guess it\u2019s gone, then. I\u2019d have liked some effort put into actually tracing the father\u2019s movements and working out where the valise might have gone. That would have been far more satisfying.<\/p>\n

But my real complaint is with Mr Ledsham and Polly. Honestly, given their ages, I would have thought their romance, or courtship, perhaps, could have been speeded up just a touch. What on earth were they waiting for? Although maybe I\u2019m being unfair, and judging them by the standards of so many modern Regency romances that get into the heavy breathing by chapter three at the latest. Perhaps this is much more the sort of delicate dance that would actually have been the norm in the Regency. It reminded me a little of Anna Dean\u2019s lovely series, where the romance builds inch by cautious inch over four books. Still, I did get quite impatient with both Mr Ledsham and Polly.<\/p>\n

The blurb describes this as a chaste novel, and it certainly is that. The romance is incredibly gentle and low-key, so anyone looking for a more emotional story should probably move swiftly on. But if you want an authentic Regency experience, in the unusual setting of Harrogate, with a multitude of well-drawn and almost uniformly kindly characters, this is the one for you. It\u2019s the Lark Rise to Candleford version of the Regency romance, where nothing terribly awful happens, and the pace is stately, but very much one to savour. The unevenness of the plot keeps it to four stars for me.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I knew after reading the first Regency by this author (A Detestable Name) that this one would be different. Arabella Brown is such an original writer that it couldn\u2019t be otherwise, and I was not disappointed. It\u2019s perhaps not quite as witty as the first book, but the glorious writing is present and correct, along […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[221],"class_list":["post-4225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225","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=4225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4229,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225\/revisions\/4229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}