{"id":4671,"date":"2023-01-12T21:44:56","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T21:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=4671"},"modified":"2023-01-12T21:44:56","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T21:44:56","slug":"review-the-jewelled-snuff-box-by-alice-chetwynd-ley-1959","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2023\/01\/12\/review-the-jewelled-snuff-box-by-alice-chetwynd-ley-1959\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Jewelled Snuff Box by Alice Chetwynd Ley (1959)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"This book was first published in 1959, more than sixty years ago – a very different era. It\u2019s wordy in places, there\u2019s a fair amount of head-hopping (jumping from one character\u2019s internal thoughts to another\u2019s without a signal) and the plot veers between implausible and outright incredible, and yet I found it a whole heap of fun. I liked the two main characters, the difficulties between them were believable and the romance was low-key but rather sweet. For modern readers, it might be jarring but for anyone weaned on Georgette Heyer, this is a nice, light read.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Jane Spencer is travelling to London to take up a position as a companion after several years as a governess. Her stage coach is caught in snow, and the passengers are forced to walk up a hill to spare the horses. During the walk, Jane finds a man lying unconscious in a ditch, possibly set upon by highwaymen. Under his inert body, she finds a treasure the thieves missed – a valuable jewelled snuff box. The stage coach passengers and the injured man are forced to take shelter overnight at a small wayside inn, where Jane discovers that the man has lost his memory.<\/p>\n

She looks after him, and they strike up an instant rapport. She rather fancies him, and he trusts her, so when the stagecoach sets off again, she takes him with her to London to meet her lawyer, who she hopes will help him find out who he is. But when she\u2019s concluded her own business with the lawyer and goes to bring in the mysterious stranger, he\u2019s disappeared. Jane\u2019s very disappointed, and a closer look at the snuff box reveals a secret – a hidden letter, making an illicit assignation with a married woman. Now she\u2019s seriously disappointed, and tries to set him out of her mind.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s another shock when she takes up her new position – Celia, the countess she\u2019s to work for, is a girl she knew at school as a bully and a thoroughly unpleasant person. She\u2019s delighted to have the chance to make Jane\u2019s life miserable all over again, and to make matters worse, her husband takes a creepily strong interest in Jane. And when Jane finally discovers the identity of her mystery man, not only has he forgotten her, but it\u2019s Celia he\u2019s been having an affair with\u2026<\/p>\n

Now, this is a fairly tangled situation, and it\u2019s a short book, so not everything is resolved satisfactorily, to my mind. In particular, I\u2019d like to know just how Celia\u2019s comeuppance worked, legally. I don\u2019t want to give too much away, but she was just air-brushed away in a page or two, and I\u2019d have liked to know a bit more about it. I also wondered very much just why the earl married her, because he seemed like a sensible guy, much older than her and too smart and experienced to be taken in by Celia\u2019s sickly-sweet public face. I just didn\u2019t believe that he could be so much in love with her that he didn\u2019t see what she was really like.<\/p>\n

As I said at the beginning, there\u2019s a lot of implausibility in the plot, particularly in the amnesia business. It\u2019s a very common trope in the genre, and one I try to avoid as much as possible. I see the appeal in it, because what could be more delicious than a character who doesn\u2019t know who he is? So much mystery to unravel, and so much tension – is he rich or poor, a grocer or a marquess? Although in this case, there\u2019s an early discussion of our hero\u2019s expensive clothes and shiny boots, so it\u2019s obvious he\u2019s a gentleman of means, at the very least. But it\u2019s still hard to suspend disbelief. A simple bump on the head, everything\u2019s forgotten, but later the memories will all come back and there\u2019ll be no lasting ill effects. Nope, not believable. But I like to give a book it\u2019s basic premise, however hard to swallow, so I went along with it, and then became thoroughly caught up in the plot.<\/p>\n

The story is a bit uneven, and it became hard to remember sometimes just who knew what (or rather, who DIDN\u2019T know what), but there\u2019s one glorious scene in the middle between the earl, Celia, Jane, the hero and Celia\u2019s maid, where everybody knows things are not what they seem, even though nobody quite knows everything, but they all just play along with the hastily improvising Celia as she tries to get them out of a huge mess. It could have been a deeply emotional moment, but the author basically plays it for laughs and it turns into the best part of the book.<\/p>\n

As usual with Regencies of this era, the writing is literate and historically accurate, influenced very much by Georgette Heyer (although I rolled my eyes at every \u2018pon rep!\u2019). It\u2019s not perfect, and it does require a shed-load of suspension of disbelief, and the ending is extremely abrupt (if you\u2019re a fan of long, syrupy epilogues, this is not the book for you), but I really enjoyed it, quirks and all. Those implausibilities keep it to four stars.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book was first published in 1959, more than sixty years ago – a very different era. It\u2019s wordy in places, there\u2019s a fair amount of head-hopping (jumping from one character\u2019s internal thoughts to another\u2019s without a signal) and the plot veers between implausible and outright incredible, and yet I found it a whole heap […]<\/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":[225],"class_list":["post-4671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-ley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671","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=4671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4675,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions\/4675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}