![\"\"](\"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/jennie-225x300.jpg\")
Another oddity. I\u2019m on something of a binge of Joan Smith books just now, and almost every one has a review that says: not her best work. I\u2019d love to know what her best work is, actually, but that aside, here\u2019s one where I can also say: not her best work.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: Jennie Robsjohn (such an odd name!) was a teacher at a seminary in Bath until she inherited a small fortune – ten thousand pounds. Enough for her to give up her job and live like a gentlewoman, and if she goes to London, perhaps she\u2019ll meet a nice man and marry. A baronet, perhaps. But at an inn along the Bath to London road, she encounters a man in his thirties accompanied by a young girl who\u2019s protesting volubly about being dragged here and there. Jumping immediately to the wrong conclusion, Jennie wades in to rescue the obvious victim of a rake, only to discover that the gentleman is a marquess and the girl is his rather wilful daughter.<\/p>\n
Lord Marndale soon discovers that Jennie, with her take-no-nonsense school-marm ways, has far more effect on Lady Victoria\u2019s behaviour than he has, so he cajoles her to his beautiful estate and persuades her to act as companion to his daughter while he flits to London for government business. Jennie\u2019s quite willing to do so, because he\u2019s handsome and rich and single, and a girl can always hope, can\u2019t she? And he\u2019s very generous and attentive to her, which might mean something or it might just mean that he\u2019s buttering her up to keep her as Victoria\u2019s companion, and nothing more.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s really the whole plot. There are other characters thrown into the mix as potential partners for both Jennie and Lord Marndale to ensure maximum confusion between hero and heroine, and there\u2019s Jennie\u2019s companion, the outspoken Mrs Irvine, to stir things up, but at bottom the issue is solely about Marndale\u2019s intentions. Romance? It\u2019s the usual thing for a book of this age, in that absolutely nothing is said or done that\u2019s unequivocally romantic until the last page. All Marndale\u2019s actions can be interpreted either way, as growing love for Jennie or as a cynical attempt to keep her looking after Victoria, and as for Jennie, she never gives any indication of being in love at all, even though the whole book is written in first person from her point of view. If anything, her thoughts are purely pragmatic – that it would be a very good match for an ex-school teacher, if she could get it.<\/p>\n
So definitely not Joan Smith\u2019s best work, especially as the latter part of it focuses on the very modern idea of a Friday night to Monday morning \u2018weekend\u2019. Despite that, it\u2019s very funny in places, and I enjoyed it enormously, so I\u2019m going to give it four stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another oddity. I\u2019m on something of a binge of Joan Smith books just now, and almost every one has a review that says: not her best work. I\u2019d love to know what her best work is, actually, but that aside, here\u2019s one where I can also say: not her best work. Here\u2019s the premise: Jennie […]<\/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":[37],"class_list":["post-5471","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\/5471","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=5471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5475,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5471\/revisions\/5475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}