Vaguely, my goal for this newsletter was to release two a month. I did three last month and none this month. And it’s nearly the end of the April! I have been doing lots of exciting things with romance novels, nothing that could currently coalesce into a newsletter, other than as fragmentary updates.
So here are updates of my April outputs and inputs.
Podcast
In April, the Reformed Rakes released three episodes (two regular ones and one special edition).
No Love Lost: Romance BookTok’s Dubious Reputation
Please Don’t Misunderstand: Communication in Romance Novels
Speaking to the Spirits: The Ruin of Evangeline Jones
We have a bunch more exciting episodes coming up, which you might get some hints about, considering what I am reading. The next episode proper is about Newgate prison and I’m really excited to take some of the research that I have been doing into a different format. That’ll be out May 9!
Reading
The Portrait of a Duchess by Scarlett Peckham: I had the same issues that I feel like most readers had with this--the pacing of the second chance romance felt a little off. I love a dual timeline and even enjoyed the dual timeline here. Just the extreme nature of the rift between Cornelia and Rafe got resolved initially pretty fast! They did a marriage of convenience when she was really young to protect her from ever having to marry. (A speculative marriage of convenience? She is not about to get married when it happens). They separate.
He rises in the ranks as a Tory politician and then, through chance deaths of the many heirs, because Duke. Cornelia loathes Tories. But lo! He is revealed (incredibly early) to be a spy for the radicals, vetted by some of Cornelia’s closest confederates. He is not her political enemy and they fall into an affair while pretending that their marriage of convenience was real for [some reason, I can’t remember].
I’m not sure if we needed the political spy plot--Cornelia’s reticence to live in a marriage seems enough to have caused distance and his inheritance of the dukedom seems enough to have explained why they are reuniting now! And Rafe’s new role as duke gives Peckham the meaty, political stuff she likes exploring. The immediate circumstances of the second chance romance threw off the pacing for me for the whole book.
However, it was a Peckham book through and through. Very hot and the scenes between the couple were great. I just didn’t exactly buy that Cornelia would welcome Rafe back into the fold so quickly. A four-star Peckham book still excites me more than most things being published right now.
Stormfire by Christine Monson: Saving most of my thoughts for the podcast and a future newsletter! But if you want to get a jump on the homework (I would never ask anyone to read Stormfire that didn’t want to read Stormfire,) you should watch La Belle et La Bête (dir. Jean Cocteau) and Donkey Skin (dir. Jacques Demy). That’s right, we’re talking about fairy tales. The episode won’t be out for awhile and I’ll time my newsletter with it, so you have a few weeks!
Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins: This was my first Beverly Jenkins book. I generally balk on reading books set in America (I also haven’t read Joanna Shupe for the same reason!). But, while I enjoyed lots of it, there were parts I wasn’t wild about, I think maybe because I was focused on the “rake” angle of it. Beth led the discussion of it in an upcoming episode of the podcast concerning rakes. The main characters are Rhine, a former slave who is passing as a white man in Nevada, and Eddy Carmichael, a Black woman chef who is attempting to make her way to California to start her own restaurant.
Rhine’s conflict primarily comes from his engagement to a white woman, who quickly reveals herself to be incredibly bigoted when Eddy comes on the scene, and his decision to live away from the Black community. That choice precludes any public relationship with Eddy as well. I loved Eddy, who was practical, kind and formidable. But Rhine takes advantage of his passing in ways that put Eddy in danger--distracting her from a Black suitor who really seems to care for Eddy, flirting with her in public, not hiding his affection for her from his white peers. While he is not a white man, everyone around him thinks that he is and I’m not sure if the book gives enough weight to this, even as Eddy literally becomes endangered.
Rhine’s rakish charm and my discomfort with where he was placing Eddy gets at, I think, some sort of danger baked into a rake’s characterization. There is a reason that the easiest to deal with rakes do their raking off-page--Anthony Bridgerton sleeps with widows and opera singers we’ve never met and Julia Quinn doesn’t have to swing big to redeem him from that vague reputation. It doesn’t make the book better and is a less feeling stance to take on rakes, but I do think it makes his narrative arc neater with lower effort. I wanted more from Rhine in his care for Eddy’s position. The book seems to think what he needs to do is a leap of faith toward Eddy, rather than a restoration of Eddy.
Also [SPOILERS] the bigoted fiancée is revealed to be in some sort of vague, violent mental health crisis, to explain away her vitriol and violence toward Eddy and Black people, since her parents seem to be “good” allies to the Black community in Nevada. I was disappointed in this.
I definitely want to read more Beverly Jenkins though, particularly her works from the early 90s, a period I love for romance.
Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian: Loved this one! Adorable, weirdly parallel to The Ruin of Evangeline Jones, which we didn’t do on purpose, with themes of building and abandoning identities, bad dads, and flirting against your better judgment. Featured in a standalone, upcoming episode.
Fire Season by KD Casey: A baseball romance! I’m reading this on Beth’s recommendation and I’ll finish it this weekend. I’m just now realizing that I read three books this month that involve bisexual heroes. Love that for me.
Movies, new to me
Not every year, but a lot of years, I kind of get on one with directors. 2018 was David Lean, 2020 was Martin Scorsese. 2022 was Terence Davies. And this year, it seems to be Jean Renoir. I wrote about A Day in the Country and the short story it was based on and how consent was depicted in the changed media.
The Rules of the Game from 1939 is, I think, considered his best film. Most movie people I know have a 1939 movie. One of the best years for movies ever, there’s an embarrassment to choose from, from Hollywood or internationally. I’ve always been a Wuthering Heights person, though Midnight and Only Angels Have Wings are up there.
I knew next to nothing going into the film. The first four fifths of the film play like a late episode of Frasier, heightening farce as lies and miscommunication and cheeky seductions go awry as the anxieties of the bourgeoisie come to a head. There’s an easy comparison to Gosford Park by Robert Altman, which was clearly influenced by The Rules of the Game. Both are set on the precipice of WWII and this focuses the indictment of the unfeeling boorishness of the upper classes even more. They both involve big house parties, where classes are coming together to go hunting, to have affairs, to sing songs and to reveal secrets.
But the movie that I have thought about the most in connection with the film is All the President’s Men. Something about being on the eve of destruction and then producing a film about it at that moment. Of course, All the President’s Men is made looking back slightly, after the resignation of Nixon, whereas The Rules of the Game was released in July 1939 and banned by October and Renoir, supporter of the French Communist Party, would flee to America when Germany invaded France in May 1940. But All the President’s Men may be looking back on the mechanics of Nixon’s resignation and downfall, the 1976 film is still on the edge of an age of paranoia and abuse of trust by the government.
One of my favorite movies that I saw last year was Certified Copy by Abbas Kiarostami. A film about copies and originals and mirroring and play acting, one of the “copies” is that Kiarostami is making his version of Roberto Rosselini’s Journey to Italy, which in turn is a simulacrum in ways of his relationship with lead actress Ingrid Bergman. I just saw Journey to Italy for the first time and I’m not sure why I waited so long to watch it.
George Sanders plays the husband role here. The beats of marriage are acted out and then lost as Italy works its way into the married couple. There’s nothing in literature or film that I love more than when English/Americans go to Italy and get overwhelmed by something in a way that is not totally positive. Middlemarch, A Room with a View, Summertime, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Especially if the work is also saying something about the Nature of Marriage.
There’s no love lost between Season 1 of Bridgerton and me. The extent of my affection centers primarily to that cover of Wildest Dreams. I don’t love any of the Bridgerton books all that much and The Duke and I is particularly not to my taste. So color me surprised when my favorite part of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was Regé-Jean Page as someone named Xenk. I went to see the film on a whim, based on word of mouth (tweets) from Sanjana (@baskinsuns). Good for him! Let him be funny and charming! He’s funny and charming and looks great in a coat!
I also saw Air, which embarrassingly made me cry a lot, which feels a bit like laughing at an insurance commercial. I was and remain The Last Dance-pilled. I know all of this is a trick by an Aquarius to seem more sympathetic, but I like the magic act and I’m not looking for explanations on how it is done. They should let Ben Affleck wear wigs in every movie. He so clearly loves it!
Things to look forward to:
Ben at movies, regrettably is challenging himself to write about a Martin Scorsese film every week, so that he can cover them all before Killers of the Flower Moon comes out. Scorsese is my favorite director; Ben is very smart and funny. This is going to be good! I also think Scorsese makes the most sense when you look at his whole project, so reading someone who is doing just that is going to be fun!
Martin Scorsese might not be the first person you think of when you think of historical romance, but I do have a shelf on Goodreads for romance that makes me think of him and his movies.
Fran at Fran Magazine is doing Middlemarch May. I love to participate in things and I love reread Middlemarch as it gets warm. Not to discourse about the value inherent in “classics,” but I think there’s something about having parts of your life defined by reading a big book that takes a while to read, which is something similar that Fran has articulated about this project. I’ll always have first read Middlemarch when I had a job where I was commuting three (3) hours a day, I’ll always have first read Moby Dick in a hospital and I’ll always have first read Bleak House the year after I took the bar exam.
I saw The Rules of the Game in a college film class back in the 1970's and imo it was his best, and one of my favorite movies, although now I don't recall the plot at all. But I think The Grand Illusion gets more love because of Erich von Stroheim.
April is for bisexuals - Emma