Suite Francais Film

This is  a likable film set in the aftermath of the Fall of France, when the Germans occupied the country. The chief character is a young woman called Lucille who lives with her mother in law, and is lonely because her husband is now a prisoner of war in Germany.  She doesn’t get on with her mother in law, who is a well to do and cold hearted widow.  Lucille feels bullied by her and hates the way that her mother in law is harsh towards their tenants.

 When a German regiment come into the town, Lucille notes that the older women freeze them out, but the young women lonely without their menfolk who are away at war, find it hard to ignore them. Before long, some of the younger women take German soldiers as lovers. Lucille is lonely too but her mother in laws strict watchfulness controls her life. When a German officer is billeted at their house, her mother in law refuses to talk to him, but Lucille who loves music, gradually develops a friendship with him. But in the end, she realises that she cannot ignore the fact that he is German and the occupier of her country.

Suite Francaise is about wartime love and sexual passion and captures very well the loneliness of soldiers away from their homes and loved ones, and the loneliness of the young women whose men have disappeared into Germany or been killed.  And the furtiveness and passion that this gives to their love affairs with the Germans.

I particularly liked it because I like to read of illicit or non-traditional love. Of course married and settled love has many satisfactions but there is a special thrill to love that is not accepted…

Royal Paramours by Dulcie Ashdown

I’ve been reading this book lately. I can remember reading it many years ago. It covers the illicit relationships of Britain’s Royals from the medieval era to the time of Edward VIII. However it misses the later revelations of infidelity from the 1980s onwards. I’ve greatly enjoyed the stories of Edward VII’s many mistresses, the love affairs of the Stuart Kings and the intense friendships of the Stuart Queens, Anne and Mary. Both of them seem to have had close relationships with women as well as with their husbands. Dulcie Ashdown said, very truly that “normal” conventional respectable married love, is not as interesting as illicit love. We love to read about the loves which should not happen, or about the deceptions and secrets of love outside of marriage, which can result in scandal. We like to see the problems in a love relationship, rather than the boring years of settled married life, which is why love stories usually end at the altar.

Nicholas Sparks

I picked up a Nicholas Sparks some months ago, when I was on holiday in America. Since then I’ve read several more of his books, and have come to the conclusion that he’s a hit and miss writer. Still, there’s something very likable about his books and he comes across as a man of warmth and feeling and I enjoy his work even if it is not “great literature! The first book I read was “Dear John”, a novel about a young man from a poor background, in the South, (like most of Sparks’ heroes). He lives alone with his father, who is not close to him, and who may be autistic. John does not do well at school or show any ambition. Then after a few years, he goes into the Army and finds a purpose in life that he hadn’t had before. He meets a young woman, Savannah, from a different background, who is at college and is a Christian. He falls in love with her, but the novel is about the difficulties of maintaining a relationship when one of the partners is in the military. John means to leave the army after his hitch is up, and marry Savannah, but “9/11” intervenes. After the terrorist attack, he -like many others -ends up re enlisting and that puts a major strain on his girlfriend. She and John don’t have much time to spend together. He feels uneasy with her college friends. They quarrel at times and then when he is serving abroad, she writes to him to say she wants to break off the relationship. John returns to America, later, because his father is very ill. His father dies, and he goes to see Savannah who is now married to a friend of hers called Tim. Tim’s younger brother is autistic and because of this, Savannah wanted to run a ranch for children with similar problems. They set one up. Tim became ill with cancer and is dying. Savannah takes him to see her husband. John makes a big sacrifice to try to save Tim’s life and protect Savannah’s marriage. I like this ending, as while it is not “happy ever after”, it shows that love can make things better and that real love may demands a sacrifice. And that not all love affairs have a happy ending. In some of Sparks’ other works, he ends with something even sadder than a near death of a character. I have to say that at times, he seems to be searching the medical dictionary for illnesses to make his readers unhappy. But in Dear John, I enjoy the problem and the resolution. I enjoy Dear John because it seems realistic in its looking at the differences between the 2 characters. John is a young man to whom the army was important because it had provided him with a purpose, and Savannah who was more privileged and interested in intellectual matters. She is young and inexperienced and it’s understandable that she might be attracted to John but not feel able to cope with a long distance relationship for years to come. I’ve tried not to put too many spoilers in this!

Hazel Holt and Mrs Malory

I just saw with sadness that Hazel Holt has written her last “Sheila Malory” cosy mystery and I rushed to buy it on Kindle. I’ve read most of her books. They are about a middle aged widow, in a small town in rural Devon, who gets involved in mysteries and murder cases. Sheila Malory is in her early 50s when the series starts and as I’m getting older myself, I tend to enjoy the stories about a heroine who isn’t young. Titles include Mrs Malory and the Festival Murder”, “The Cruellest Month” and many more. Sheila is a writer, who writes literary criticism and occasionally takes temporary posts in teaching and lecturing which enables her to go to other locations, such as Oxford, America and a prestigious girls school. Her mysteries are “cozies” in the American phrase which means that they are not usually about the criminal classes, but murders in “private life” among the comfortable middle class. There is no real violence or gore. In fact, in many of her books the murder victim is a very unsympathetic figure, - such as a busybody or a nasty bully, or even a potential murderer. If they are male, they are often bullying and domineering over their wife and children…. The murderer is often someone who has been wronged by the victim, who has snapped and killed him or her. I like the characters in her books, they are older people, usually and more pleasant and well-mannered than many characters in modern fiction. They are more “Inspector Morse “types" than characters from “The Bill”. One of the small problems with the books is that because the victim is usually a nasty type, (this often emerges only after his death when family problems are outed), it is hard to wish for the mystery to be solved, because you sympathise with the murderer to an extent. Sheila does sometimes feel that she has an ethical dilemma of not wanting the murderer to be caught…Even when she does find the murderer, she often accepts their request to “put their affairs in order” before going to the police, and allows them the gentlemanly option of committing suicide. In one of her earlier ones, she and her son, Michael (who becomes a lawyer) trap the murderer into a confession and it is one of the few cases where the killer (presumably since the novel ends with his being caught) is tried and found guilty. But again this is a case where the victim (a woman) was a bullying selfish creature who used blackmail and spite to get her way, much of her life. I’m not quite sure why this was one of the few cases where the murderer (who was not an unsympathetic person) was caught in the normal processes of the law. Hazel Holt’s world is pleasant and cosy, albeit she does touch on modern problems such as secret affairs, child abuse, homosexuality etc. and she shows a tolerant and intelligent viewpoint. I'm very sorry that she’s stopping writing the novels.

Rhys Bowen's fun novels

I’ve been a fan of her books for some time but was disappointed by the last one and it got me thinking. She has 3 series -all light detective fiction. The one I like best is about Lady Georgiana Rannoch, a young upper class woman who is “posh but poor”. She is connected to the British Royal family but also has a Cockney policeman for her grandfather. She often gets involved in murder and other investigations and members of the Royal family appear in the books. Mostly they are light and fun, with charming amusing characters such as Queenie, Georgiana’s clueless and ill trained maid. Claire Daniels, her actress mother, is clearly based on Nancy Mitford’s Bolter. Other occasional real life characters include Noel Coward. However her last novel Heirs and Graces has the plot turning on something that seems to me quite implausible. It is about a young Australian man who turns out to be the long lost heir to a title and estate in England. The current Duke isn’t keen on having this uncouth young man as his heir, but he himself has refused to marry because he’s homosexual. But part of the plot entails the present Duke, deciding that rather than having the Australian boy step into his shoes, he will adopt one of his male protégés such as his valet. I don’t mind a little bit of “bending the realities” in a historical novel, especially a light work like this. But I think that the story of the Duke adopting someone as heir was frankly very silly. At the end of the novel, a character points out that this would not be possible... since Ms Bowen certainly knows this... but it is left too late in the novel. The Duke’s family are all upset when he makes the announcement, that he will adopt someone and appear to take it seriously. But no upper class family would be unaware that it was not possible to leave an entailed estate and title to anyone who was not a blood relation. I still enjoy the novels, but this story line was a jolt that took me out of the novel. One of the problems of writing historical novels… is that it is tempting to liven up the story by reference to more scandalous if not well authenticated stories of the past. And at times, there is a temptation to change attitudes so that the characters are more sympathetic to present day readers. I think the temptation is there to simplify the work and make it more accessible, by using a storyline such as the one in Heirs and Graces, which would make sense to a modern audience but which would have been utterly impossible at the time. Having said all this, I still enjoy Rhys Bowen and Lady Georgiana and will read any other novels!