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The House on Twyford Street
Dust jacket art by Honi Werner. Her fifth book about a young woman in late 17th Century England.
314 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1976
About the author
Constance Gluyas
20 books7 followersConstance Gluyas was born in London in the lean years following World War I and left school at the age of fourteen to go to work. During World War II, she served in the Women's Royal Air Force and supervised the main switch-board with a direct line to Europe during the Normandy invasion.
After moving to California, where she lives with her husband, Donald, and daughter, Diane, Mrs. Gluyas began her career as a writer.
After moving to California, where she lives with her husband, Donald, and daughter, Diane, Mrs. Gluyas began her career as a writer.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 18, 2016
You know I can't resist a namesake heroine. :)
Despite a strong start, this one scattered in all directions & lost much of its punch. It's not a badly-written book, & there's a nice sense of historical backdrop (e.g. cameos by Wren, Pepys, & King Charles)...but it has the feel of an author trying to find her style. There are too many disparate faces, emotions, & incidents battling for control of a limited story scope.
Case in point: the cast of this book runs from hyper-realistic to WTFery to slapstick humor, like Elizabeth Gaskell meets Rosemary Rogers meets PG Wodehouse. It's as if the author couldn't decide which approach worked best, so she chose her favorite stock characters from all three & mashed them together, complete with appropriate humor/angst/outrage in the accompanying prose. Margaret & Madam Gilbert are serious 'society novel' types. Sanders is Doctor McCoy in tights. Peter feels like the great-great-great-grandfather of a Wodehouse buffoon. Mitford & the prison guards are psychos ripped from the school of OTT villainy. Sarah & Jason's back-and-forth dialogues smack of Georgette Heyer.
The flyleaf summary makes Twyford Street sound as if someone attacks Sarah every time she uses the loo. But that's not the case. While she does face some violence (attempted rapes, whipping, branding, etc), none are courtesy of the hero. In fact, most people appreciate that Sarah is a fine young lady & repeatedly wax poetic on her aweomeness. Only cold-hearted bastards are unmoved by her courage in the face of adversity; she wins cheerleaders in everyone from courtesan to housekeeper to coachman.
Personally, I'd label it Bodice Ripper Lite. With a flyleaf blurb like this:
JEMMIE, who took Sarah as little more than a child & turned her into the instrument of his pleasure & profit; MITFORD, the jailer who used his power over Sarah to inflict scars on her spirit & flesh that would leave her branded forever; PETER, the restoration rake skilled in every art of seduction & style of corruption, who made Sarah his prey; and above all, JASON, the handsome, proud, tormented lord who was ruler of Sarah's heart & master of her fate.
...you'd expect something torrid & unending in the abuse department, but you'd be wrong. Mitford? Yeah, okay, that's pretty accurate. Jemmie? Ok, so he tricks her into marriage. But Sarah was into him back then & not shy about sex when she thought they were married. And as for Peter...no. Peter is about as threatening as Bingo Little. He's a restoration dandy whose capacity for evil runs on par with a cantelope. Poor Peter wouldn't dream of forcing himself on a woman, let alone someone his BFF Jason already wanted. The guy faints dead away at the sight of blood, y'all. He's not a villain by any stretch of the imagination.
Criticism aside, I will eventually pick up another Gluyas. Her writing was smooth & I enjoyed the characters -- I just wish my namesake had a more rippery tale to tell.
Despite a strong start, this one scattered in all directions & lost much of its punch. It's not a badly-written book, & there's a nice sense of historical backdrop (e.g. cameos by Wren, Pepys, & King Charles)...but it has the feel of an author trying to find her style. There are too many disparate faces, emotions, & incidents battling for control of a limited story scope.
Case in point: the cast of this book runs from hyper-realistic to WTFery to slapstick humor, like Elizabeth Gaskell meets Rosemary Rogers meets PG Wodehouse. It's as if the author couldn't decide which approach worked best, so she chose her favorite stock characters from all three & mashed them together, complete with appropriate humor/angst/outrage in the accompanying prose. Margaret & Madam Gilbert are serious 'society novel' types. Sanders is Doctor McCoy in tights. Peter feels like the great-great-great-grandfather of a Wodehouse buffoon. Mitford & the prison guards are psychos ripped from the school of OTT villainy. Sarah & Jason's back-and-forth dialogues smack of Georgette Heyer.
The flyleaf summary makes Twyford Street sound as if someone attacks Sarah every time she uses the loo. But that's not the case. While she does face some violence (attempted rapes, whipping, branding, etc), none are courtesy of the hero. In fact, most people appreciate that Sarah is a fine young lady & repeatedly wax poetic on her aweomeness. Only cold-hearted bastards are unmoved by her courage in the face of adversity; she wins cheerleaders in everyone from courtesan to housekeeper to coachman.
Personally, I'd label it Bodice Ripper Lite. With a flyleaf blurb like this:
JEMMIE, who took Sarah as little more than a child & turned her into the instrument of his pleasure & profit; MITFORD, the jailer who used his power over Sarah to inflict scars on her spirit & flesh that would leave her branded forever; PETER, the restoration rake skilled in every art of seduction & style of corruption, who made Sarah his prey; and above all, JASON, the handsome, proud, tormented lord who was ruler of Sarah's heart & master of her fate.
...you'd expect something torrid & unending in the abuse department, but you'd be wrong. Mitford? Yeah, okay, that's pretty accurate. Jemmie? Ok, so he tricks her into marriage. But Sarah was into him back then & not shy about sex when she thought they were married. And as for Peter...no. Peter is about as threatening as Bingo Little. He's a restoration dandy whose capacity for evil runs on par with a cantelope. Poor Peter wouldn't dream of forcing himself on a woman, let alone someone his BFF Jason already wanted. The guy faints dead away at the sight of blood, y'all. He's not a villain by any stretch of the imagination.
Criticism aside, I will eventually pick up another Gluyas. Her writing was smooth & I enjoyed the characters -- I just wish my namesake had a more rippery tale to tell.
November 22, 2022
What a disappointment! It started off good, if depressing, with all that the h, Sarah Barry went through. (I've read several of Ms. Gluyas's books, and I'm starting to think she has an obsession with Newgate prison, Perhaps she was interred there in a former lifetime?) This young woman endured way too much, from losing her entire family to illness, being homeless, offered help by a seemingly friendly man named Jemmy who coerced her into becoming a pickpocket, falsely married her, beat and abused her, then left her a "widow", once again homeless. to keep from starving, she picked the pocket of the H, Jason, Lord Witherly, which results in her serving a term in Newgate and then Bedlam, when she defends herself from being raped. Much too much!! I skipped over the horrid descriptions of prison and asylum life back in Restoration days, or I would have barfed up my lunch.
Typical of HR books, upon her escape, Sarah vows revenge against Jason, though he regretted his decision to have her arrested but felt he couldn't do anything about it. (Strange, since he was wealthy, socially prominent, and a friend of king Charles II, so that really didn't make sense.) Her chance seems to have come, when she's rescued from a rape attempt (by a mentally imbalanced man named Mitford, who was released from Bedlam, when he should have had permanent residency) and her rescuers are none other than Jason and his mother, Lady Margaret. Soon, Sarah's working as a companion to Lady Margaret and ends up nursing Jason through an illness, which leads to the two of them falling in love. And that's where the story took a wrong turn.
First of all, everything between Sarah and Jason happened way too fast. No sooner are we reading about Sarah working for Lady Margaret, then Jason's sick, she's taking care of him, they engage in that witty/snarky/cold/aloof/angry/etc. dialogue that the h and h indulge in when they're trying to fight their true feelings, then Jason - who always kept his emotions to himself because hem had trouble expressing them - suddenly wears his heart on his sleeve, acts jealous when his friend, Sir Peter, pays a visit and is obviously attracted to Sarah, declares his love to her, gets angry when another visiting friend flirts with her and announces they're getting married! This before formerly proposing or informing his mother of how he feels! way too out of character.
Lady Margaret, kind and compassionate, suddenly turns into a bit of a tyrant (not to mention a snob) and tells Sarah there's no way Sarah can marry her son, with her past of living with a man she wasn't married to (though un witting on her part), picking pockets (though she had no choice), being in Newgate prison (which was Jason's doing) and being in Bedlam asylum (where she never belonged). She has been longing for Jason to fall in love and get married, but only to the proper sot of young woman, of course!
Sarah was the only one who made any sense. She loved Jason (her hate and plans for revenge sure disappeared fast) but knew their getting married would be unsuitable, because of the social stigma. She was hurt, though, at how quickly lady Margaret turned on her, and couldn't help wondering if she (as well as other people) believed she might really be insane. She determined, for his own good, to convince Jason she didn't love him and cared for someone else.
Then the psycho Mitford catches up with Sarah (whom he'd been staking) he tries again to rape her, hits her, she passes out, and is rescued by Lady Margaret of all people, but she uses Sarah's being unconscious to her advantage. When Sarah wakes up she assumes Mitford raped her and Lady Margaret doesn't tell her that she got there in time to prevent it, knowing that if Sarah thought she were raped (with its social, stigma at that time) she'd feel even less worthy to be Jason's wife. What a horrible woman!!
The rest of the book is a time waster. Sarah is sneaked off to live with a friend of Lady Margaret's (Opal, one of the king's former mistresses) who becomes her friend, and keeps trying to convince the stubborn snob to change her mind about Jason and Sarah. She feels guilty and remorseful, but remains steadfast in believing she has her son's best interests at heart. Later, she gets Sarah a job as a dressmaker's apprentice in an area where Jason's unlikely to visit, convinced it's for the best. Jason, who doesn't know the extent of his mother's involvement, at first blames Sarah, then searches for her, can't find her, keeps looking, accuses Sir Peter of being her lover, and more such stuff. Then, the evil Mitford strikes again!!
By this time, who the hell cares if they ever get back together, since they never spent much time together in the first place! Those scenes in his bedroom while he was ill were the longest between them. (And if you're looking for hot love scenes, you can forget it. Sarah saw more of her late ex's body and Mitford's then she did Jason's. All that happened was a quick kiss, and lukewarm at that.) You can't make a good love story when the lovers spend more than 3/4 of the novel apart. You just can't care about the couple with so little to build the story on.
What the author should have done is had Sarah work to help victims of injustice, or former Newgate prisoners who have it rough, or people falsely accused of being insane, make a new life for herself (and maybe meet a man who feels likewise) while Jason goes about in high society and finds a woman of his own class whom he decides to marry. Then, they meet again!!
I should have been an author!
Typical of HR books, upon her escape, Sarah vows revenge against Jason, though he regretted his decision to have her arrested but felt he couldn't do anything about it. (Strange, since he was wealthy, socially prominent, and a friend of king Charles II, so that really didn't make sense.) Her chance seems to have come, when she's rescued from a rape attempt (by a mentally imbalanced man named Mitford, who was released from Bedlam, when he should have had permanent residency) and her rescuers are none other than Jason and his mother, Lady Margaret. Soon, Sarah's working as a companion to Lady Margaret and ends up nursing Jason through an illness, which leads to the two of them falling in love. And that's where the story took a wrong turn.
First of all, everything between Sarah and Jason happened way too fast. No sooner are we reading about Sarah working for Lady Margaret, then Jason's sick, she's taking care of him, they engage in that witty/snarky/cold/aloof/angry/etc. dialogue that the h and h indulge in when they're trying to fight their true feelings, then Jason - who always kept his emotions to himself because hem had trouble expressing them - suddenly wears his heart on his sleeve, acts jealous when his friend, Sir Peter, pays a visit and is obviously attracted to Sarah, declares his love to her, gets angry when another visiting friend flirts with her and announces they're getting married! This before formerly proposing or informing his mother of how he feels! way too out of character.
Lady Margaret, kind and compassionate, suddenly turns into a bit of a tyrant (not to mention a snob) and tells Sarah there's no way Sarah can marry her son, with her past of living with a man she wasn't married to (though un witting on her part), picking pockets (though she had no choice), being in Newgate prison (which was Jason's doing) and being in Bedlam asylum (where she never belonged). She has been longing for Jason to fall in love and get married, but only to the proper sot of young woman, of course!
Sarah was the only one who made any sense. She loved Jason (her hate and plans for revenge sure disappeared fast) but knew their getting married would be unsuitable, because of the social stigma. She was hurt, though, at how quickly lady Margaret turned on her, and couldn't help wondering if she (as well as other people) believed she might really be insane. She determined, for his own good, to convince Jason she didn't love him and cared for someone else.
Then the psycho Mitford catches up with Sarah (whom he'd been staking) he tries again to rape her, hits her, she passes out, and is rescued by Lady Margaret of all people, but she uses Sarah's being unconscious to her advantage. When Sarah wakes up she assumes Mitford raped her and Lady Margaret doesn't tell her that she got there in time to prevent it, knowing that if Sarah thought she were raped (with its social, stigma at that time) she'd feel even less worthy to be Jason's wife. What a horrible woman!!
The rest of the book is a time waster. Sarah is sneaked off to live with a friend of Lady Margaret's (Opal, one of the king's former mistresses) who becomes her friend, and keeps trying to convince the stubborn snob to change her mind about Jason and Sarah. She feels guilty and remorseful, but remains steadfast in believing she has her son's best interests at heart. Later, she gets Sarah a job as a dressmaker's apprentice in an area where Jason's unlikely to visit, convinced it's for the best. Jason, who doesn't know the extent of his mother's involvement, at first blames Sarah, then searches for her, can't find her, keeps looking, accuses Sir Peter of being her lover, and more such stuff. Then, the evil Mitford strikes again!!
By this time, who the hell cares if they ever get back together, since they never spent much time together in the first place! Those scenes in his bedroom while he was ill were the longest between them. (And if you're looking for hot love scenes, you can forget it. Sarah saw more of her late ex's body and Mitford's then she did Jason's. All that happened was a quick kiss, and lukewarm at that.) You can't make a good love story when the lovers spend more than 3/4 of the novel apart. You just can't care about the couple with so little to build the story on.
What the author should have done is had Sarah work to help victims of injustice, or former Newgate prisoners who have it rough, or people falsely accused of being insane, make a new life for herself (and maybe meet a man who feels likewise) while Jason goes about in high society and finds a woman of his own class whom he decides to marry. Then, they meet again!!
I should have been an author!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews