Madam, want to talk about author Mary Stewart? discussion
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Thunder on the Right
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Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽, Moderator
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rated it 3 stars
Sep 04, 2020 10:10AM
If Stewart had toned down the melodrama just a few notches I would still consider it one of her better books. I still have a good deal of fondness for it, though. Say what you will, it does have a pretty exciting plot. Personally I don't really mind the third person narration.
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I don't know how long it took me to even notice the third person narrative, but it wasn't the first read - or the second or the third!
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ wrote: "Lol, I’m tickled that you quoted my old comment on that DRAMATIC scene. :) Glad you enjoyed the read!"I enjoyed the book and the threads.
you put it so well, I had to quote! and then, I forgot to hit notify me when people reply and just found these posts. Duh!
This one has never worked for me. Far too Gothic, the heroine too weedy. It particularly annoys me that she has led such a protected life, is so perfectly pretty, and it never seems to occur to her to earn her own living. Most of the MS heroines are capable of taking care of their own lives and are either charming and engaging or interestingly flawed or both.I find it very difficult to marry up the confident young woman investigating her cousin's disappearance in France and taking an aggressive line with various nuns and farmers with the sheltered child she is seen as by her parents and Stephen. And I don't think this is about different perspectives, it's a weakness in the story construction.
I also agree with one of the comments above (possibly from years ago!) that there are far too many elements in the plot. It seems to me that the original way in for the heroine was the disappearing cousin/amnesia plot and the bank robbery/getaway angle was invented as a way to service that. But then the author became absorbed with two of the powerful personalities she had created (Dona Francisca and Pierre Bussac) and their motivations started to drive the plot more forcefully, unbalancing the structure.
It feels terribly disloyal to be mean about ANY Mary Stewart novel but at least with this one there is the excuse that it was an early one and she must have been still experimenting with techniques. I struggle more with the later cottage stories when you feel she KNEW what made a great story but didn't always deliver on it.
I've been rereading a few of my favourites during lockdown and galloped through Wildfire and This Rough Magic, but after four pages of The Gabriel Hounds, I had to put it down. I just wasn't in the mood for Christy's self-centred smugness about being young, pretty and rich. And yet someone else might love TGH! I noticed someone in the old exchanges above singling out This Rough Magic as one they can't bear and that's one of my favourites. But it's fun that we don't all agree on this stuff!
Well, I’ve finished and have very mixed feelings about it. As a thriller/mystery, it definitely moved into melodrama and soap-opera! Amnesia? Such an overused trope although possibly not in 1954. It is still well written, evocative, and relatively well-executed. It’s nowhere near as good as my favourites: ie roughly her first dozen books, in particular, Madam Will you Talk, This Rough Magic, The Gabriel, Hounds, etc
It’s one of the few of Mary Stewart’s that I haven’t re-read a gazillion times before, so it was interesting that for most of it, I really felt I was reading it for the first time as I had forgotten most of the plot. It held my attention and I was riveted in the last few chapters. However, it is definitely one of her weakest romantic thrillers and there are some serious flaws in it.
I was okay with the third person POV. - it certainly allowed the reader to have a much better understanding of the hero’s thoughts. I found the heroine Jennifer rather odd and unsympathetic. Her inability to sense Stephen’s feelings or desire for her struck me as somewhat unbelievable. She was also exceptionally strong, forthright, and brave for the terribly innocent 22-year-old as originally portrayed.
The plot was far too busy and the thriller elements too melodramatic. The characters were really over-the-top as villains I thought.
The experiences of poor Gillian were kind of abandoned at the end of the book and I found that somewhat frustrating. How on earth was she going to get over that when her memory came back?
As always, MS's evocation of time and place is brilliant but perhaps some of the descriptions were a bit over the top. a 3 star read.
You make some great points, Susan! I wish we could've seen what Stewart would have done with this book a little later in her career.
Tadiana - yes I think she would have produced a much tighter and more nuanced story. I wonder how much editing advice she received from her publisher?
I think that I've always felt that Stewart was a bit depressed when she wrote this one, because Jennifer is so ... passive, and then she just kept piling on the excitement in order to keep giving herself a reason to go on with it. I have, however, absolutely no concrete reasons for that!
Karlyne, it's as good a guess as any!
Susan in Perthshire wrote: "Well, I’ve finished and have very mixed feelings about it. As a thriller/mystery, it definitely moved into melodrama and soap-opera! Amnesia? Such an overused trope although possibly not in 1954. I..."perhaps some of the descriptions were over the top Yes, I thought that, when we first met Gillian and she’s standing on the threshold illuminated by a shaft of light. And then again when Dona Francisca is poised on the edge of the bridge. Great images, but just a bit overdone!
I didn’t mind the third-person narration, in fact I enjoyed the book overall. I was fine with the romance, too. Stephen wasn’t a typical hero, and I liked the way Jennifer came to understand that and yet still valued him for who he was.
I quite like this one, though it’s not one of my favourites. It is a bit too melodramatic. I would have liked to know a bit more about what Gillian thought about it all, whether she started to remember being married etc. Also if she was still going to become a nun.
Louise wrote: "I quite like this one, though it’s not one of my favourites. It is a bit too melodramatic. I would have liked to know a bit more about what Gillian thought about it all, whether she started to reme..."It's funny that the entire story revolves around her, but we know basically nothing about her!
that is so true Karlyne, I think the lack of Gillian is my biggest problem with the book. Moreso than the melodrama. I really kept expecting a reunion between the cousins!
Jackie wrote: "that is so true Karlyne, I think the lack of Gillian is my biggest problem with the book. Moreso than the melodrama. I really kept expecting a reunion between the cousins!"I think somehow a reunion needed to happen! Although the amnesia also had to happen... Hmmm....
The wrong place I know, but Juliette Greco (referenced in my Brother Michae) passed away yesterday
Jay wrote: "The wrong place I know, but Juliette Greco (referenced in my Brother Michae) passed away yesterday"Oh, wow! She must have been somewhere near my mom's age. I'm going to go read her bio again. Thanks, Jay.
Actually, she was quite a bit older - and what a life! I hadn't known that she was the inspiration for the Beatles' Michelle, either.
Just finished it and yes, Stewart definitely went into melodrama and yet I still enjoyed it :O) I wonder if it is the landscape, dramatic and gothic, pushed her into that kind of story...Jennifer didn’t bother me too much, but her cousin certainly did. I also appreciated how Stephen was ‘hurt’ which made him more interesting.
There were of course the distasteful contemporary elements - Pierre taking advantage of the cousin (!) even if he ’saved' her, still doesn’t mean he has any rights on her person / the doctor at the end brushing the cousin’s whole experience of having been duped into a ‘marriage’ which I’m sure was not platonic / and other priceless bits. Does make you wonder...
Anyway, as a said, I did enjoy it. It felt very cinematic, as all do so far :O)
When I read this a couple of years ago, I couldn’t get past the cousin’s whole story line. I just don’t know how a person gets over experiences like that to rebuild their life, and to have those experiences be secondary to Jennifer’s story makes me very uncomfortable. The pressure felt in those days to fit any “inappropriate sex” into a box of conformity to the “normal” did a lot of psychological harm to women, and many traces of that impulse remain. Also the degree of licking Stephen took (and kept on ticking) was just over the top.
Abigail wrote: "When I read this a couple of years ago, I couldn’t get past the cousin’s whole story line. I just don’t know how a person gets over experiences like that to rebuild their life, and to have those ex..."I found Gillian's experience very hard to shake, too--even though they try their best to gloss it over by giving her amnesia at the end. This book is a lot more forgiving of Pierre than a contemporary novel would be.
I also found myself on this read wondering what the story would be like told from Celeste's perspective. Jennifer acts like she's a hundred years older than Celeste but really they can't be more than a few years apart in age? Also I hadn't noticed on previous reads, but both Jennifer and Celeste end up having to buck their mother figures so they can live their romantic lives and that seemed like kind of an odd parallel to me. I wonder if Stewart was even conscious of it.
But I liked this book. I didn't mind the melodrama--I felt the book was pretty conscious of how it employed it. I do understand why Stewart called her own book overwritten (there's an awful lot about Stephen's "need" for Jennifer and I never really got a clear sense of what exactly that meant--Stephen ended up kind of underdeveloped in his motives). But I liked Stephen: I like restrained romantic heroes a lot. I appreciated that he was vulnerable but just powerful enough to get things done, and I thought there was a nice balance struck between Jennifer acting on her own (she's the one who first suspects murder; she's the one who has to go out in the storm at the end and find the path to Gillian over a landslide) and getting help. Though I would have preferred that she walk off that bridge herself.
Interesting comment about the mother figures! In those days there was much more of an assumption that young women belonged to their parents and lived at home until they married—but that model had already been rendered problematic by World War II, when so many young women went out into the workplace. After the war people tried to return to the earlier model but tension about it kept building till we got the sexual revolution! So perhaps the mother-rebellions are reflecting that shift, which happened in hearts long before it happened in reality.
If I had read this book for the first time today, I suspect I’d probably not bother reading any more Mary Stewart and what a loss that would be! Thankfully, I didn’t and so I can still read my other MS favourites and never get bored or question the credibility of their stories. This one is however, over the top, melodramatic tosh with seriously unpleasant undertones in respect of poor Gillian’s experiences and bedevilled by weaknesses in plotting and characterisation.
Jenny is a disappointing heroine. Compared to the wonderfully well rounded, fascinating, strong and relatively independent heroines in other books, she comes across as a remarkably naive, shallow, judgemental and insensitive and far too much under the control of her mother. Even for the 1950s, this was over the top and clearly serving as a plot device to explain why Stephen had waited so long to declare his feelings.
The villains are so one dimensional. Dona Francisca is almost cartoon-like in her unremitting evil power seeking. Bussac could have been much more developed and nuanced. He obviously loved Gillian and their relationship could have been much better expanded. Instead he remained a superficial sketch of a man rather than a fully fleshed character. In particular, I hated the casual use of ‘brutish peasant’ in the paragraph describing him. What a wealth of class ridden prejudice lay in those words.
Which brings me to Gillian - the convenient amnesiac who apparently won’t remember her entrapment and marriage. That whole story line left me with a nasty taste in my mouth. How could a doctor guarantee that part of her memory wouldn’t return? How are we supposed to believe that she wouldn’t be affected by her experiences and require specialist help to recover. This was so cavalierly dismissed in the story and it made me really uncomfortable.
Stephen should have been a much stronger, better developed character and whilst he certainly revealed his hidden strengths towards the end, he was definitely underdeveloped in my opinion.
MS couldn’t write a bad book if she’d tried, but this one is definitely far from being her best. Some fabulous descriptions and flowing passages all revealing her skills as a writer but for me this is definitely three stars, rather than the 5 stars that I normally allocate to my favourites of her books.
I’m not quite as harsh as you but you certainly bring to the fore all the things that bother me about this book, Susan!
Thank you Abigail. I do feel a little guilty being so critical about one of the very few authors that I go back to, time after time. (Georgette Heyer being another.) MS set the bar so high in books like This Rough Magic and Nine Coaches waiting, it’s impossible for me not to point out the flaws when a book fails to reach her usually impeccable standards. I’m glad we agree on the things that make us unhappy with this book. 😉
Susan in Perthshire wrote: "If I had read this book for the first time today, I suspect I’d probably not bother reading any more Mary Stewart and what a loss that would be! Thankfully, I didn’t and so I can still read my othe..."I agree with everything you said there Susan.
The other annoying thing was that she kept calling Gillian a girl. Gillian was 7 years older than Jennifer who I think was 22. I know she was ill, frail, whatever but it still bugged me.
Susan in Perthshire wrote: "Thank you Abigail. And thank you, Susan, and Julie, too! You've said it all, really.
I caught myself wondering if Mary Stewart had the publisher breathing down her neck with this, her second* book. "The heroine in Madam was far too independent, all that fast driving and motorcar expertise. Could you do someone a little more feminine? And a little more sex, not explicit, of course, but implied nudity and 'needs'? We could do with a bit more drama, too." And she rolled her eyes and did it – we could read all those references to Mrs Radcliffe as an ironic comment on her own writing here.
There seem to be quite a number of asides on storytelling, how a story should go and what a hero should be – sorry I can't quote them, I've been listening to the audiobook. What do you make of those?
*I woke up at two o'clock in the morning thinking, oh murder, that wasn't her second book, it was her third! And all the while I'd been thinking how rewarding it is to read her books in order. Duh! My memory isn't a sieve, it's a colander.
LOL, you nailed it! That’s exactly the sort of terrible advice that agents and editors give authors facing the hurdle of their sophomore book, that pressure to conform to perceived norms when what readers are actually responding to is the divergence from norm. “Needs,” indeed! That made me howl. I do think you’ve hit on the key to what feels off about this book.You’re making me wish I’d had time to reread this so I could comment more substantively, but my plate is just too full.
Abigail wrote: "LOL, you nailed it! That’s exactly the sort of terrible advice that agents and editors give authors facing the hurdle of their sophomore book, that pressure to conform to perceived norms when what ..."Also just time pressures, right? I don't know how contracts worked back then but some of the writers I know who are doing pretty well find themselves under a lot of pressure to get the next book kicked out quickly. Now I'm always going to be wondering if this one was left a little bit drafty. :)
Yes, good point, Julie! That could explain why the narrator or point of view seems a bit half-baked, shifting between omniscient narrator and third person limited (giving Jenny's or Stephen's point of view). It can be done – Jane Austen does it – but it has to be done well. Whenever those asides about Mrs Radcliffe or the ideal hero or ideal story came up, I caught myself wondering who is saying this. It seemed to be Jenny, but that seemed out of character, so I reckon the shift from Jenny's point of view to the narrator's voice hadn't quite worked. Does this make sense? I'm finding it a bit hard to explain ;-).
