Henry James' Daisy Miller

American-born Henry James (1843-1916) was one of the true literary giants.

His 1878 novella Daisy Miller brought him his first taste of commercial success and critical acclaim.

James spent a large part of his life in Europe and in Britain. He was fascinated by the experience of Americans in Europe.

This is the theme of the novella. Daisy Miller is the daughter of a nouveau riche American. Her father has sent her, along with her mother and her kid brother, to Switzerland to absorb some culture and some polish. Daisy is beautiful and charming. Her problem is not that she’s American but that she does not not know any of the rules that govern respectable fashionable society. Even worse, she does not know that she does not know these rules. She has no idea why she is continually snubbed.

She makes the acquaintance of Winterbourne. He is a young American but he has spent most of his life in Europe. He does know the rules. Unfortunately he does not comprehend that he is dealing with a girl who is entirely unaware of her social mistakes. She is entirely unaware that her forwardness will be misinterpreted as an indication of loose morals.

Winterbourne is charmed by her but also shocked.

That’s what will cause the heartache. He is delighted when he first encounters her and is able to engage her in conversation, but shocked that he allows it. It is most improper for a young lady to speak to a young man to whom she has not been formally introduced. He is delighted that she agrees to accompany him to a picturesque nearby chateau but shocked that she does so. Again, it is not proper behaviour for a young lady.

Winterbourne just cannot reconcile his attraction to Daisy’s beauty, vivacity and charm with his growing fear that perhaps she really is not respectable. He is worried about her familiarity with Eugenio the courier. The seeds of mistrust and suspicion have been sown. And Daisy does nothing to allay his concerns because she has no inkling that she has done anything wrong.

Later, in Rome, Daisy’s behaviour becomes increasingly socially reckless but she remains oblivious. She spends a lot of time with an Italian who may be a fortune-hunter. That’s Winterbourne’s assumption. But is Daisy just flirting?

Winterbourne and Daisy just cannot understand each other. It’s not a cultural difference. They’re both Americans. It’s not even quite a class difference. It’s a social difference. The inhabit different mental universes. Daisy does not realise her danger. Winterbourne cannot get through to her.

The communication difficulty has other consequences. Winterbourne genuinely doesn’t know what feelings, if any, Daisy has for him. And increasingly he is unsure about his own feelings.

Daisy is trapped by her inability to comprehend the social rules. Winterbourne is trapped because he understands them too well.

Winterbourne and Daisy are both rather nice young people. We care about them although we share Winterbourne’s exasperation with Daisy and to an extent we share her exasperation with him.

Wonderful book. Read it.

I very much enjoyed Peter Bogdanovich’s film adaptation, Daisy Miller (1974). I recommend it. It follows the novella very closely and I think it captures its spirit.

Joseph Kessel’s novel Belle de Jour

Joseph Kessel’s novel Belle de Jour was published in 1928 and was immediately controversial. It would be decades before anyone dared to publish an English translation.

Both Kessel and his novel are now entirely forgotten outside of France. Luis Buñuel’s 1967 film adaptation is however still regarded as one of the masterpieces of cinema.

The basic premise of both novel and movie is the same. Séverine is a happily married young woman who has never learnt to be totally comfortable about sex. She decides to take a part-time job, in a brothel. It’s a kind of therapy. She can however only work the afternoon shift, so she becomes known as Belle de Jour.

It’s obvious that Séverine has major sexual issues and that she takes no pleasure at all in love-making with her husband Pierre (an eminent young surgeon). Her first experience with a customer at the brothel is degrading and humiliating. That excites Séverine a great deal. She discovers that if she feels sufficiently degraded she can enjoy sex a good deal.

Then along comes Marcel. He’s one of her customers. He’s a hoodlum. His body is covered in scars from numerous fights. He’s dangerous with a suggestion of violence. This is the best sex Séverine has had so far!

Her husband is kind and gentle and sensitive and never pressures her into having sex. He’s so passive and understanding and sensitive that she can hardly bear to have him touch her. Marcel just takes her brutally when he wants her. That works for her.

Séverine is determined to keep her two lives separate. That might be possible as long as she and Marcel do not get emotionally involved. Perhaps they are already emotionally involved. Séverine isn’t sure she can tell the difference between lust and love and she isn’t at all sure which of those two things she wants.

The sadomasochistic elements that are prominent in the movie are more diffuse and more indirect in the novel. It’s clear that Séverine enjoys to some extent playing the submissive role but it’s the more generalised sense of shame and degradation that gets her blood pumping.

While the basic plotline sounds very similar to the 1967 movie there are in fact huge differences. Buñuel’s movie operates on at least two different levels of reality. It is clear that much of the action of the movie consists of Séverine’s sexual fantasies. It is impossible to be certain where reality and and her fantasies take over. Dream and reality seem to be bleeding into each other. It’s possible (but by no means certain) that almost everything in the movie only happens in Séverine’s fantasies. Buñuel has no intention of making things easy for us. He wants us to be uncertain.

This is not the case with the novel. The novel is a straightforward linear narrative with no ambiguity. Everything that appears to happen in the novel does happen.

It is always important to bear in mind that a novel and a movie adaptation of that novel do not necessarily have the same meaning. And the intentions behind the novel and the movie may be very very different. Buñuel did not feel the least bit constrained to make a movie that meant the same things that the novel meant. And there is no reason at all why he should have felt so constrained.

So if you’re thinking that the novel may make the movie’s meaning more clear then you’re hoping to be disappointed. It’s not going to be any help at all in that department.

Although Buñuel’s movie is the greater artistic achievement his movie and Kessel’s novel are both exceptionally interesting and both are very much worth seeking out. Kessel’s Belle de Jour is highly recommended.

My copy of the book is the Overlook Duckworth paperback edition of Geoffrey Wagner’s 1962 English translation.

I’ve also reviewed Buñuel’s movie, Belle de Jour (1967).

The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux Camélias)

La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady of the Camellias) is an 1848 novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. Dumas himself adapted it as a stage play shortly thereafter. In 1853 it became the basis for Verdi's opera La traviata. Both the novel and play were highly successful.

Dumas was the son of the immensely popular and famous Alexandre Dumas. The younger Dumas went on to become a major figure in the French literary world.

He was just twenty-three when he wrote The Lady of the Camellias. It is a semi-autobiographical account of his affair with Marie Duplessis, one of the most famous (and expensive) of all 19th century courtesans. Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis in 1847 at the age of twenty-three. The heroine of the novel is renamed Marguerite Gautier.

Given that Dumas’ liaison with Marie Duplessis was well known in Parisian society and that readers of the novel were well aware of Marie’s death in 1847 the author’s decision to begin the novel with her death was probably an unavoidable one, and of course it serves to highlight the tragedy. We know the heroine is doomed, and that the love between these two people is doomed.

A young man named Armand Duval becomes infatuated with the celebrated courtesan Marguerite Gautier.

The problem is that he cannot possibly afford her. Armand is by no means poor but he is far from being a rich man. And only a very rich man indeed could afford a woman like Marguerite.

The complication is that they fall genuinely in love. Marguerite does not mind that Armand has very little money, as long as he is prepared to accept that she is being kept by a wealthy duke and that she is accepting money from other men for her sexual favours. Armand struggles to come to terms with all this. He struggles to understand Marguerite.

Both Armand and Marguerite try to find a solution that will be mutually satisfactory.

Dumas had an assortment of mistresses and kept women. The world of decadent excess, of high-class prostitutes, the world of the demi-monde, was his world. His attitude towards prostitutes was extremely sympathetic. That is not to say that he entirely approved of prostitution. His attitudes to this question were complicated and perhaps contradictory. On the other hand he did not believe that such women should be condemned. Marguerite Gautier is a very sympathetic heroine. Dumas does not sentimentalise her. Marguerite is quite mercenary. She has found that the wages of sin are very generous and she is addicted to a life of luxury and excess. She loves Armand but she doesn’t see any reason to be faithful to him.

Marguerite has her flaws, but her love for Armand is genuine.

The novel can be described as a fictionalised account of the life of Marie Duplessis. Just how fictionalised Dumas’ account is remains uncertain.

Dumas was a big name in France but his plays were considered much too shocking to be performed in England. Reading the novel it is certainly evident that there was a reason that French novels were considered scandalous by respectable opinion in England. The novel makes not the slightest attempt to disguise the fact that its heroine is a prostitute and that the relationship between the two main characters is a sexual one. Nor does it disguise the fact that while living as a kept woman Marguerite turns tricks on the side. Dumas avoids moral judgments. Armand has a mistress before he meets Marguerite and during the course of the story he sleeps with other women. He is not the most admirable of men - he fails to trust Marguerite at a time when she needed him to do so. He lets her down.

The Lady of the Camellias offers an extraordinary glimpse into the world of the demi-monde, written by an insider. It can be considered to be a priceless artifact of social history. It is also a great love story. Highly recommended.

It has been filmed countless times,  the most notable adaptations being the 1921 Camille starring Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino, the 1936 Camille starring Greta Garbo and the 1969 Camille 2000.

Perley Poore Sheehan’s Woman of the Pyramid

Perley Poore Sheehan’s novel Woman of the Pyramid was published in The All-Story pulp magazine in 1914.

Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798 had first sparked western interest in ancient Egypt and by 1914 Egyptology had become quite a craze. This novel was therefore very topical.

In the days before the First World War a young American named George Carlton is a bit of a scientific dilettante. He’s trained in psychology and psychiatry but his real interest lies in the occult and in what would later come to be known as the paranormal. He’s very interested in ghosts.

As an aside, at that time such interests still had at least a degree of scientific respectability and plausibility.

Carlton is in love with a pretty English girl named Alice Wentworth. Wedding bells would seem to be in the offing. In the meantime Carlton, Alice and her aunt are off to Egypt. Carlton already has a very keen interest in ancient Egypt.

Carlton is a little disturbed by the mysterious woman he keeps seeing. No-one else seems to be able to see her. He suspects that she’s a ghost of some sort. He also suspects that she’s connected to ancient Egypt in some ways. He thinks of her as the Woman of the Pyramid.

He becomes a little obsessed. He enters the famous Red Pyramid (the third largest of the pyramids) and there he encounters the Woman of the Pyramid again. It’s a fateful meeting. Carlton finds himself back in the distant past. The Woman of the Pyramid is the queen, Netokris, recently widowed. And Carton is no longer Carlton. He is now Menni, an important man, governor of the royal palace in fact. It seems that the queen sees him as a potential husband.

Menni isn’t interested. He’s in love with slave girl Berenice, who is in fact Alice Wentworth. Netokris is a woman who doesn’t take no for an answer. She’s ruthless, cruel and inclined to act on whims. She decides that Berenice is a rival whose existence cannot be tolerated.

There are various palace conspiracies afoot and while Carlton/Menni doesn’t want to get mixed up in them it might be the only way to save Berenice/Alice, and his own skin.

A possible ally is the priest and sorcerer Baknik. Baknik has various occult powers including the power to foretell the future. The future he predicts for Carlton/Menni and Berenice/Alice is a case of good news and bad news. His predictions of the queen’s future are not entirely hopeful either. All of the characters feel themselves to be the playthings of Fate.

This might at first seem to be a time travel story but it’s more of a past lives story. The question is the extent to which events in one life will affect their next life.

It’s also very much a love story.

Most of the story takes place in ancient Egypt but the final quarter of the book brings Carlton back to the 20th century, where the same three people seem destined to replay the events of the past. The past lives thing is done quite well here with the past lives and present lives intersecting neatly.

I don’t think Sheehan was overly obsessed with historical accuracy but the background is at least vaguely historical. Netokris probably existed and may possibly have been responsible for building the Red Pyramid. Some plot points are lifted from the account of her reign by Herodotus.

If the past lives thing appeals to you and you have any kind of interest in ancient Egypt and you happen to enjoy pulp adventure/romance then this novel will tick all your boxes. I enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

Woman of the Pyramid has reprinted in a paperback omnibus edition (including three other stories by the same author) by Steeger Books in their excellent Argosy Library series.

I've also reviewed another of Sheehan's novels, The Red Road to Shamballah. It's pretty good also.

Florence Stonebraker’s Three Men and a Mistress

Florence Stonebraker’s Three Men and a Mistress is a sleaze novel published in 1950, but you have to remember that a sleaze novel of 1950 is very different from a sleaze novel of 1960. Early 50s sleaze novels were very tame indeed. Many were were basically steamy romances.

Florence Stonebraker (1896-1977) was a prolific American writer of both straightforward romance fiction and sleaze fiction. Her sleaze novels were romances that added hints of sleaziness and a lot of melodrama and accepted that sex was a part of romance. That was enough to make a book like Three Men and a Mistress scandalous in 1950.

Sue Harris was brought up in the very staid very respectable very stuffy little town of Bradmont. She was about to jump into bed with her boy friend Frankie Stolter when her father walked in. He accused Sue of being a slut and threw her out of the house. What rankled for Sue was the she never had the chance of actually doing anything. She was labelled a tramp when in fact she was still a virgin.

Sue decided she had had enough of her father and enough of Bradmont. She headed for the big city. For a while she really was a tramp, until she met millionaire Texan Luke Wilson. She is now Luke’s mistress but they have settled down into cosy domesticity and Sue is entirely faithful to him.

Five years later she returns to her home town when she is told that her father is broke. She wants to help him out financially, not out of love but out of revenge. She loves the idea that her father will have to accept financial help from his now very rich tramp daughter.

Sue decides to celebrate her return home by looking up Frankie Stolter. She wants to find out if she still has the hots for him. She discovers that she no longer feels anything at all for him. She is also reunited with her sister Retta. The two sisters have always hate one another and that hatred has grown even more intense. Retta is outwardly respectable but she is a liar and a hypocrite.

Then comes Sue’s fateful meeting with aspiring actor Dick Durant. He is shallow, vain, selfish, stupid and vicious but terribly good looking and she falls head over heels in lust, and in love, with him. Sue’s stable happy world is about to become a messy nightmare. Especially when the action moves to California (where Dick is aiming for stardom in Hollywood).

As is the case with other early 50s sleaze novels there is plenty of sex happening between the characters but it all takes place offstage as it were. On the other hand sex is certainly a major motivating force for the various characters.

It’s not the only motivation. Retta is driven by spite and jealousy. Dick Durant is driven by lust, but much more strongly by selfishness and ambition. Luke was initially drawn to Sue by sex but he has fallen genuinely in love with her.

Sue’s motivations are complicated. Sex plays a part but she’s also driven by a sense of restlessness, a certain amount of self-doubt and to a considerable degree by unrealistic expectations. There’s a definite streak of self-destructiveness as well.

What really made books like this scandalous was that they didn’t necessarily demonise women like Sue. Sue is not demonised at all. She thinks of herself as a bad girl but she isn’t really. She has some growing up to do. Her judgment as far as men are concerned could use some improvement. Most all she needs to figure out what she really wants from a man, and she needs to realise that she is entitled to happiness.

She does evolve as the story progresses, shedding a few illusions and learning more about herself. The question is whether she can learn enough in time to avert disaster.

This is romantic melodrama but with at least some emotional complexity.

The reader will find Sue exasperating at times but it’s impossible to dislike her. She makes mistakes because she’s human, and because people do allow sex to cloud their judgment.

This book doesn’t have much of an axe to grind. It does take a few swipes at small-town hypocrisy and at Hollywood shallowness but for the most part it’s blessedly free of heavy-handed social commentary or moralising. The total lack of moralising is particularly welcome.

On the whole Three Men and a Mistress is an enjoyable read if you enjoy romantic melodrama. Recommended.

Armchair Fiction have reprinted this novel in paperback in their Scandalous Classics series.

I’ve also reviewed Stonebraker’s excellent Reno Tramp as well as Flesh Is Weak (which is also pretty good).

Joan Ellis’s Don’t Tell Anyone

Joan Ellis’s Don’t Tell Anyone was published by Midwood Books in 1966.

Later in life Julie Ellis (1919-2006) had a successful career as a writer of suspense, historical and romance fiction but she had an earlier literary career as a writer of pulp sleaze fiction. She was one of the more notable writers in the lesbian sleaze fiction sub-genre although she wrote non-lesbian erotica as well. She wrote in total about 150 novels under her own name and various pseudonyms, including Joan Ellis. Unlike many of the popular writers of lesbian pulp fiction in real life she was apparently entirely heterosexual.

Sleaze fiction took off in a big way in the United States in the wake of the paperback revolution. It is impossible to calculate just how many sleaze fiction titles were published but it was by no means unknown for a single writer to produce more than a hundred such novels. The golden age of American sleaze fiction lasted from the end of the Second World War to the 1970s. Lesbian sleaze fiction was one of the more prolific sub-genres for the obvious reason that it was extremely popular among both lesbian and heterosexual male readers.

There are however no lesbians to be found in the pages of Don’t Tell Anyone. Just man-hungry women.

Adele Conroy is eighteen, or at least she’s nearly eighteen. Her parents have just divorced and she’s a bit conflicted about that. She blames her mother Rita for not being able to hold her man but she also blames her father for chasing anything young in a skirt. Adele has a boyfriend, Skip. He’s one of the hunkiest boys at school. That’s a good thing in itself but it also brings her status, and that’s a very good thing from the point of view of a teenaged girl. Adele and Skip have fooled around in pretty steamy ways but she hasn’t actually slept with yet. That’s about to change. Adele is pretty happy with her decision to go all the way with Skip. Now she will really be a woman.

Of course she is aware that while Skip is good-looking he’s just a boy. Unlike Tom Whitby. He’s a man. He’s a mature man. He must be at least twenty-three. Making it with a boy like Skip is fun, but maybe making it with a man would be even better. There’s also the new neighbour, Roger Hennessey. And he doesn’t treat her like a child.

What worries her about Tom Whitby is that her mother seems to go for him as well, and Tom seems pretty interested in Rita. Rita Conroy is only thirty-six and she’s still beautiful so it’s understandable that she still has a hunger for men. Adele understands that. Adele has a burning hunger for men. And after sleeping with Skip that hunger intensifies. So why can’t Tom Whitby see that Adele is a woman as well? Adele thinks that maybe she can attract Tom’s attention, and she knows that in a tight sweater her bust measurement of 38-D can usually be relied on to attract masculine attention.

Adele would also like Roger Hennessey to treat her like a woman. And when Adele sets her sights on a man she’s an unstoppable force of nature. Adele craves love but for Adele that means physical love. She doesn’t really understand that there’s any other kind of love.

What follows is a great deal of romantic and sexual melodrama, with a definite “sex, sin and scandal in small-town America” thing going on as well. This is very obviously a novel written by a woman. It’s basically steamy romance, but with the romance being overshadowed by pure lust. Adele has only the vaguest of plans for a long-term future with the men she pursues. She concentrates on the vital short-term objective, getting them into bed.

The sleaze fiction of this era varied considerable in terms of just how graphic the sexual encounters are. Some, such as Robert Silverberg’s 1959 Gang Girl, are quite graphic. Some are very coy. Some, like Sin Hellcat, fall halfway between these extremes. Don’t Tell Anyone belongs at the coy end of the spectrum. They’re often the most entertaining because the writers really have to pull out all the stops to create an atmosphere of sexual intoxication but without describing the sex in any detail. Ellis does this pretty well. The sex scenes manage to be hot and sweaty while stopping short of any description of sex whatsoever, apart from caressing of Adele’s swelling breasts (and there’s a lot of that). It’s what’s going on in Adele’s man-crazy brain that is hot and sweaty. Very hot and sweaty.

It’s interesting to speculate on exactly how much of a female readership these sleaze novels had (apart from the popularity of lesbian sleaze with lesbians). A lot of these sleaze fiction titles read more like women’s erotica than porn for men. Most are very female-centric.

Some, but not all, of these sleaze novels have overtones of noir fiction. This one does not.

It’s also interesting that the various sleaze fiction publishers tended to have distinct style when it came to the cover art. Midwood’s titles had the best cover art - sexy but with a bit of style and class.

I’d be inclined to classify Don’t Tell Anyone as a combination of romance fiction and women’s erotica. If you’re a male fan of vintage sleaze you might still enjoy its deliciously overheated quality. If you’re a female fan of vintage sleaze you’ll possibly enjoy it a great deal. Which returns us to my earlier speculations about the readership of such novels. How many readers of this type of fiction were female? And how many modern fans of vintage sleaze are women? I have no idea of the answer to the first question but I'm guessing that the answer to the second is, quite a few. Literary erotica does seem to be largely a female taste.

Don’t Tell Anyone is a good example of its type. If you like sleazy romance, or romantic sleaze, it's highly recommended.

Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek

My interest in Daphne du Maurier’s books was initially aroused by the fact that they provide the source material for three of my favourite films - Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973). I was reasonably impressed by du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, but not so impressed by the short stories that inspired the other two films.

Daphne du Maurier has been described as a writer of gothic romances (and Rebecca most certainly fits into that category) and after reading Xavier’s spirited defence of this genre at his At the Villa Rose blog I felt I should give du Maurier another try. The book I selected is one of her most famous, Frenchman’s Creek, published in 1941.

It turns out that Frenchman’s Creek is not really a gothic romance after all. It’s certainly a romance but it’s probably best described as a swashbuckling romance novel. The story of an English noblewoman’s passionate affair with a dashing French pirate is one that is clearly likely to tick all the romance novel boxes.

The heroine is Dona, Lady St Colomb, and she has grown weary of the high life in London. She retreats, alone, to her husband’s neglected estate in Cornwall. She soon discovers that there is a creek running through the property and that creek is being used as an anchorage by a notorious French pirate who has been raiding the properties of the rich landowners of the region. Dona is a woman who suffers a great deal from boredom and the presence of a pirate ship almost in her own back yard at least promises to make life slightly less tedious. Then she hears that there are rumours that the pirates have not only been committing robberies, they have been ravishing the local women as well. Now Dona is really interested. In fact she’s more than a little excited.

This French buccaneer is not your typical pirate. He is well-bred and well-educated, a man of culture, and even a bit of a philosopher. He is a gentleman, well apart from the ravishing women thing (and Dona is inclined to see that as a feature rather than a bug). In fact he’s the kind of pirate pretty much guaranteed to set feminine hearts aflutter. He certainly gets Dona’s blood racing. I’m not sure if it gets her bosoms heaving but it certainly seems possible.

Of course Dona persuades her handsome pirate to take her to sea with him on his next voyage. And she will get drawn into a world of adventure and forbidden love.

The plot may sound absurd and overheated. It is overheated, but perhaps not entirely absurd when you consider the background to the novel. This is the England of Charles II, an age in which sexual licentiousness was more or less taken for granted among the hangers-on at Court. It is established that Dona and her husband are very much a part of a very dissipated social set. It is also established right from the start that Dona already has a scandalous reputation and, not to put too fine a point on it, she is generally regarded as being little better than a whore. She doesn’t have to worry about endangering her reputation. Her reputation is well and truly in tatters already. Taking a notorious pirate to her bed is just the sort of escapade that might appeal to such a woman, and would certainly amuse her friends.

The focus of the story is very much on the romance angle. Of course criticising a romance novel for being romantic is a bit like criticising a thriller for being thrilling. There’s an extraordinary amount of sexual innuendo, much of it clever and amusing.

Daphne du Maurier was immensely popular in her day although not highly regarded by critics. Her critical reputation has grown since and is, perhaps, a little overblown. Frenchman’s Creek is a bodice-ripper. It’s well-written and with some literary pretensions but even if it’s a slightly literary bodice-ripper it’s still a bodice-ripper. I honestly don’t have a problem with that. Being a good writer of genre fiction well is just as challenging as being a good writer of so-called literary fiction, the main difference being that genre writes write books the people want to read while writers of literary fiction write books that people feel they should want to read.

This is the sort of book that critics would have been inclined to dismiss not just because it’s clearly genre fiction but because it’s aimed squarely at a female readership. Which is unjust. There are genres that men like and there are genres that women like. Critics tended to despise them all, but they especially despised the books women like. These days critics are more likely to take the opposite tack. It’s all equally unreasonable. Genre fiction requires its practitioners to understand their target audience and give them what they want. I don’t have a problem with that. Daphne du Maurier understood her audience and gave them what they wanted, with style and skill.

Assuming that the purpose of this book is to generate an atmosphere of romantic and sexual excitement in its female readers I’d say it succeeds admirably. The author builds up the sexual tension with considerable skill. We have to wait a long time for Dona and her pirate to have sex so that when they do (there are of course no graphic descriptions of sex but du Maurier makes it absolutely crystal clear that Dona isn’t naked with her pirate because it’s getting stuffy in her cabin) it has the desired impact.

The pirate is a totally unbelievable hero. He’s perfect in every way, the ideal combination of masculinity and sensitivity, the ultimate female wish fulfilment fantasy. But hey, it’s a romance novel. We have to believe that Dona is so hot for this guy that she’ll risk everything.

Dona on the other hand is an interesting heroine. She’s not quite as immoral as her reputation suggests but she’s still pretty damn immoral. She finds some rationalisations for her behaviour but clearly she’s quite happy to abandon every responsibility in order to gain romantic fulfilment and it’s also clear that for Dona romantic fulfilment means sexual fulfilment. Her pirate fills her with the kind of lust she could never feel for her husband.

So is this a book that male readers will enjoy? Probably not. There’s not quite enough action, although there is some. And while du Maurier isn’t at her best in the action scenes they’re OK and she is very very good at suspense. On the whole though, even with the adventure element, this is still basically a bodice ripper. As a heterosexual male I’m probably not the best person to judge it on those terms but even I’d have to admit that it is wildly romantic. And it is clever and witty. You’ll have to decide for yourself on this one.