Cotillion, by Georgette Heyer

[rowyn]

archangelbeth and ursulav recommended Georgette Heyer to haikujaguar as a good romance novelist, naming Cotillion in particular. I have a vague recollection of reading a Heyer novel in my teens and not caring for it, but with nothing more than that to go on I figured I'd check this one out.

Cotillion is a marvelous book: a delightful Regency-era comedy. As a romance novel, it's mostly a failure for me, by which I mean in no way to diminish its charm as a story. For me, a good romance develops the emotional connection and relationship between the protagonists. It should dwell in detail on the characters' feelings for one another, their hopes and desires. Cotillion doesn't do enough of this sort of thing to suit my tastes in romance.

This aside, I certainly recommend the work. The characters are well-drawn and well-rounded. They are likeable, if not always loveable, and the various non-romantic relationships -- friendships, relatives, and so forth -- are wonderful to behold. It reminds me of Austen in that the comic elements are stronger than the romance, which I've usually found the case in Austen as well. It is also like Austen in that it subverts certain romance tropes even while it adheres to others. It further helps in my case that it's subverting some tropes that I can't abide.

Unlike Austen, Cotillion is full of nobility and the London scene, subjects which Austen rarely touched upon. There's a fair chunk of Regency jargon in Cotillion that I didn't really know, which has the curious effect of making a historical novel written in 1954 feel more dated than Austen's early 19th century work does. I feel like I ought to read more romance novels that were written during the era so I can get a feel for whether or not the jargon is something common to other writers of the period and just not used by Austen's country gentry. In any case, I give this book a 9.

Comments

[archangelbeth]

AH-HA! ...I suspect that if you go into Heyer -- at least, all of the half-dozen books I've read -- with the expectation of details about the character's feelings, it's going to fall flat. Heyer is very inclined towards show-don't-tell in that regard, or even, "Imply, don't tell." The entire emotional reaction of the people to one another tends to be explore more in how they behave around each other.

I could be wrong, but you may want to approach them more as likely to be story (often, at least in the ones I pick, with a bit of comedy) with Implied Romance.

(I have, regarding jargon, also heard that while Heyer did a goodly amount of research into the slang of the time -- she also made up some stuff as a "gotcha" for people who did their "research" in the form of copying her stuff. >_> Rumor hath it and all that, so take that with a grain of salt.)

Anyway! I am glad you enjoyed it!