Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Chapter 13: Happy Birthday, Catherine!

Catherine’s birthday begins on page 161 and before the next ten pages are up becomes a bone of contention between our two protagonists, who can’t seem to leave bickering aside and fall in love already.  This chapter is one of the book’s weakest.

The chapter’s high points:

1.  The O’Sullivan Brothers bond over a heated game of racquetball (Daniel sees Sean as a “two-bit amateur”!  What a cutely Cagneyian expression!).

2.  Daniel realizes that he’s slept with his new love on his dead wife’s birthday (oops).

3.  Brianna Taylor Kelley, “of the Seventy-first Street Kelleys” (granted I didn’t grow up anywhere near the elbow-rubbing range of the NYC social elite, but do people anywhere really talk like this?), is first mentioned: this is the selfsame Brianna Taylor Kelley whose initials adorned the ring found in the

O’Sullivan boys’ bar’s wall back in Chapter 6, and whom we’ll meet in person in the next chapter.

4.  Page 161 brings further bouts of soi-disant hoo-haw busting sex!

And then on page 162 the birthday-themed game-playing commences when Catherine’s moms inadvertently reveals the special date to Daniel, from whom Catherine had heretofore hidden the occasion, thinking he’s only in it for the sex.  “I didn’t know today was your birthday.  Happy birthday.”

Catherine recovers over a two-martini lunch at Lever House!  A quick internet search tells me that this Park Avenue eatery’s lunch menu currently features a 22-dollar hamburger with “hand cut french fries, gootessa cheddar, or maytag-burrata.” I’m a cheese fan, sure, but...huh?  They also offer pork cheeks, “braised.” Hee hee!  I’m showing my rustic roots again, aren’t I?  (Incidentally, the trancelike and slinky aquatic sounds of the Lever House website’s theme music are going to be in my head for the next few hours...)

Random fact: the Maytag Dairy Farms, presumably makers of the maytag-burrata cheese adorning Lever’s selection above, were founded by the grandson of appliance maker Frederick L. Maytag.  Whoda thunk it?

Anyway, back to our story…

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t want you to think I’m, you know, expecting something from you because I’m trying very hard not to...A birthday’s a huge thing for me, and I’d rather you not know about it, because if you knew, then you’d think you have to make a big deal out of it, because I expect a big deal, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to.”

Ooooooooookay...so I guess it’s time to shut things down, now that Daniel’s finally started to show signs that he’s growing comfortable with the relationship?
Chapter 14: The stately town houses of Central Park

It’s going pretty well between Catherine and Daniel, and for several chapters it began to look as though the path from where they stood to everlasting bliss was uncluttered and clear.

Then came Brianna Taylor Kelley and her eye-popping classical décor (including a real Gainsborough).  It appears that long ago Ms. Kelley’s husband of one year, a firefighter, died in an explosion while on duty, inexplicably embedding the ring in the wall of the bar.  At this point things go south quickly for Catherine.

“You didn’t remarry, did you?” Daniel asks Ms. Kelley.

“No.  Everyone wants to replace things, replace people, but this house is filled with irreplaceable things, and Samuel was irreplaceable, too.”

Well, shit.

We learn in the next few pages that Daniel’s only trying to let Catherine down gently, knowing full well that sparks will fly between the two of them when it comes out that he and Catherine can find absolutely no evidence showing Charles “Don’t Call Me Chuckie” Montefiore is not guilty of collusion.  Of course, this doesn’t stop them from having YET MORE SEX.

This chapter closes at the Montefiore Auction House offices, where Catherine and Daniel get an F in “ferreting” as they fail to find even a scrap of evidence that might exonerate Grandpa, but an A in “exhibitionism” as their affair is discovered by house skulker and nogoodnik Foster Sykes.  Foreshadowing?  Naaaah…

One final note: Kathleen O’Reilly atones for her sinful “hoo-haw” and endears herself to me eternally in her use of the word “schlub.”
Chapter 15: Busted, squared!  [Warning: spoiler alerts!]

This short chapter’s packed full of action as the various plot lines begin to converge.

So, Daniel’s been pulled from the audit for “having an affair with someone closely connected to the client.” Worse yet, Daniel’s higher-ups are moving forward with his report, a scathing indictment of Charles “Auctionmeister” Montefiore.

In the time-honored tradition of adding insult to injury, Daniel dumps Catherine: “I thought I could have a relationship, but I can’t.  I’ve loved the time we’ve had, and there’s absolutely no other woman that I would want to be with other than you, but this limbo isn’t fair to you, and I don’t think I can move past it.”

Well, hell.

The chapter’s ending passage includes another sly return to the Forgery motif: “With a flourish, Catherine slung her faux Prada bag over her shoulder and heard the seams rip even farther apart.  Because at the most personal levels there were some things that just couldn’t be faked no matter what.” Not bad, Ms. O’Reilly!
Chapter 16: Tennessee Williams called, he wants his scene back [Oh, and more spoiler alerts...]

Drunk as hell and baited by his brothers (“transitional babe”?), Daniel leaves their Wednesday night poker game to do his best Stanley Kowalski impression.  “Can you get me in the building?” he asks Catherine.  “I need to get inside there.”

The clouds now part, revealing rainbows and fairy puppies and angels that poop chocolate and gumdrops.

First, after a cursory survey of the auction house’s phone logs, Daniel digs up the evidence he needs to exculpate Charles Montefiore and at the same time incriminate the company’s IT director.

Then, with the help of his loving mother-in-law, Daniel finally finally finally finally finally gets it through his thick skull: “Don’t wait too long, Daniel.  I was married to my Bernard for forty-three years, and I wouldn’t get married again because I was too old, too set in my ways.  You’re set in your ways, but you’re not too old, Daniel....Bring me the grandkids, and I’ll be happy.” No pressure, Daniel.

Finally, Daniel asks Catherine over to his apartment for the first time so that he can bare all, dumping his heart, soul, and everything else sloppily at her feet in a bucketful of emotional goo.  What ensues is a well-written, entirely believable, and genuinely heartwarming dialogue in which Daniel begs Catherine to give him a chance, which she does.

Three pages later (and on the morning after 9/11, no less!) Daniel asks Catherine to marry him for the first of what will be 104 times (according to the book’s one-page Epilogue).

And it’s Happily...Ever...After.

Whew.
My overall impression?

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to the SBTB regulars that I most definitely came to this book with various preconceived notions.  Mea culpa.  “Low-grade bodice-ripper” comments aside, I’m sure I undertook this reading assignment with expectations of purple prose and tenuous plot twists that served only to tie together various sex scenes that would ensue between the book’s protagonists.

I have to be honest that the first several chapters did little to sway me from these views; I felt the writing was overwrought and the characters a bit over-the-top.  Much of the dialogue and description was simply silly (viz. “man-man,” “velvety hardness,” and “hoo-haw”), and the characters’ slowly-building relationship was limned in two scanty dimensions.

Chapter 11 was where things started to pick up for me.  O’Reilly’s writing grew more zestful as the Forgery motif made itself known in the back of the Chinatown shop where Catherine and her friends had been trapped.  As the characters became more real and more well-rounded, I had more sympathy for them, and more sympathy for their plight.  I’m sure this newfound sympathy was evident in my slackened snark.  The last sixty pages or so I read all at once, genuinely interested in the novel’s conclusion.

Ultimately, I was satisfied.  As I’ve said before, Kathleen O’Reilly shows herself to be a solid and engaging writer: if she can get me to turn a few dozen of her pages without a pause, she’s got something going.  While her style is not my cup of tea, it’s admittedly effective.

So, is category romance for me?  I don’t think so, but I’m glad to have had a chance to learn a bit more about it.  Nevertheless, I have to admit that I’m looking forward to my next reading assignment.

Please let me say that I am grateful for the overwhelmingly positive feedback I’ve received from the SBTB readers (and humbly chastened by the constructive criticism), and I’d like to give my sincerest thanks to Sarah for the opportunity to post my reviews on her blog.  I hope you will all continue to follow my breakdown of Georgette Heyer’s classic, An Infamous Army, which is likely to cleave more closely to my own reading tastes.

Chapter 9.  Le déjeuner sur l’herbe

We continue on a jaunty country outing with several of our story’s principles.  Charles having been spirited away by his military duties, he entrusts Lady Barbara to his family in order that her going abroad with M. le Comte de Lavisse will not be misinterpreted by the prying public.  And so to a charming Château near Merbe Braine on the Nivelles Road go Bab, Lady Judith, Peregrine Taverner and his Harriet, the Count, and all of their assorted footmen and retainers.  What a way to go!

A hint of foreshadowing frames their merrymaking, as en route to their destination the party passes a small village named (dum dum DUUUUM!) Waterloo.

Oh, yeah, and Harriet’s miffed that should she permit him to do so Peregrine would gallop off after the ever-enchanting Bab.

Chapter 10.  This book’s got more rakes than Home Depot’s lawn and garden section

When Lord George Alastair, Bab’s older brother, makes landfall in Belgium, his first stop is at his family’s home on the Rue Ducale.  Finding his younger sister is out, he hunts her down at the Worth’s where yet another ball is taking place.  He doesn’t make it past the foyer before setting his sights on that vision of unassuming loveliness, Lucy Devenish.

It would seem that George and Lucy had met before in Britain:

“It was a little more than that.  I became acquainted with him when I was staying in Brighton with my cousins last year.  There was a degree of intimacy which—which I could not avoid.” Her voice failed.  Judith suspected that the attentions of a dashing young officer had not been wholly unwelcome.  She had not doubt that Lord George has speedily overstepped the bounds of propriety, and understood, with ready sympathy, Lucy’s feelings upon being confronted with him again.  (p. 165)

What, he saw her wrists?!?  Oh noes!

All joking aside, our Lucy’s finding herself in quite the pretty pickle.

Chapter 11.  Blücher!

I can’t be the only one who thinks of Young Frankenstein on mention of the Prussian General.

One of the commenters on Judge a Book By Its Cover found it hard to keep track of all of the names being bandied about.  You ain’t kiddin’, sister!  Chapter 11, in which we’re subjected to yet more war preparations and—quelle surprise!—a ball! piles on more names than the Book of Genesis.

But if you’re a fan of eye-gougingly, hair-pullingly punctilious (and doubtless historically accurate) description of military dress, this chapter’s for you.  Ms. Heyer could outfit a member of the Brunswick Light Dragoons with her eyes closed.

Most amusing-when-taken-out-of-context line (a.k.a., Vietnamese cuisine only goes so far): “Pho!  A precious lot of comfort we shall have when we go into action!”

Chapter 12.  More o’ the same

We begin with twelve straight pages of military movements, army massings, and other assorted martial goings-on.  The whole narrative is tied together with the Duke’s everlasting exasperated ejaculations: “I have got an infamous army, very weak, and ill-equipped, and a very inexperienced staff,” and “Matters look a little serious on the frontier.”

For once Bab says something agreeable: “I can’t think.  I’m bored to tears, Charles!...I am tired of your duty, Charles.  It is so tedious!” As Charles can’t bring himself to forgo an appearance at a cavalry party at Lord Uxbridge’s, he begs that Bab take Peregrine Taverner as her escort to a quiet suburban boîte in his stead.  Oh, how the tongues will wag!

Meanwhile, the roué Lord George Alastair presses his case with Lucy Devenish, “that chit whose name I never can remember.”

Chapter 13.  Girls just wanna have fun

Despite Charles’s assertion that married life will not prove an impediment to Lady Barbara’s helter-skelter social life, she’s out to get in all the fun she can before being burdened by the marital yoke.  She fulfills her suburban assignation with Perry Taverner, and oh how the sparks do fly!

Harriet Taverner, having suspected Bab of trying to lure her hubby away since the picnic in Chapter 9, is piiiiiiissed.  There are several pagefuls of back-and-forth and he-said-she-said, all amounting to little more than a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.  Things come to a head at the chapter’s close when Harriet publicly snubs Bab, and suddenly the suburban affair (which even Lady Judith Worth takes to “signify nothing”) is poised to become the stuff of Belgian backroom legend.

Oh, and Lord George Alastair is still a rake.

---

Uncle, uncle!  Tell me, Smart Bitches, what have I done to deserve this?  Is this the punishment I earned with my unfortunate “bodice-ripper” comments from so long ago?

O’Reilly’s Sex, Straight Up wasn’t much to my taste, and it was often silly, but it was therefore fun.  This?  This is just dull.  She’s more concerned with troop movements and hussars’ fringes and frogging than with putting together a plot more complicated than “oh yeah, Bab’s flirting causes chaos.” There’s not even all that much to snark.

Why couldn’t you have offered me one of Heyer’s more Wodehousian titles to read?

My next assignment had better be more...well, more something.  I’m dyin’ over here!

---

Poor DocTurtle. He needs some hussar fringe. And we’ll have to pick a third novel for him to read, don’t you think?

Chapter 14.  Ha!

The Ladies Barbara Childe and Harriet Taverner are at war.  After Harriet’s public snubbing of Bab in the previous chapter, the two have another encounter at a party thrown by the Duchess of Richmond.  Harriet remarks slyly to her husband on Bab’s outfit: “Perry, let me remove into the salon: I find this place a little too hot for me.”

Unperturbed, Peregrine replies, densely: “In a minute!  I must say how do you do to Lady Bab first.” “Dude, you’re an idiot,” read my marginalia at this point, as Peregrine and Harriet part company for a bit.  A page later I’ve scribbled “understatement of the century” as Heyer remarks that Perry Taverner is “never remarkable for his perception.”

A page later Judith Worth is consoling and counseling a heartbroken Harriet; Harriet declares “I hope I never set eyes on either of them again, and if Perry means to dine at home I shall lock myself in my room, and go home to Mama!”

“You might if you were silly enough, perform one of those actions,” says Judith reasonably, “but I do not see how you can accomplish both.” Delightful!

Unfazed by his wife’s state of utter discombobulation, Perry does not in fact dine at home but after a brief stop to change clothes, total idiot that he is, he’s off to dine with Bab.  It will fall (in Chapter 15) on Charles Audley himself to smack some sense into Peregrine’s thick skull, but not before he and a few fellow staff officers take time off to mock a young colleague’s braggadocio.

This chapter’s wry, sly, and authentically funny in the respectfully derisive manner of Wilde or Wodehouse, Trollope, or Austen.  Good stuff!

Chapter 15.  Sweet sorrow

For an encore, Heyer produces a gallery of rich character portraits: Perry is shown as a little whipped pup, Barbara as a fearful widow who clings tightly to the freedoms her widowhood affords her, and Charles as a stoical love-smitten soldier who struggles to hold his composure while his true love slips away.

Charles gets the truth from Judith before calling on the Taverners.  To Harriet: “I am going to have a talk with him, and I think you will find him only too ready to take you home.” Shortly thereafter he drops in on Peregrine and dresses him down.

“I am aware how my conduct must strike you,” Peregrine stiff-upper-lips.  Honor must be served: “if you want satisfaction, of course I am ready to meet you.” Charles is delightfully remonstrative: “Don’t talk to me in that nonsensical fashion!  Do you imagine that you’re a rival of mine?...You are merely an unconditioned cub in need of kicking, and the only satisfaction I could enjoy would be to have you under me for just one month!”

Oh, snap!

Two and a half pages later, Peregrine begins his plans to take his family back to Britain, and Charles returns to the Worths’ for a night of moody introspection.

The next evening finds him at a ball at Sir Charles Stuart’s.  Things begin reasonably amicably, but as Bab and Charles share their first waltz on the dance floor, he tells her how he sent Perry packing.  “I am charged with a message from Peregrine,” he tells her, “his apologies for not being able to take his leave of you in person.”

“It is your doing, in fact!  Insufferable!  My God, I could hit you!”

The two hasten to an empty adjoining parlor and commence the novel’s most passionate intercourse yet.  Ever fearful of boredom, Bab banishes banality by living life out loud and worries that a new marriage will steal that life away from her as her first marriage did.  Meanwhile Charles’s investment of emotion has crashed at his feet, cut to the quick by the woman he’s loved since his first sight of her.

Ouch.  Life goes on, somehow.  Life goes on.

Chapter 16.  Separation and strife

As a dark storm of battle looms, the Prussian officers arrive to conference with their Anglo-Allied counterparts.  But as yet the action is still primarily of the emotional sort. Charles now throws himself back into his duties while Barbara runs back to M. le Comte, as Colonel Fremantle calls him, “that Belgian fellow—what’s his name?  Bylandt’s brigade: all teeth and eyes and black whiskers.”

Harry Alastair takes his older sister to task:

“The nicest fellow that was ever in love with you, and you jilt him for a damned frog!”

“If you mean Lavisse, he is a Belgian, and not a Frenchman, and I did not jilt Charles Audley.  He was perfectly ready to let me go, you know,” replied Barbara candidly.  (p. 277)

Will the coming war tear them apart once and for all?

Chapter 17.  The storm breaks

It is the evening of June 15th, 1815.  At last Bonaparte has crossed into Belgium.  While the Duke had expected him to come from the west through the region of Mons, Boney has striven to split the Duke’s army and Blücher’s by coming in by Charleroi and points east.  The advance has taken the army somewhat by surprise, word coming of Napoleon’s attacks as half of Brussels is engaged at a ball at the Duchess of Richmond’s house.

The Duke retains his composure and dispatches order after order to his generals before making an appearance at the ball, where the oncoming battle is the talk of the town (that and Lady Barbara’s couture: “who but Bab Childe would have the audacity to wear a gown like a bridal robe at a ball?”).  The air is purely martial, and the assembled nobles are entertained by a demonstration by the 42nd Royal Highlanders and the 92nd Foot soldiery, whose pomp and circumstance steels the resolve of all.

All save Barbara, perhaps.  Her cool is no longer cool:

“He is in Brussels?  Yes, yes, he is still in Brussels!  Tell me, confound you, tell me!”

There was a white agony in her face, but Judith was unmoved by it.  She said: “He is not in Brussels, nor will he return.  I wish you goodnight, Lady Barbara.” (p. 300)

Suddenly this is a much more interesting book.  How long will that last?

Chapter 18.  Making up is hard to do

June 16th now.  In an interesting turn of events, Bab finds herself alone at home, the Vidals having left for England.  She calls on Lord and Lady Worth, hoping the former might stable her horses to ensue they don’t get stolen in others’ mad rush to leave the city.  “It will not do,” Worth tells Bab, “If you mean to remain in Brussels, you must stay here.”

And so Bab moves in, and at once she and Judith settle the old scores standing between them.  As Judith scolds Barbara for her horrid behavior, Bab admits her ill treatment of Charles: “Everything of the most damnable on my part!” On the even of a conflict larger than their own, Judith and Barbara begin to make up.

Meanwhile the thunder of cannon can be heard in the south.  In fits and starts further word of battle reaches the anxious town.  Worth reports what he’s heard at their friend Creevey’s: “Young Hay has gone, too; but I heard of no one else whom we know.” At once Barbara is terrified for her brother Harry’s sake, as Harry was on staff with Hay’s colleague Maitland.  There’s little word of Charles.

It was at this point that I realized that this book could be the basis for a wonderful tragic opera.

Chapter 19.  Sisters of mercy

That evening passes quickly, and June 17th dawns on a scene of chaos: yet more citizens are fleeing, and those that remain brace for the arrival of the war’s first wounded.  Once the casualties begin to come, Bab and Judith find themselves up to their elbows in blood and gauze and broken bones.  They bond closely over their humanitarian efforts, and by the end of the chapter Judith brings herself to defend Bab while getting in a subtle dig on her erstwhile favorite Lucy Devenish (who had recoiled at the thought of helping the wounded):

Mr Fisher said: “Well, I am sure you are a pair of heroines, no less!  But I wonder his lordship would permit it, I do indeed! A lady’s delicate sensibilities—”

“This is not a time for thinking of one’s sensibilities,” Judith interrupted.  “But will you not be seated?  I am glad to see you have not fled the town, like some of our compatriots.”

But is there more between Charles and Lucy than we’re yet to know?  Lucy hints as much after asking of Charles: “You must wonder at my asking you, but there are circumstances which—”

Hmmmm…

I apologize to fans of my snark that there’s been precious little of it in this particular post.  It’s just that, well, the book is suddenly pretty good: wry humor, good characterization, and real action combine to make the book a lot better than it was as recently as...oh...twenty pages back.  Maybe it’ll change, we’ll see.