Mary Balogh: First Comes Marriage

My sister has a thing for Regency romances. It's a guilty pleasure, and I think it was with some hesitation that she agreed to lend me a book from her collection - it's never fun to have somebody thrash something that you yourself know isn't terribly good but that you like anyway (I feel this way about Marian Keyes or Jean M. Auel to name but a few). However, she's a smart lass and knew what was coming. And I have to say that I can see the appeal of novels like this, but myself I don't think I can stomach more than one (I might check out one of the classic authors of regency novels though, Georgette Heyer). Perhaps more if I get swine flu. I think they're excellent to read when you're bedridden and suffering. You really don't have to think at all, and can skip many pages without missing much. This book in fact could easily have been half as long - the actual substance of each chapter takes no more room than say two pages, and the rest is taken up with describing, in staccato sentences, how the main character reflects on this substance. For example, one chapter is about a new dress. New dress is put on, new dress is admired by self, new dress is walked downstairs and admired by all and husband (the one that was wedded without love, as a sort of business arrangement, and despite this is great in bed and fantastically suitable). Woman wearing dress reflects on whether husband really likes her in dress for two pages, husband reflects over how astonishingly sexy wife is in dress and how unaware of this she is for another two. Exeunt omnes. It's a definition of the word formulaic. Very annoying is that the author uses words and phrases that are wrong for this age, such as gender instead of sex. Also annoying is the excessive use of the word ton. I am not exaggerating when I say that ton might appear up to four times on each page. I couldn't remember what it meant, even though I could understand from the context that it referred to a set of people that our heroine was anxious to fit in with, so I looked it up after reading it. Well, then here's my question: surely the members of a set of people like this do not refer to themselves ever as such? I mean, we may know that there is a jet set but the members of the jet set don't call themselves the jet set. It's an outsider's definition. Please discuss.

So, I can't say I recommend it per se, but that I do understand the guilty pleasure, and that in itself is not an un-recommendation I suppose. There are four or so more in this particular series, about this particular family. All about two people who must marry and have sex despite their first inclinations. Do not read if you are afraid of thrusting. There is no shortage of that. The author is ludicruosly productive, by the way. By the time I write one blog entry she must have three more novels headed to the publishers...