tisdag 27 maj 2014

Beards and bestsellers

This spring has been tough blog-wise. Mini-flus, colds, headaches, broadband installations and, I suppose, the odd moment of general laziness have had a sad effect on the number of entries written. As a case in point, it is not until now that I find myself ready to broach the subject of this year's Eurovision Song Contest which ended weeks back.

This was a satisfying Eurovision year. Not only did Sweden reach an honourable third place, I liked the winning song too. In some ways, it illustrates why I'm so fond of the contest. Forget cool, edgy music and the latest fancy trends. Instead, the winning song was a resoundly old-fashioned power ballad - belted out beautifully by a bearded drag queen.

Yes, I admit it, I was bemused by the beard. Drag acts are not that uncommon in the Swedish qualifying heats for the competition: this year, we had a bouncy number where the guys' pins were definitely better-looking than mine (admittedly, not difficult). However, these cross-dressers tend to look as fetching and feminine as possible, which made me think that this was partly the point. A beard kind of spoils the womanly effect. Still, what do I know: doubtless my confusion is what the Dowager Countess would call "provincial". And the beard proved a useful diversion. If, say, the svelte Spanish lady singer would have competed with a Bond anthem-style ballad and won, the critics would have been up in arms the next day about the continuing uncoolness of Eurovision. As it was, there was benign talk of a "victory for tolerance". Even hostile reactions tended to center on the beard to such a degree that the little detail of the dress was quite overlooked. We got the absurd situation of protesters shaving off their beards - a symbol of manliness - in order to look less like a drag queen. The Austrian singer Conchita Wurst (stage name, naturally - I'm not sure Wurst was good idea) must be thinking: "Result!".

Moving on, in a not very smooth transition, from singing queens to femmes fatales. I've been scandalously unadventurous on the book front lately. Hardly had I finished Destiny than I ordered and started reading yet another of Sally Beauman's novels. I did try something else by another author at first - an Edwardian whodunnit awash with noblemen but disappointingly short of women for them to squabble over - but I kept longing to get back to well-written family-saga land. Consequently, I'm now well into Beauman's Dark Angel. I don't like it quite as much as Destiny, because I have predictable problems with the dark angel in question and above-mentioned femme fatale, Constance Shawcross. The family on which she preys is so essentially likeable - if flawed - that I just wish Constance would snap out of her bitterness concerning her truly disgusting father's demise (he may have been dispatched by one of the family members - but then again maybe not) and get on with life without causing too much unnecessary harm. On the other hand, that wouldn't make much of a novel, would it? Even as I wince while anticipating Constance's next move, I keep turning the pages. Without doubt, Beauman is this year's find.                  

torsdag 8 maj 2014

The daftness of lovers

Well, what do you know. There actually is such a thing as a well-written novel following a traditional blockbuster formula. I had almost given up hope. I love sumptuous rags-to-riches mini-series on TV in the A Woman of Substance mould, but when I give the book equivalents - or source material - for this kind of drama a try, the pedestrian prose is often a let-down. Glamour seems easier to convey on a TV screen than on paper. But Sally Beauman's Destiny ticks the right blockbuster boxes, is dripping with glamour, and works perfectly as a novel.

I'm still a little surprised that Beauman has written something that might be described as a romantic novel. She is the author of Rebecca's Tale, which is a book very much in the "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" vein. But in Destiny we have star-crossed lovers, no less, doing their best to keep the flame alive, even when things look hopeless for them and other people are being made miserable by their inability to leave their memories of their love behind.

As a matter of fact, there's a perfectly good reason why the book's hero - multimillionaire jeweller Edouard de Chavigny - and its heroine - Hélène Craig, an actress from a dirt-poor background with star quality - should not be together. (Yes, I did tell you, blockbuster!) Though they don't know it, they are a little too closely related for comfort. Not the full Oedipus, mind you, but still close enough to make a union legally and biologically risky. However, that is not the reason - so far - that they haven't made a match of it. Instead, their split hinges on the hard-to-understand behaviour of the heroine, who makes a run for it because she thinks she is pregnant by another man (a previous attachment, now dead). And then the hero, when he finds out where she's gone to, far from confronting her, watches her career from a morose distance. Oh, and the kid seems to be his after all (not that the prospective mum twigs this - honestly, can she count?). And Hélène easily confesses about her pregnancy to a man she doesn't love, instead of staying put and telling all to man she does love. Much heartbreak follows, far from all of it Hélène's and Edouard's. Come on, you people, get your act together!

If the course of true love never runs smooth, it is often, in the world of fiction, because of the stupidity of the lovers themselves. Perhaps I place too much reliance on telling the truth - full confessions may not always be a good plan: it didn't work for Tess of the d'Urbervilles - but surely, a lot of love stories would reach their conclusion a lot quicker if the love birds just talked to each other. But no - instead they grab any excuse to self-sacrifice and run away from love. It's as if they relished being star-crossed. In how many romantic films does not one protagonist misinterpret the loved one's friendly break-up embrace with a soon-to-be-ex as a Big Betrayal? They're up and away, sobbing, to the nearest airport, instead of just asking their love: "Why did you hug X?" and getting the satisfying response: "Because we were just breaking up, so I could be with you".

Of course, the main reason fictional lovers behave like this is that there would be precious little plot in many a love story if they didn't. But it is a contrivance, and maybe one of the reasons why young lovers are often among the least interesting characters, even in a book, film or TV series where they are nominally the protagonists. You want them to get together, of course you do. But as long-suffering best friends, bitchy wannabe or ex-girlfriends of the hero, unhappy second-best "good men" for whom the heroine nearly settles (not to mention the villains!) etc. behave a lot less foolishly than the lovers, after a while one is tempted to side with the side characters. Let's hear it for the world's Mercutios.

torsdag 1 maj 2014

Totally made-up costume-drama intrigues - featuring Mr Selfridge (and more villains)

There is a series of humorous books (I’ve not read them, just seen them about, plus I’ve heard the film version highly talked of) about pirates, where each adventure in a more or less strained manner involves some real  historical event or character in the pirates’ derring-do. So we get, for instance, The Pirates! – in an Adventure with Napoleon. I enjoyed the second series of Mr Selfridge even more than the first one, but when it comes to its approach to history it feels rather like those pirate adventures. One real historical personage is set down in a completely fictional context, and you wonder how the series makers have got away with it. Is there no-one left of the Selfridge family who might disapprove? And why didn’t the creators of the series plump for an entirely fictionalised version of events, with a fictional gambling, chorus-girl-chasing but canny store owner to go with the rest of the fictional character crew? The more influence the fictional brigade of characters get on the storylines about Mr Selfridge and his also presumably based-on-fact family, the odder the effect becomes.

Never mind. Its’ fun, and exemplary advertising for the Selfridges store in London. Though the standards the series sets can be daunting. I paid a the store a visit last time I was in London a few weeks ago, and encountered a certain amount of quiet contempt – not directed at me personally, but at fat-bottomed girls generally who dared to enter the lingerie department hoping to find anything remotely glamorous. I left thinking, quite illogically, “I bet Mr Thackeray would have handled that a great deal better”.

Mr Thackeray – played by Cal Macaninch aka Mr Lang – is one of the new villains in the series, a classic Envious Colleague. As new head of the Women’s Fashion department, he resents at first Agnes, who has gone from shop girl to leading creative light but who struggles with her numerous new responsibilities, and then Henri who comes back to the store to help out in a senior, dangerously unspecified role. There’s not much depth to the character of Mr Thackeray, but I can readily sympathise with his irritation. I’ve never been able to warm to Agnes – sheer cattiness on my part, I expect – and in this series Henri is something of a trial as well with his constant sulkiness and Mysterious Past. They are a good choice of victims for a villain to vent his spleen on. The series writers (there are several, and good ones to, which is as well as from what I can see Andrew Davies takes very little part in proceedings nowadays) aren’t above giving him some plausible incentives for villainy, either, such as the good old “villain thinks the hero’s bad-mouthed him when in fact it’s someone else” scenario. I’ll be watching the development of Mr Lang – sorry Thackeray – with interest, but I predict some problems later on. His private life hasn’t been touched on yet, but will have to be at some point, and then the series writers will have to struggle to come up with something original in costume-drama terms. At least he is extremely unlikely to fall for Agnes.

Villain number two – yes, there are two villains here as well, just as in The Paradise! – is, entirely unpredictably, the husband of Lady Loxley who was so fortunately (for her) absent during the whole of series one. Far from being a poor Woosterish booby who’d been had by a clever chorus girl, as one would have thought, Lord Loxley turns out to be a decadent horror of a man. His wife has not been keeping her distance because she wanted time alone with her lovers – well, not entirely – but because she’s afraid of him. Pleasing dramatic consequences follow. Again, Lord Loxley is not the most subtle of villains, but as with The Paradise, you have a feeling that at least someone is trying. And the milky-white perfect complexion is a nice touch.

Mr Selfridge’s charisma remains a mystery to me, but other characters have developed nicely. For instance, there’s the touching friendship between accountant Mr Crabbe and head of Personnel Mr Grove, who’s made some bad romantic choices in the past and now has to live with them. Mr Grove’s ex-mistress Miss Mardle, who’s trying to learn to love again, is also a character one can care about. My favourite is Victor, not as interestingly social-climbing as in series one, but still sharper and more sardonic than the usual heroic love-interest fare (and yes, the manservant-like waiter costume helps). When Agnes or Henri – I forget which – refers to him as “a good man” my heart sank. This is what heroines call the admirer they feel guilty about not fancying. Surely, a catch like Victor deserves better.