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.