Interesting but dated ( )

I was slogging my way through a couple of books that didn't fully have my attention when I rebelled, and scoured my shelves for something more engaging. I don't think I've read a "spy novel" since college (or maybe high school), but I trust Neversink Library, so I ended up opening The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars.

As usual, I was not disappointed. Well, I was a little disappointed that "The Madonna" didn't turn out to be the spy, nor even really the star of her own book, but what the book is instead was delightful and compulsively readable.

Then again, despite the fact that the narrator of the story is Prince Gerard Seliman (yes, I'm too lazy to figure out how to do the accent right now), Lady Diana's (The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars) secretary, Gerard seems a bit hapless, an old fashioned gentleman at the whims of the actual actors of the story -- all women: Lady Diana herself, a ruined capitalist in search of a new fortune, Madame Mouravieff, the terrifyingly ruthless agent of the relatively new Soviet regime, and finally, his estranged wife, Princess Seliman, flitting around on a yacht, nursing her broken heart.

Seliman may not be a spy, but there is at least one spy (another woman!) in this novel of subterfuge, cynical grabs at power, prison, executions, and a good deal of international travel.

This book was one of the biggest bestsellers of all time, and despite the sometimes old-fashioned writing, it's still easy to see why. ( )

This book reminded me a bit of _Travels With My Aunt_ by Graham Greene – it is written with a similar type of light-hearted spunk. I am sure it was considered rather racy when it was first published in 1927, but it still sizzles with slinky rich women and power-crazed female villains. Our heroic narrator, a Prince Seliman, has a sense of humor, is courageous and is suitably noble. A gentleman throughout, Seliman makes us admire and adore the decadent Lady Diana almost as much as everyone else does. This is a romp into a forgotten era that still manages to be an engagingly-paced thriller. ( )

I can’t recall exactly where I first read about this novel and how famous it made Maurice Dekobra, but I do recall it being classified as an early example of the thriller genre. That’s on the mark, although the style is somewhat different than what what normally makes a thriller turn. It also has elements of espionage although for me they weren't as important.

In a nutshell here’s how it goes. Lady Diana (that was sorta creepy, but in some ways she’s described, she could be interchangeable with her latter-day real-life namesake), anyway, Lady Diana is a widowed aristocrat with a large fortune that disappears overnight when the oil market crashes. With the help of her private secretary, Gerard, she decides to appeal to the new Soviet government in Russia to let her take control of the shares in an oil field left to her by her husband. For some reason this plan appeals to her even though it’s ludicrous. Newly-minted Communists, fresh from the bloody revolution, letting some foreigner make money off their resources? In what universe? Anyway, she bargains marriage to her in exchange for the oil rights. Unfortunately her chosen bridegroom, Varichkine, already has a girlfriend. She’s a cold, ruthless killer, bent on furthering her own career and the Soviet cause in equal measure. Gerard gets caught up in the bargaining and ends up in prison for his trouble.

That’s the point where the thrills really come. Dekobra illustrates the peril really well and I really felt driven to keep turning pages. Up until then there wasn’t much traditional thrilling. There were lots of speeches though. Everyone seemed to want to wax eloquent about socio-political topics of the day. They weren’t long, but there were a lot of them. I don’t know if parlor conversationalists were always so verbose, but everyone in this book seemed to have a definite opinion and the vocabulary to express it.

Character-wise I think both Gerard and Lady Diana both ran contrary to how they would have been written just a couple of decades before. Gerard is employed as a secretary even though he’s a prince with an estranged wife. It seems he has an unrequited love for Diana, but he beds an available woman without a qualm about Diana or his erstwhile wife. He works for Lady Diana because it gives him something to do; he doesn’t even draw a salary. Lady Diana is a social heavyweight with a propensity to take lovers one after the other and she’s not shy about sex, her body or any of the things she does with her life (like dancing nude for charity and creating a delicious scandal). She’s classy, but earthy and while she remained distant for me as a character, I liked her. Early feminist I suppose.

Not likeable, but equally liberated (oh I don’t think she’d like me describing her that way) is Irina Mouravieff, our villainess. She’s dogmatic. She’s cruel. She’s deceitful. She’s devious. I kind of liked her. The big romance with Varichkine I didn’t really buy though. When Gerard asked why she went after him when she really should punish her boyfriend and Lady Diana, she answers that she caught him first and so might as well punish him because he was in hand. Pretty much everything about her has that level of dispassion, so I didn’t buy her vehement love for Varichkine.

Ah well. Overall it’s decent. Talky and preachy, but once things get underway they move pretty fast. Recommended if you like looking at the origins of popular genres. ( )

The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars was written in 1927 by Maurice DeKobra, a prolific French novelist and journalist who is now almost forgotten, in English anyway. It's a fun, somewhat silly book; reading it I couldn't quite tell if it was written "straight" or was meant to be a kind of parody of a spy novel. It reminded me of Max Beerbohm; in fact, the heroine, Lady Diana Wynham, is kind of like a cross between Zuleika Dobson and the Bolter. (I think the book is mean to be risque, too, by 1920s' standards: Lady Diana, in front of "all London" does a nude dance at a charity benefit.) Don't read it expecting anything serious but it you enjoy lightweight stuff it makes a nice break. ( )