Sprig Muslin

I confess it true: I am such a noddycock that this is the first of the estimable Miss Heyer's trashy novels that I e'er did peruse. Dash it all, how was I to know she was a veritable caryatid of culture, a purveyoress of fine wordsmithing, an artiste?

Yeah, so she invented the Regency romance, or close enough to it. Yeah, she was an English homemaker. And by today's "so what did you smell like after you murdered those teenagers, Mr. Dahmer?" celebrity standards, she was a complete nonentity. Never gave an interview, never went on tour, never so much as blew a kiss to a crowd.

And still her legend lives on. I imagine the Regency period of English history would still be a giant snorefest for the youth of America if it were not for Miss show more Heyer's Regency-set romances. They spawned myriad imitatrixes to mine the rich seam, from the time she started out at age nineteen until this good day. And beyond, I suspect. She wrote well over 50 titles, she had a half-century career, she was a commercial powerhouse. She was a game-changer for the publishing industry. She was, in short, JRR Tolkien but female (and fun to read).

You won't spot historical inaccuracies in her books. You won't spot infelicities of style. You won't see violence or mayhem, though the odd lord does get shot or sliced with a sword.

What you will see is simple, direct, and graceful writing, not precious or cutesy-poo drivel. You will see implausible-but-consistent plotting. You will see clearly and concisely drawn characters, people one can believe really went to Almack's and faught in the Peninsular campaign and made their debuts to the ton. You will, if you climb down off your preconceived notions, get a rare treat...a book that's a pleasure to read and a disappointment to finish, but is just exactly the right length.

Recommended. Most heartily. Damme if it's not. show less

Sir Gareth Ludlow has no illusions about ever finding love again after losing his fiancee seven years previously. But knowing his obligation to continue the family line, he decides to propose to his old friend, Hester Brancaster. On the way to the Brancaster estate he encounters a girl calling herself Amanda Smith who will pull Gareth and Hester into levels of mischief they never could have imagined.

One of the more comedic of Heyer's novels that I've read, this novel had me chuckling out loud (and occasionally in inopportune places like the bus). Amanda is a naive girl with her plots to get her own way and an ability to tell such ridiculous tall tales that it's impossible not to find her amusing. Sir Gareth is exactly the strong, mature show more hero that Heyer is so adept at creating and Hester is a lovely female lead with a hidden steel core in amongst her surface vagueness. This is the first Heyer novel I've read where I haven't been positive where the romance plot was headed but not once did I doubt that all would turn out for the best. A funny and lovely read, as I've come to expect from this mistress of Regency romance. show less

Great fun! Very well-written and engaging throughout. I especially love the formation of this quasi-fictional but meaningful chosen family by the end of the book, with 'adopted' aunts/uncles/cousins living so happily away from their 'real' families.

This is my fifth of Heyer's regency romances, though, so I'm starting to pick up on patterns and read them in the context of each other. I am getting annoyed by the obligatory softening and surrender-of-personal-agency of so many of the feisty female characters at novels' end. I mean, love is great, and showing strong smart women in happy relationships is great, but must they ALL ultimately lay their heads on the shoulder of the strong husbands-to-be, lamblike, as the men smile indulgently at show more them? show less

I'm being kind with 3 stars.

I totally get why people love this Heyer book so much; I do. But I really disliked it. It's beautifully written and the narrator of this version did a fantastic job (although her Mr. Theele kept making Peter Sellers' Sidney Wang character pop into my head; I couldn't shake the feeling that when she read it she had a rictus-like smile on her face. But I digress.)

So what didn't I like? Amanda. Dear God in heaven; at her best-behaved I'd have left her on the side of the road, taken Joseph with me, and buried her in the carriage's dust. At her worst I wanted to slap her stupid. I very nearly didn't finish the book.

I know I was supposed to find her and her antics a hilariously entraining romp, and I have no show more problem understanding why most people do, but she's just such a spoiled rotten brat and I was stuck listening to her ridiculous tantrums and schemes for 2/3 of the book.

Why didn't I just dnf it? Because everyone I know and trust loved it, and I really liked Lady Hester and Sir Gareth. I'd have loved this book if it had more of them and less of that little idiot Amanda.

But after saying all of that, this is a personal thing; the book is superbly written and flows beautifully. I hated the predominant character but that's not because she's badly written; likely the opposite. If you can laugh at the antics of a teenager scheming to get her own way with careless but cheerful disregard for others, I highly recommend you put this Heyer at the top of your list. If you're disinclined to find charm in spoiled teens, you might want to stick with Heyer's other titles.

N.B. - notwithstanding the rictus-smile narration of one of the characters, I'd totally listen to this narrator's work again; she did an excellent job. show less

I started this as I wanted a book to read in the bath after the successful conclusion of operation clear the shed. I ended up turning the light out after I'd finished it. Excellent. One of Heyer's romances that actually had me uncertain which of the female leads our hero would end up with, the one he should, or the one wit hthe obvious charms.
Spoiler ridden review follows.
We meet our hero first, Gareth appears to have ti all, apart from his fiance who broke her neck in a carriage accident some 7 years ago. He now decides that as the sole remaining son of the family, he needs to marry & continue the family line. So he decides to offer for Hester, who has long been considered by her family to be left on the shelf and should leap at the show more match. It's not a love match, on his side, he just thinks that they might rub along. Along the way, Garth comes across Amanda, a youthful 17 in a flowered muslin dress who is trying to escape her grandfather in order to demonstrate that she is able to take care of herself in order to marry an officer of the Peninsular army. And so she is, to a certain extent, but not really. The first time Gareth rescues her, he ends up arriving at Hester's family's house with Amanda, and dumps her upon Hester just before making his offer. Amanda is everything that Hester is not, young, vivacious, beautiful and, to Hester, has an air of the lost fiance. So everyone wonders what on earth Gareth is doing bringing his bit on the side to propose to Hester, although there remains surprise that Hester declines him. Amanda determines to escape Gareth and so sets off with Hester's elderly debauched uncle and then finds that she;s misjudged him and escapes him as well. Gareth spends a lot of time chasing after Amanda, only to get wrapped up in one final scheme to escape him and ends up shot. And so Amanda calls Hester to nurse Gareth and from here you feel more sure which way this is going to go. The final scenes rely on the families of both Hester & Amanda arriving almost at once and demanding that he marry in order to repair the damage to their reputation. Fortunately, Gareth is made of sterner stuff and so we end up with the right couples paired off, for the right reasons. This one had me worried, Amanda's obvious charms win everyone over, but her heart is already spoken for, would Gareth fall prey?
To add to the appeal, I live in one of the towns mentioned, so I knew where they were and which routes they were taking (generally the old road, the A14 not having been invented!) show less

Not bad. In terms of the romance, better than A Civil Contract - he does realize what he's got by the end of the book. The main adventure, though, is mostly very annoying - Amanda is an idiot, and insists on embroiling everyone else in her schemes. On the other hand, she did manage to shake things loose. Hester is way too dutiful at the beginning, I liked her much better by the end. The coincidences that brought everyone there at once are...not entirely ridiculous, only nearly. Amazing numbers of idiotic men here - from the farmboy and Hildebrand to the various male relations. It's not entirely annoying, though - better than almost all of the mysteries. I'll probably reread, at some point.

Handsome, charming and very wealthy, Sir Gareth Ludlow was considered a matrimonial prize of the first order, but none of the eligible young ladies his sister presented to him ever seemed to strike his fancy. Believing, after the death of his fiancée years before, that he would never love again, he had finally decided to marry his friend, Lady Hester Theale, the shy but well-bred daughter of the Earl of Brancaster. But a chance encounter with a headstrong runaway catapulted him into the most unexpected of adventures, and Sir Gareth soon discovered that he really didn't know Lady Hester at all...

As an online friend recently commented elsewhere, Georgette Heyer is fond of employing the "sensible heroine/silly secondary beauty show more combination," and Sprig Muslin is a case in point. Quiet and self-effacing Lady Hester, and feisty, adventurous Amanda "Smith" are not quite so charming a pair as Sarah and Eustacie of The Talisman Ring, but their creator nevertheless manages to endow them with unexpected depths. A surprising irreverence lurks behind Lady Hester's seeming obedience, and Amanda is remarkably cool-headed in a crisis. These discoveries make for interesting interludes in a novel that, were it not for Heyer's uniformly excellent writing, might be described as mediocre. show less