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On a side note, I got my Dad and step-mother hooked on Jennifer Crusie by slipping them FAKING IT and saying, "It's a mystery-comedy about a family of art forgers." My step-mother likes mysteries, my Dad collects art, and they both like comedy, so I figured that would sell them. When they both praised it and asked for more, I gave them FAST WOMEN, then WELCOME TO TEMPTATION. I'm wonder if they'll ever figure out that Crusie is really a romance writer, and if they'll care if they do.
GETTING RID OF BRADLEY is similar in some respects to CRAZY FOR YOU, in that both involve a woman who wants to break out of her boring life and a man who's stalking her. I liked the former better; the tone is lighter overall, even when it comes to dark elements, and it's set up from the beginning as a playful romantic comedy with elements of mystery and suspense, rather than a romantic comedy with unwelcome intrusions of creepy reality.
High school physics teacher Lucy Savage is getting divorced from her husband Bradley. He's stood her up at divorce court, her sister is bossing her around, and she hates her newly blonde hair. When someone shoots at her and she mistakes the cop who pushes her out of the way for a mugger and beats him up, it actually improves her day. Next thing she knows, she's being stalked by a mysterious person, who may be her Bradley or the Bradley the cop is looking for (they may or may not be the same Bradley) so naturally, the cop has to move in with her and her three dogs (one of whom has invented a dog joke) and her ever-mutating hair. To guard and protect her, of course.
This book cracked me up. If you want to learn how to use repetition for comic effect, study it. If you want to be cheered up, just read and be cheered. I was particularly gratified to find a Crusie heroine who knows self-defense, even if it's not always directed at the correct parties. The police work is less than plausible and the sex scene is generic (Crusie got much better at writing them later on) but generally the book made me very happy.
In FLOWERS FROM THE STORM, the Duke of Jervaux, who is a rake and a mathematical genius, is called out for a duel for having an affair with a married woman. But before anyone can fire, he has a stroke and collapses. He wakes up in an asylum. He's unable to speak, understand spoken language, or read and write words, though his mathematical abilities are intact. Unfortunately, at that time no one understands what's happened to him and they think he's insane. Enter Maddy, whose blind mathematician father was in a mathematics society with Jervaulx. Maddy and her father are Quakers, and she gets a message from God that she needs to rescue Jervaux, who she realizes is not insane, but only unable to communicate. (The mad chemistry between them has nothing to do with it, she tells herself, because he is a man of the world and if she gets involved with him, the Quakers will disown her.)
The first third or so of the book, before Jervaulx starts to recover, contain some fascinating attempts at writing from the point of view of someone who has lost language. Kinsale does a good job of conveying a state which is inherently impossible to portray in words. I liked the way both Jervaulx and Maddy had inner worlds which were intensely important to them, and also came from diametrically opposed backgrounds, and how difficult it was to communicate with each other because of it, and how comparatively easy it was for them to bridge the gap of his aphasia.
The main problem I had with the book was the pacing. Although I liked the characters and was engaged by their predicaments, there were a number of places where I found the book easy to put down, unlike, say, SHADOWHEART or THE SHADOW AND THE STAR or even MY SWEET FOLLY, all of which I was glued to from beginning to end.
There's also a point at which Kinsale probably should have stopped adding new complications and reasons why Maddy and Jervaulx were doomed as a couple, because eventually I started to think that their relationship was just too difficult, that they didn't have enough in common and there were too many obstacles and too much Maddy especially had to give up, and that they would never be truly happy together. That mad chemistry had better keep cooking, or they will be in trouble a year or two after the end of the book.
GETTING RID OF BRADLEY is similar in some respects to CRAZY FOR YOU, in that both involve a woman who wants to break out of her boring life and a man who's stalking her. I liked the former better; the tone is lighter overall, even when it comes to dark elements, and it's set up from the beginning as a playful romantic comedy with elements of mystery and suspense, rather than a romantic comedy with unwelcome intrusions of creepy reality.
High school physics teacher Lucy Savage is getting divorced from her husband Bradley. He's stood her up at divorce court, her sister is bossing her around, and she hates her newly blonde hair. When someone shoots at her and she mistakes the cop who pushes her out of the way for a mugger and beats him up, it actually improves her day. Next thing she knows, she's being stalked by a mysterious person, who may be her Bradley or the Bradley the cop is looking for (they may or may not be the same Bradley) so naturally, the cop has to move in with her and her three dogs (one of whom has invented a dog joke) and her ever-mutating hair. To guard and protect her, of course.
This book cracked me up. If you want to learn how to use repetition for comic effect, study it. If you want to be cheered up, just read and be cheered. I was particularly gratified to find a Crusie heroine who knows self-defense, even if it's not always directed at the correct parties. The police work is less than plausible and the sex scene is generic (Crusie got much better at writing them later on) but generally the book made me very happy.
In FLOWERS FROM THE STORM, the Duke of Jervaux, who is a rake and a mathematical genius, is called out for a duel for having an affair with a married woman. But before anyone can fire, he has a stroke and collapses. He wakes up in an asylum. He's unable to speak, understand spoken language, or read and write words, though his mathematical abilities are intact. Unfortunately, at that time no one understands what's happened to him and they think he's insane. Enter Maddy, whose blind mathematician father was in a mathematics society with Jervaulx. Maddy and her father are Quakers, and she gets a message from God that she needs to rescue Jervaux, who she realizes is not insane, but only unable to communicate. (The mad chemistry between them has nothing to do with it, she tells herself, because he is a man of the world and if she gets involved with him, the Quakers will disown her.)
The first third or so of the book, before Jervaulx starts to recover, contain some fascinating attempts at writing from the point of view of someone who has lost language. Kinsale does a good job of conveying a state which is inherently impossible to portray in words. I liked the way both Jervaulx and Maddy had inner worlds which were intensely important to them, and also came from diametrically opposed backgrounds, and how difficult it was to communicate with each other because of it, and how comparatively easy it was for them to bridge the gap of his aphasia.
The main problem I had with the book was the pacing. Although I liked the characters and was engaged by their predicaments, there were a number of places where I found the book easy to put down, unlike, say, SHADOWHEART or THE SHADOW AND THE STAR or even MY SWEET FOLLY, all of which I was glued to from beginning to end.
There's also a point at which Kinsale probably should have stopped adding new complications and reasons why Maddy and Jervaulx were doomed as a couple, because eventually I started to think that their relationship was just too difficult, that they didn't have enough in common and there were too many obstacles and too much Maddy especially had to give up, and that they would never be truly happy together. That mad chemistry had better keep cooking, or they will be in trouble a year or two after the end of the book.