Good morning, readers and book lovers! Guess what, we were going to have a good old American breakfast at the Country Kitchen down the road from where I live, but the line of people waiting to get in stretches all the way around the building. Not surprising, as the Kitchen serves breakfasts of pancakes, bacon, fruit, eggs, ham, sausage, and pretty much whatever else you want. Rats, today’s coffee flavor is hazelnut, my favorite, and we’re going to miss it!
Come with me and we’ll drive on a little further to a place that serves breakfast burritos. Don't they look yummy? The coffee is so-so but at least we’ll be fed. And the jalapeno peppers in the burrito filling will make us cry, no doubt.
Okay, now that we’re pleasantly replete, bring your cup of rather boring coffee past the orange swirl and follow me into the salon. Today we’ll talk about drugging the pain of everyday life with the printed word.
The death of my mother in the spring of 2008 plunged me into a metaphorical maelstrom of grief. We had been extremely close: she was, in fact, my best friend. In spite of having a wonderful, supportive family and loving Circle sisters, the grief threatened to overwhelm me at first.
The usual escapes of extended foreign travel, deep meditation, or recreational drugs, legal or illegal (not that an old bat like me would have a clue as to how to acquire the illegal kind), weren’t open to me. So, to take my mind off my loss, I read fiction.
Specifically, I read romances, those thin little Mills & Boon or Harlequin books scorned by non-romance readers as “chick lit,” “trash,” “mind candy,” and so on. But not just any romances: the ones I read were written by the high priestess of the art, the absolute queen of that genre, Anne Weale.
In the mid-70s I somehow came across a copy of Sullivan’s Reef and adored it. It alone of all the romances I’ve read has stayed with me. There is something about Charlotte Martin and the story of her great, secret love that has struck a responsive chord in many other readers besides myself, judging from stray comments I've come across in the Googleverse. The problem was, I couldn’t remember the name of the author. However, supplied with the title, I was able to track down a copy of the book so I could reread it. After that I was off to the races, so to speak. Anne Weale, the author of Sullivan’s Reef, wrote more than 80 romances during her lifetime.
I tracked them all down, with one exception, bought them, and read them. Of course they were formulaic, except for a couple that I’ll mention in a minute. But the settings—colonial Malaya, the Camargue, Spain, the West Indies, London, the southern English countryside, the north of England, the Caribbean, Greece, Nepal, even Canada and the East Coast of the USA—wafted me to different worlds. These were worlds in which the protagonists were young women in their mid-twenties (usually), starting out in their careers. Always, the men who eventually became their husbands were at least 12 years older and either rich or about to be. Why this disparity in age is so universal in the romance genre, I don’t know. The only reason I can imagine is that men in their early to mid-thirties have had time to establish themselves in their careers and acquire sufficient assets to support a wife and possible family.
The one exception to this disparate-in-age, rich-guy formula is Anne Weale’s The Sun in Splendour. This time the ages of the romantic couple are much closer and the guy is far from rich. That’s one of the reasons I like it.
These seemingly inconsequential novels were written by a woman with a wonderful command of the English language and are as suitable for one’s 15-year-old granddaughter or one’s 87-year-old mother as for oneself. There are a few passionate kisses but mercifully, nothing graphic. Everyone behaves quite discreetly until the wedding ring is on and the curtain subsequently drawn. (The novels set in Greece and Nepal are exceptions, however.)
There was one novel of Weale’s I was absolutely desperate to track down and could not, Bid Time Return. I Googled until my eyeballs bubbled but couldn’t find a copy. At one point I found one on the Anzac version of e-Bay but before I could email my Australian relations, imploring them to bid for it, the auction closed. Through Auntie Google I made contact with someone who was fortunate enough to own a copy, but she refused to lend it to someone she didn’t know—quite understandably, I thought. At last I tracked down a copy on the shelves of a public library in New Jersey. Just as I was MapQuesting the directions to get there (it’s a five-hour drive from where I live), a surprise floated into my email inbox.
The woman who refused to lend me the book had sat down and typed every word of it, created a .pdf file, and sent it to me. The goodness of some people surpasses all expectations, nay, all understanding. Greater love hath no woman, especially no romance aficionado, than to perform such an act of compassion for a stranger.
The book was all I had hoped, a departure from the usual formula, about four childhood friends growing up in the Channel Islands before WWII. It, like The Sun in Splendour, was completely off Anne Weale's beaten track.
By the time I’d read all 80-plus novels, six months had passed. The overwhelming grief receded to the point where I thought of my mother several times a day rather than constantly. Once again I felt able to cope with the normal pains, pleasures, and pressures of everyday life. And I still love Sullivan’s Reef: in fact, I reread it last week. It never fails to please. Thank you, Anne Weale.