A guilty pleasure

I’m back in the U.S.A. Got back to Up North very late on Wednesday evening and spent most of the last two days screwing around. Need to get myself back on track for the drive south, probably Wednesday. Can’t believe the term starts on August 25th! Uch. Will be catching up with comments soon and am looking forward to reading everything y’all wrote during my absence.

You may remember from a previous obsession update that I purchased The Tempest: A Guy of Gisborne Story by Charlotte Hawkins some time ago in anticipation of reading it in motels during the long drive south. (I bought the paperback.) Fortunately or unfortunately, I found I couldn’t wait. Scarfed it down on Friday morning. Re-read it on Friday afternoon. My mom (who has never seen a single episode of the BBC Robin Hood, and basically has no idea who Richard Armitage is except for knowing that I am crazy about his work) read it in one long gulp this afternoon. I thought that was interesting because although I agree with previous reviewers that the Guy in The Tempest is completely consonant with Mr. Armitage’s portrayal of that character, my mother was attracted to the character in the novel without knowing either Armitage or much about the Robin Hood canons. I won’t summarize the not-very-complicated plot here, in case you haven’t read it yet. It’s a hurt/comfort story with a delightful ending.

So I guess you could say we liked it (grin). Even if my mom told me after she finished it that we should read three or four classic works of literature now to keep our brains from rotting (grin again).

Now I have to qualify that statement. This is not great literature. I do not like it in the way I like my favorite works of U.S. literature (The Great Gatsby, The Corrections) or of German literature (Die Buddenbrooks, Der Stechlin) or even of romance literature (like my beloved Georgette Heyer). It’s fan fiction; it has different standards of quality and generic conventions than even mainstream romance literature. Maria Grazia’s review points out some of the problems in the work from the perspective of mainstream romance literature and novels– that the transformations in the characters are not especially credible, and that they are so transformed by love as to become almost unrecognizable. (I’d argue that this tendency is not so much a problem from the stance of fanfiction, mostly because the author relies for characterization on the willingness of the reader to associate the character as drawn in the fanfic with his/her perception of that character from the original canon medium. We see Mr. Armitage’s Guy transformed in the BBC Robin Hood, so we believe that Hawkins’s Guy is capable of the kind of transformation he undergoes here.) I’d add to potential critiques from this standpoint that the way the story is written obscures exactly what the conflict is that drives the second half of the narrative: is the Sheriff (Briwere in this telling) simply angry at Guy for falling in love? It’s not clear. Yet the Sheriff’s eventual turn on his loyal subordinate is the crucial plot element that drives the whole last section of the book.

However, I also stated that one reason I bought it was exactly due to the con Natalie listed in her review of it: the promise of abundant sex scenes. In other words: for me a major purpose of purchasing the work was wish fulfillment. And on this score, the work succeeds admirably, at least for me.

First, Cassia is a really strong Mary Sue, and by that I mean that she has clear features but her perceptions don’t take over the story. She is a fairly conventional heroine and not especially complex — much less so than this depiction of Guy — so the author has plenty of time to tell us about Guy’s reactions, which is what we care about reading anyway. (Because we know so little about her, we aren’t faced with the problem of the credibility of the transformation in her values and commitments during the narrative — she’s strong, caring, and helpful, but her main function is to be the anti-Marian, so as readers we are always adding that comparison to our readings of her.) I also identified with her strongly — Cassia has many personality traits that Servetus would have if she lived up to her ideals more regularly.

Second, I thought that Hawkins provided a really strong and credible account of a particular reading of Armitage’s Guy that I happen to like a lot: Guy in his dangerous guise. (I’d argue that this is not the only possible reading of Armitage’s Guy, although I know there is some disagreement about this point and that some fan fic authors are troubled by any sort of anachronistically emo Guy, for example.) This is the ruthless Guy who wants what he wants — and will do what he has to do to get it without concern for the welfare of others — but also the Guy who is sensitive to social convention and recognizes the need to play by the rules. And although Maria Grazia is certainly correct that the Guy of the second half of the novel reflects a strong transformation over the character in the first half, there’s still more than enough ruthless, self-serving behavior in the second half to keep him recognizable.

Third, fan fiction relies heavily on a certain sort of convention in wish fulfillment that speaks deeply to my heart, even if I know the conventions are stereotypical. This story offers a lot of those tropes: the Guy who can’t believe anyone would be kind to him without hope of profit, for example, or the selfless heroine who acts with generosity even when it is not returned. In a mainstream romance novel these moments would probably be groaners, unless they were addressed either quite differently or ironically, but here we expect to find them and do. For me, although I acknowledge that the tempo change in the second half of the novel was noticeable, the need to address these wish fulfillment conventions meant that I wasn’t at all disturbed by it. For instance: one of these tropes is the need for Guy to reveal himself as suitable father material — as another trope requires him to be tamed by love and domesticated into a nuclear family. Guy as potential father is shown up a mischievous nephew who’s thrust into the story at the end. A professional romance novelist would probably have interspersed this story earlier on and added more humor to it. Hawkins sets the story up in two brief scenes, and in both of them Guy is full in earnest. There’s a certain charm to having an author fulfill our wishes without resorting to artifice. I’m guessing that these conventions are part of what kept my mom reading — particular the damaged Guy / damaged hero seeking redemption convention, which is all over every chapter and keeps my heart bursting as I read through the book.

And last but not least: the sex. We’ve had some discussion on this blog about the relative attractiveness of cliched sex scenes. Natalie did not like the sex, and I should add that my mom didn’t really like it either. I, however, loved the sex, even though it included some of the usual conventions: the unbelievable staying power of the hero, the repeated simultaneous orgasms, the calling out of the lover’s name at the point of climax, and so on. But what convinced me most in the end is that the scenes are so powerfully written that I was completely convinced of the role that oral sex finally played in the narrative as the sort of ultimate act of love. (As opposed to the way that it’s now usually integrated into medieval fanfic sex narratives, as anachronistic foreplay.) Not everything about the sex is so compelling — Hawkins is not as good at writing tender sex, and these scenes are often summarized in a sentence or two, whereas the heavily passionate, uncontrollable sex scenes go on for pages. But all in all I thought this novel executed this important convention of wish fulfillment effectively — enough to get me breathing heavily for sure!

Hawkins is writing a sequel, which you can read some initial chapters of at her blog (linked above). There are also some noticeable problems with syntax and mechanics in the book — but not enough to keep me from reading. I definitely feel like I got my money’s worth from this purchase.

[This is an unsolicited review. I purchased my own copy of the work from amazon.com. The opinions expressed in it are solely my own and –in paraphrase– my mom’s.]

~ by Servetus on August 15, 2010.