As some of you may know, I'm on a Georgette Heyer bender this year, hoping to read as many of her books as I can find. Why? Well, because foolishly and snobbishly, I'd overlooked her work for years and years. So now I'm making up for lost time. I won't be reviewing all of them, but I will be talking about the ones I most especially love.
Isn't it wonderful when you discover that you've been wrong all along about an author and then - oh heavenly day - you have a whole roster of books to cruise through.
All the Heyer reviews will be lodged under the home-made Regency button on my right sideboard as we go along. If you feel inclined to join me in this Heyer marathon, please do. The more the merrier. (I'm including a couple of Heyer reviews I did last year - soon as I find them.)
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THE GRAND SOPHY is a 'domestic comedy'. The kind of story I adore. All I require is that it be well and wittily written and we're halfway there. Fortunately, Heyer delivers the goods.
Sophy Stanton-Lacy is an unfashionably outspoken and bossy youngish woman with flash, cash and dash. She is a domestic hurricane of quick wit, intelligence and common sense. In action, she reminds me a bit of Flora Post, Stella Gibbons' heroine in COLD COMFORT FARM - though Flora is less outspoken and has no money.
But like Flora, Sophy was born to manage all in her immediate vicinity. She can't be happy until she settles everything right to her satisfaction. She sounds insufferable, but really she isn't. She's actually a hoot.
Sophy makes you smile and shake your head - she is outrageous (even going so far as to occasionally carry a pistol), but always with the best of intentions. Proven usually right in the end, she simply isn't the type to stand by and watch everything about her go to rack and ruin - not when she's sure she can figure out a better solution. In her plots and ploys, she works with the reader to fashion the ending the reader wants. Very clever.
Simply let yourself be guided by the Grand Sophy and all will be well.
When this whirlwind is sent - temporarily- to live with her uncle, Lord Ombersley's family, while her father Sir Horace goes adventuring across the sea to Brazil, Sophy immediately sees that her uncle's family needs fixing.
Sophy doesn't stand on ceremony, she is unconventional - having been raised on the Continent, even traveling with her widowed father in Spain near end of the war against Napoleon. She knows everyone who's anyone, including the Duke of Wellington himself. Sophy is a 'lady' of course, but one who is impatient with ridiculous Regency rules and regulations.
Lord Ombersley's eldest son Charles is, for all intents and purposes, the head of the family now, having inherited the estate from a relative who rightly skipped Charle's father because of his well known profligate ways. Charles is a bit of a martinet, what with having the weight of his father, mother, brother Hubert and four sisters, including the stubborn Cecelia, on his shoulders. The entire family treads lightly around his infamous temper.
The stiff-necked Charles is recently affianced to Miss Wraxton, a stickler for Regency propriety - an unprincipled snoop and an all around pain in the butt. But Charles, of course, will not realize this until Sophy opens his eyes to Miss Wraxton's unlovely persona. Charles is hoping for a 'comfortable' marriage, but Sophy makes him realize that Miss Wraxton is anything but.
Charles' sister Cecelia, a sweet but stubborn young chit, has fixed her attentions on a beautifully handsome young poet, Augustus Fawnhope, a penniless 'younger' son who refuses to get a real job. He is writing his 'magnum opus' - an epic poem he hopes someone will buy and stage. Cecelia had been intended for the slightly older but elegant, charming and kindly, Lord Charlbury, a wealthy man who adores her. But Cecelia refuses to comply.
The likable but ineffectual Lady Ombersley cannot be relied upon to deal with any family exigencies as she is the type who cannot abide fuss - it sends her into spasms. She also lives in dread of discomfiting her eldest son Charles who holds the purse strings.
As trials and tribulations come along there are some colorful characters to meet, including an indolent Spanish Marquesa and an ineffectual poop-head hypochondriac, Lord Bromford. who fancies himself in love with Sophy. But as family drama pops up, Sophy takes charge, annoying and bedeviling Charles every step of the way.
She has, fortuitously landed in the middle of this fractured family, almost immediately intuited what is wrong and used her special talents to set things to rights. In the end, all will be well and Sophy will emerge triumphant.
This is such a delightfully entertaining book that if I were you I'd save it, like you do a special box of expensive chocolates - until the right moment. You can then sink into a pile of pillows (the chocolates are up to you), retreat from reality and enter the agreeable world of The Grand Sophy.
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