If Henry Crawford Married Harriet Smith

Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another very fun Georgette Heyer novel. I won't lie--I think it has flaws. But even a flawed Heyer book is a better read and more fun than some folks' most perfect stuff.

As always, she has engaging main characters who are not exactly like any other that I've seen in similar novels. She has a soft spot in her heart, I think, for characters who are silly or foolish or immature but basically good. Lord Sherringham, for example, is foolish and careless and impulsive and (too often) quite selfish; he marries without thinking, wastes tons of money gambling, makes little effort to get along with his own mother, and treats his young, innocent wife like she's just one of the guys. As a result, his desperately childish and trusting wife says the wrong thing and behaves the wrong way all of the time. It's perfect that he calls her kitten; she's like a little kitten that wanders through traffic and construction sites without any awareness of danger. But, like her dopey husband, she's a good person and able to change.

Sherry (Lord Sherringham) is like Mansfield Park's Henry Crawford, if we saw him in a behind-the scenes version of his life, and Hero (Kitten) is like Emma's Harriet Smith, if she were dropped off on the road somewhere and had no one to protect her. Then the reader has to see how this unlikely couple makes it work. This is not a spoiler--they do. And it's charming.

It is flawed, though. The beginning of the courtship and marriage is so improbable that it almost sinks the book, IMO. It could have used a better device. But I'll allow it. Then we probably dwell too long on Hero's introduction into society and her many screwups. (I picture her played by a young Lucille Ball.) Sherry finally loses his temper and is set on sending his wife to his mother's house, to be trained up by a woman who hates her, and Hero is forced to run away. It feels like the story really starts at that point, and it's 2/3 of the way through. I woulda liked that a hundred pages sooner. Anyway, it gets better there, and that last third is thoroughly entertaining. And though the conclusion is satisfying, I could have used a little bigger payoff at the end, seeing them happy for a few pages longer. I feel like she left a bit of the good stuff off.

To sum up--I liked it. I have my notes, but it's still a pleasure to read.

And I still insist that the BBC or somebody needs to start turning some of these novels into 6- or 8-episode miniseries. Who do I talk to?

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