Ibbotson, Eva - A Company of Swans

[oyceter]

Apparently, before she started writing YA, Ibbotson wrote romances. Looks like this (1985) was written after Kathleen Woodiwiss' bodice ripper, The Flower and the Flame (1972), but it feels as though it were written before. Not that I have read either, actually, but I've generally heard that the Woodiwiss book was the start of a new kind of romance novel generally called "bodice rippers" because of the upped doses of sex.

A Company of Swans is about Harriet Morton, kind-hearted and downtrodden, who wants to escape her repressive family and become a ballerina in the Amazon. It makes more sense when you read the book, honest! She runs into Rom Verney, love ensues, etc. etc. etc. Doing plot summaries of romances is usually pretty beside the point, imho.

Anyhow. I'm still trying to decide if I liked this or not! I didn't dislike it, but there were some parts that borderline irked me, like the outright evilness of Rom's ex-love and Harriet's family, along with the shining goodness of Harriet. However, Ibbotson doesn't go into wall-throwing territory, because while Harriet is pure and good and the like, she's somehow so pure and good that I can't help but like her, rather like Honda Tohru in Fruits Basket. And while there are misunderstandings and the like, they don't go on for so long that I feel like hitting the characters on the head with a very large stick.

I also like that Rom and Harriet genuinely seem to like each other, and that when Rom has the (very bad) misunderstanding that Harriet is throwing herself at him, he begins to react like your standard romance novel hero (i.e. thinks this entitles him to have sex with her willy-nilly), he actually manages to stop and think and realize she is not doing so, which is more than I can say for your standard romance novel hero. Of course, part of this is because Harriet's goodness is so shiningly apparent.

Obviously, I am rather conflicted about this book.

Bonus points for being set in the 1910's as well as in the Amazon, both areas which most romances do not focus on. I'm curious to read Ibbotson's other romances to see how they compare. And it's just very strange, because while I can see many of the romance cliches that I so love to harp on, they're there in a different form. I can't tell if that's because Ibbotson is doing something with the cliches, or because she's writing in a period when the cliches haven't hardened into cliche, or if she's writing things that will eventually become cliche. I just realized I have no notion of the history of romance as a genre, and this irritates me.

Comments

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Yay for the 1910s!

To me, this book lives in an earlier period, so Harriet's sweetness and goodness don't bother me. All of Ibbotson's work seems that way to me, like they're meant to be the way they are, in a world separate from our own.

[oyceter]

That's what it felt like, and I was so sure it had been written before the Woodiwiss that I was surprised when I looked up the publication dates on Amazon! It's just a very different romance from what I'm used to, and I'm still trying to get accustomed to the style.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

I adore A Company of Swans.

(Yeah, I got nothing else. When Ibbotson's name is mentioned, I squee.)

(Which is not to say they're perfect books, but I read them in high school and college the first time, so I'm deeply imprinted on them. It's one of those texts where I can see flaws but they have little to do with my emotional engagement in the text.)

[oyceter]

Yay emotional imprinting ^_^. My favorite moment is Harriet's rather plaintive question as to what a girl has to do to get ruined.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I have been online too long. When I saw a short name starting with R and a longer name starting with H, my brain automatically parsed them as "Ron" and "Hermione."

Only for a moment, though.

[oyceter]

LOL! Hermione the ballet dancer, and Ron, the rich ballet patron, who loved her. What a fic that would be....

[rahael.livejournal.com]

Oh hey! Ibbotson. I like her - and I don't really have anything to compare her to in terms of romance as a genre, but in my locust like descent on the local libraries, I remember my pleasure when I hit the "I"s.....

[oyceter]

Oh cool! I've only heard of her via her Which Witch books, but oracne mentioned that she wrote romances as well, so I went to dig them up.