Stewart, Mary - The Ivy Tree

[oyceter]

Or: My First Gothic

Mary Grey (The Heroine) is wandering along in Northumberland when she's accosted by handsome Connor Winslow (The Dark Brooding Man), man in charge of the estate Whitescar (The House). He's the nephew of the current owner of Whitescar, and he mistakes Mary for his cousin Annabel, who was the favorite of said owner but who ran away eight years ago and is supposedly dead. Also, their meet cute (is it a "meet danger" in gothics?) is that Connor immediately threatens to drown Mary before learning she's not Annabel.

A scheme is hatched! Connor and his sister Lisa persuade Mary to impersonate Annabel in order to secure Whitescar in her grandfather's will. As one does! If her grandfather wills it to Annabel, Mary will then turn it over to Connor, who feels like he deserves it after all the work he puts in. Sundry complications ensue, including the arrival of cousin Julie, who is apparently the spitting image of Annabel.

I am not sure the gothic genre is one for me, as I found myself bored by most of the book. The assorted character interactions were a bit interesting, but as the secrets of Annabel's past and her reasons for fleeing eight years ago were revealed, I found myself longing for more secret clones kept in vats of suspicious liquid, wings, swords that are demons, and other sundry manga tropes.

Also, when the Big Reveal was revealed, I reacted by wanting the throw the book at something.

Spoilers

I feel having your first person narrator reveal herself to actually be Annabel through it all is cheating! I reread the first chapter, and Stewart does cleverly hide things by keeping Mary/Annabel's thoughts to a minimum and having her explain most things via dialogue. And the bit about thinking about Adam in the Garden of Eden was clever. But still! The whole physical description of Connor was like she was meeting him for the first time, and in general, I just feel cheated.

Also, there's this odd desire to keep things realistic in the book that didn't work for me. Annabel-as-Mary comments several times on how the impersonation scheme is something that only works in fiction, and that breaking of the fourth wall made me question the rationality of her decision to pose as Mary in the first place. And then there's the whole "I will let Adam think I'm Mary-as-Annabel so he won't know I'm actually Annabel!" thing that just had me going "Bzuh?"

I am not exactly sure why this didn't work for me when secret clones, evil twins, and secret clones of evil twins totally make sense in manga, but I suspect part of it is because in manga, everyone in the story acts like it makes total sense, so it's easier for me to suspend my disbelief.

... also, there's that whole fantasy element that's missing.

On the other hand, I brought Stewart's Nine Coaches Waiting and Barbara Michaels' Into the Darkness to Taiwan with me, so I will experiment a little more on gothics. But seriously! I wanted more leprosy and vast international conspiracies and people who are actually Lucifer!

Comments

[cofax7]

Some of Stewart's other stuff definitely has a fantasy element, although it's generally less evident than you would prefer.

Barbara Michaels often has a fantastic/horror element as well, if a mild one. I like Stewart, my favorite being Touch Not the Cat.

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I liked TNtC and its supernatural elements -- that was my first Stewart back in seventh grade. I really liked The Ivy Tree the first time I read it, and was about to reread it before I picked up Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and keep meaning to reread Nine Coaches too. I pretty much devoured Stewart's book in my teens, though I do wonder how they'll hold up now.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I think it's cheating too, but I found the whole concept of impersonating yourself so hilarious that I didn't care.

[oyceter]

Huh ok, will be interesting reading them.

[oyceter]

It was pretty hilarious, except I was too busy yelling at Stewart in my head!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Hey, TOUCH NOT THE CAT is one of my faves, too! Also THIS ROUGH MAGIC and THE MOONSPINNERS, though the reason for those might be the settings.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I read most of Stewart while I was in high school/early college, so I think I read them with little criticism--for me the chief interesting element was their sense of datedness--the way the heroine would dress and behave, for example.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

If you're interested in trying Victorian gothic stuff, I can ask my wife for recommendations -- it's one of her genres of choice these days, especially for bubblegum reading.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Read Madam Will You Talk if you want to try Stewart. Much, much better. No fantasy, but an overlay of medieval niftiness.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I'm a big Mary Stewart fan, and like The Ivy Tree a lot, although it's not my absolute favorite of hers. Nine Coaches Waiting is probably up there for me, as is Airs Above The Ground (mostly because of the topic) and The Gabriel Hounds. She's not super-outlandish, although she does have a lot of fantastic elements in her books - there won't be any actual demons incarnate lurking around!

[utsusemia.livejournal.com]

Hey! Gothics are actually one of my great weaknesses. Get me a brooding hero and a creepy house and I'm yours for the night. I think I read Wuthering Heights at too young and impressionable an age or something ;)

Into the Darkness is a great book, I think. I'm kind of addicted to Barbara Michaels/Eizabeth Peters, though. My favorite favorite Barbara Michaels is Vanish With the Rose, which is just completely awesome and Be Buried in the Rain, which I've read about five times. Admittedly, all read at that impressionable high school age, but I think she's a very good writer. If you don't like those, then you just don't like romances set in creepy houses.

It was great meeting you at Wiscon, btw! I need to hunt down that old thesis of mine, but I promise I'll send it. It's very funny imagining that someone is actually *interested* in it who isn't my thesis adviser. Heh.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I guessed the Big Secret before I looked at the spoiler.

In an sf novel, Julie would also be Annabel -- and there's no way of knowing which one is the clone.

In a fantasy novel, one of them would be a doppleganger -- and again, no way of telling which is the real one.

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

This is essentially the same basic set-up as in Josephine Tey's (non-Gothic) mystery "Brat Farrar." The main differences are that in "Brat Farrar" the protagonist who is persuaded to impersonate somebody whom he may in fact be (at one point he starts to wonder about this himself) is male. And the revelations at the end, though a bit implausible by objective standards, are less apt to leave you feeling as if the author has been cheating madly since page one. "Brat Farrar" is also a much better-written book, although I do recall liking Stewart's "The Ivy Tree" when I read it in high school.

Another aspect of "Brat Farrar" which you might find of interest is that the missing person the protagonist is impersonating has a twin, although I'm pretty sure they're not identical.

"Brat Farrar" was also dramatized (and somewhat updated) for British TV. The TV version was subsequently shown on PBS--sometime in the early '80's, I think--probably as one of the early installments of "Mystery!" The staging of this production clearly implied that the disgruntled distant relative who talked the protagonist into impersonating the missing heir(?) was gay, which actually made a couple of plot elements make more sense than they did in the book. E.g., the distant relative's apparent gayness provided a potential explanation for why he was both estranged from and eager to play vengeful tricks on the rest of the family (I don't recall any specific reason for his hostility even being hinted at in the book) and also suggested an additional reason why he was eager to strike up an acquaintance with the good-looking protagonist and enlist him in his scheme. There may be some much more subtle subtext to this effect in the original novel, which I believe was published in the early or mid-1960's or earlier, but if so it went right over my head when I read it in my teens.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I don't remember either, but I second the recommendation of both these things.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

The only gothic I've ever really loved is Rebecca.

[oyceter]

Oh! Yes! I forgot to note several instances in which Mary apologizes profusely to Con, saying something like, "All right, I'll start behaving like a reasonable human being now, not like a woman."

O_o

[oyceter]

Oooh, yes, that would be lovely! The more over-the-top and insane, the better.

[oyceter]

Oooh, ok, thanks!

[oyceter]

I will try Nine Coaches Waiting and see if I like it enough to go through her backlist!

[oyceter]

Hee! I actually read Wuthering Heights in 7th grade and bah-ed it as not having enough romance! I suspect it will be a fun reread now so I can yell at Heathcliff and Cathy in my mind.

Also, OMG, I will love you forever for getting me a copy of your thesis! Also also, I forgot if I told you or not, but apparently there's a kdrama coming out soon called Gourmet that's all about a chef going around regions in Korea and eating tasty food! I am so there.

[oyceter]

I know, I was secretly wondering if Julie was going to be a young Annabel clone or what!

[oyceter]

Cool, thanks for the rec! I was also thinking of Sarah Smith's The Vanished Child when I read the book. Though possibly it is a mystery trope? I have no idea; I tend to do poorly with mysteries because I'm not very invested in whether or not the mystery gets solved...

[oyceter]

That is on my list of things to read next!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Once you've read it, I have a good Alfred Hitchcock story to go with it. :D

[akycha.livejournal.com]

Over the top?

Well, for over-the-top, you can't beat The Monk by Matthew Gregory "the Monk" Lewis. The only book he's known for and it is a doozy.
Note: probably pretty offensive to Catholics, and the prose is really, unbelievably awful. The man could not write. But it doesn't matter when you're making one horrid discovery after another!

Mrs. Radcliffe, queen of Gothic! The Romance of the Forest made me laugh (the plot was being rather obviously tweaked in order to give people MORE ANGST!) but it's very moody and conveys a fine sense of the Gothic. And of course there is The Castle of Udolfo; you must read it, everyone must read Udolfo, after all, Austen's Catherine enjoyed it so much!

ANYTHING by Elizabeth Braddon. She wrote hundreds of novels, and the woman could write. She's best known for Lady Audley's Secret (fabulous!) and for The Doctor's Wife, the latter of which she wrote as a response to Madame Bovary, because she thought it wasn't a realistic depiction of the life of an imaginative woman. I really liked her character in The Doctor's Wife who is a writer of three-volume Gothic tales.

I cannot let the list lie without mentioning the badly titled Uncle Silas by LeFanu. I think LeFanu's novels are not particularly good in general, but in that one he maintained the Gothic mood so beautifully, and wound it up so tightly, that the reader is ready to spring out of the chair screaming by the climatic scene. I have never had my feelings so effectively harrowed.

I am also fond of Victorian blood-and-thunder, for which I favor Alcott and Collins. However, this comment is quite long enough, and I will shut up now!

[mari-redstar.livejournal.com]

Hey, I just read that! Disgruntled Distant Relation did, IIRC, say something to the effect of "Well, at least you believe I'm sincere about the plotting and not just trying to pick you up," while he was trying to convince Brat that this impersonation gig would be awesome, but I don't recall anything more obvious.

rot13 disagreement with your summary: Vg vf cerggl pyrne, gubhtu, V guvax, gung Oeng naq Cngevpx nera'g gur fnzr crefba- Cngevpx yvirq jvgu gur Nfuolf hagvy ur jnf guvegrra, naq Oeng terj hc va na becunantr, juvpu zrzbevrf jr tbg va guveq-crefba-yvzvgrq. Gurl zvtug'ir orra zber pntrl nobhg vg va gur GI nqncgngvba?

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

Sorry, everything after "summary" came out looking like some kind of code that it's beyond my power to crack.

[mari-redstar.livejournal.com]

Sorry myself, I should've linked: http://www.rot13.com , copypaste it into the box and hit cypher. The forums I hang out on use that to keep spoileriffic discussion separate and I got into the habit.

[oyceter]

Awesome! Thank you! I will look those up, though possibly when I am back in the US and have access to a library again!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

It's like reading science fiction!