4: Lonely Dog Woman Talks Romance

Welcome back lovely listeners of the Indie Book Club.

response and we’re really grateful for the huge ground swell of support we’ve received, the comments, the likes, and the shares. And we’ve even managed to inspire a couple of haters, which obviously means we’re on the map, people surely. My remarks about the scarcity of sexy men in the countryside obviously really hit a nerve and apologies for offending people with that. and apparently I only hold those views because I’m a lonely, embittered, sex starved catwoman, which actually shows how wrong people can be because the truth is I’m a lonely, embittered dog woman. And I can prove it as well.

If anyone has a look at the Inkspot social media feed, they will see that it regularly features my two pooches. So, today’s podcast is on romance, the most popular genre of all. And in order to get into the mood, for those of you and for those of you who can’t see, I’m wearing a red top with a moore written on it. And I do have to confess it’s not my favorite genre. I used to read an awful lot of it when I was younger. Probably because in common with everyone who doesn’t have many years on the clock, I had completely unrealistic notions of the sort of qualities a romantic partner ought to possess. And as you get older, you inevitably become a bit more cynical or at least realistic.

I do remember reading Alan Debbotton’s constellations of philosophy and there’s a section there on Schopenhau who believed that romantic love wasn’t about personal happiness at all. Instead, it’s a trick of the genes to ensure that we reproduce with a physically suitable partner and in order to make the strongest possible child. And as he puts it, we might imagine we’re choosing a partner for their eye color or their sense of humor or their taste in films, but in truth, we’re actually impelled by instincts whose logic will never really be fully revealed to us. So heartbreaks, the inevitable crash after this initial high. And love may feel like destiny, but it’s actually biology in action.

And this may sound very prosaic and I certainly didn’t feel this way when I was young, but looking back on some of my romantic choices, I kind of think that maybe shop and how might have been right. So when I was a teenager, I remember being absolutely blown away by Wuthering Heights when Kathy’s talking to Ellen and she says of Heathcliffe, “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” And I remember having this incredible catch in my throat when I read those words, that feeling of longing. that it’s very consuming and I needed to find someone like that. And surely everyone needs to find someone with the same soul as theirs, which is where the phrase soulmates comes from, right?

So, what I hadn’t considered is actually what kind of relationship Kathy and Heathcliffe would have had if she hadn’t ditched him and if they had actually managed to get together because she was absolutely horrible and he was even worse. They were both unutterably selfish, cruel, and violent. And they probably would have actually ended up killing each other. And can you imagine the children they may have had? Pure psychopaths without a doubt. And it’s really just as well that Kathy’s genes were tempered by Edgar Lintons, who was a much more gentle soul, the moon beam to her lightning.

 And as for Heathcliffe, his only child dies, and he doesn’t mourn him in the slightest, which tells you all you really need to know about him really. Although admittedly, he was an incredibly annoying child.
Kathy compromises herself in giving Heathcliffe up. She believes she would have degraded herself by marrying him, and so she settles for Edgar. But actually, all she succeeds in doing is making all three of them thoroughly miserable. So, compared to this epic story, traditional romance tropes by comparison are actually a bit simplistic and boring and very formulaic and they’re also pretty skewed towards the young. maybe it’s lonely Catwoman speaking again. There are probably loads of books about silver romances, but it’s a pretty small niche within the genre and generally I prefer historical or literary fiction instead.

I mean, I don’t mind if there’s a love story, but I prefer it to be a side dish rather than a main event. Saying that, though, there are plenty of older people who stick with romance through thick and thin, and they find it very comforting, escapist, and emotionally satisfying, especially during lonely or stressful times. So, younger readers like my ignorant teenage self just love the idea of passion and grand gestures and soulmates. But actually, as we become older, we get a bit more jaded and we realize there’s really no such thing as the perfect partner. And real relationships are very messy, complicated, and they often require pretty hard-headed compromises and sometimes even painful sacrifices.

And those are the things I find much more interesting to read about. Going back to my teenage self, I was completely obsessed with this idea of the byronic hero. So I was team Heathcliffe despite all of his terrible flaws. The byronic hero was tall, dark, handsome, and ing. Definitely older, more experienced than worldly wise. I wasn’t remotely interested in boys my own age who were just really dumb, ignorant, and inexperienced idiots just like me. Actually, I was darkly attracted to the idea of a tortured soul, a man who had suffered, a man with a past Byron, Heathcliffe, like Rochester. Can you imagine, though? Sometimes I do thank my lucky stars.

I never got exactly what I wanted. I certainly got tall and dark and handsome. That was a while ago. He’s a silver fox now. But moody and brooding can wear thin pretty quickly. You want someone that you can have a laugh with and not always at someone else’s expense. And the best kind of romantic partner is actually someone whose kindness is greatly underrated in this whole game of romance. someone who will make you a cup of tea when you’re having a rough day or will listen to you grumble about your mother or Bob from accounts and who will also be able to tell you to put a sock in it when the rugby’s about to begin but that’s really not the sort of thing that people want to read about.

So romance has a bad rap especially because of Mills and Boone and writers like Barbara Kartland and even when I was young I despised these books finding them formulaic and very sexist and that was actually in the 80s. So the Mills and Boon books were written to a formula. The heroine had to have certain qualities. Obviously, she had to be young, innocent, obviously a virgin, and she could be spirited. There was nothing wrong with that. But she had to be the decided economic and intellectual inferior of the hero who was, you guessed it, tall, dark, and handsome, usually brooding, and around 10 to 15 years older than the heroine. And there was zero diversity in these books.

diversity in a Mills and Boone book certainly when I was young was a blonde hero. So during the course of the narrative some sort of misunderstanding occurs usually at the beginning of the book which either causes the hero to doubt her virtue or for the heroine to doubt his principles. But happily when all of this is cleared up then it’s hearts and flowers all around. And Barbara Kartland’s books, they also featured virginal heroines, and all of her heroes had a touch of Byron about them, but without the sexual deviancy, obviously, without sex of any kind, in fact. And Barbara Carton was a pretty outlandish character and actually looked more like a cake than a person with her huge buff hair and even bigger pink dresses, and she was brilliantly parodied in Little Britain by Matt Lucas with his Dame Sally Markham.

But actually, to be fair to Barbara, she made a very decent living by tapping into the deep wellspring of female longing. So, you may well ask why I know so much about Mills and Boon books without reading them. That’s because when I left school, I thought casually scribbling a few of these books would be a great way to supplement my very meager income. My first job was franking mail for marry cury cancer care and Mills and Boon actually sent me the formula but it’s much harder than you may suppose to churn out romance and I never finished the draft I started and actually the world is really hardly the poorer for it. So sure I was reading romances but I preferred books about love preferably the racy spicy kind.

I love Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper, Shirley Conan, and Sydney Sheldon. These books had tons of romance in them, but they also had a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And they didn’t always end neatly, and the characters really went through the mill. The sex was eyeopening. I mean, I got into so much trouble at school for reading Jackie Collins during lessons. I just couldn’t help it. So I may have physically been in a geography lesson in a cold classroom in Dosville, Monmouth in Wales, but actually spiritually I was lying by a poolside in Beverly Hills with a daiquiri in one hand and a joint in the other and probably with a gun hidden under the pool lounger and my mates and I obsessively passed these books between us and if you opened them they would just naturally fall open at the racy bit.
So Mills and Boon and Barbara Kartland really held zero attraction for me. 

And there was another author I despised for pretty much the same reason and that was Georgette Heyer. Regency romances with pastel pink or blue covers and I really decided they were not for me. I snobbishly assumed they were firmly in the pink puke bucket. So I never bothered to even open one. And I also don’t remember anyone telling me that she was worth the effort, which is pretty strange as I was always known as a big reader and I was always talking about books to people.

But no one ever waved the Georgette flag. But for the purposes of this podcast, I thought I’d better bone up on her work as she was such a poster child of romance. So, what an eyeopener. That’s all I can say. I’m actually really ashamed of my narrow-minded prejudice in the first place. Her heroines are no shrinking violets. They are smart, they’re sassy, often sarcastic, and they know what they want, and they really aren’t afraid to go and get it after marriage, of course. But you do get a sense that things are going to go swimmingly for her characters in the bedroom after they’ve got a ring on their finger, which is actually not true of Barbara Cartland’s books at all.
NA wrote over 50 books, most of them romances, so it’s almost impossible to get familiar with the entire is that how you pronounce it. as it’s impossible to read so many books so quickly, so I focused on two of them. That’s Catillian and Grand Sophie. And since then, I’ve stumbled on podcasts, websites, blog pieces, all devoted to her books. And I’m actually really excited to read more of them as she’s like Jane Austin with sass. The banter’s sparkling. The heroins are great. Her heroes are actually three-dimensional who are pretty complex, although far from being by. And above all, the books are funny.

The dialogue is great, full of clever rapport and lots of authentic Regency slang and all of it is really well researched. Jane Austin was writing contemporary novels whereas Geette Ha was writing about Regency London in the 1930s. So, Catillian, the heroine Kitty, is told by her mostly uncle, who’s her guardian, that he’ll leave his entire fortune to her, but only if she marries several nephews. All the smart money is on the rakish and devastatingly handsome Jack, but he’s far too cool for school.

So Kitty ropes one of the nephews, Freddy, into a pretend engagement so she can get away from her uncle and go to London for a bit and have some fun. She’s had a pretty sheltered life up to this point. Chaos ensues during which Kitty discovers that Jack really ain’t all that, and Freddy has some hidden qualities. Spoiler alert, the pretend engagement eventually becomes real, but not before Kitty finds out that Jack is a merchant banker. That’s Cockney rhyming slang, by the way. And that Freddy is very kind-hearted, utterly dependable, and not nearly as witted as he appears. And above all, that she can have a laugh with him. Perfect. It’s a really fun and thoroughly satisfying read. Then there’s The Grand Sophie. What I really appreciated about this one is that all the suffering is actually done by the hero rather than the heroine.

Sophie is an utterly self- assured, well-traveled girl who goes to stay with her aunt and immediately begins to straighten out everyone’s lives. She’s tall with generous proportions. How No skinny minis here. It’s a really gloriously fun read. And I’m excited to have discovered a new author. There is a fly in the ointment, one shared with the otherwise wonderful Anthony Trollet novels, and that is occasionally the pretty awful anti-semitism and general xenophobia towards anyone who isn’t all round English. And if you haven’t read these books and you can overlook these flaws, then you’re really in for an absolute treat if you decide to dive in.
There is another thing that I find remote quite creepy about Jane Austin and also Anthony Trollope and Geette Ha and that is the propensity for all these characters to marry their cousins which is just horrible. But I did see a quote in one of these websites that said if Jane Austin and PG Woodhouse had a literary love child that baby would grow out to be Geette Hera. And you can’t really get higher praise than that. And the lesson for me is I will never make assumptions about authors without reading them ever again. So who’s writing romance today? The hottest romance authors right now are absolutely killing it on book talk. And they don’t just appeal to the young.

They’re finding an audience amongst all age groups as they found ways to reinvent and refresh the genre. I have to confess that I haven’t read her books, but I’m told that Emily Henry writes really witty romantic comedies as the queen of sad girl romances, with jokes. And I love jokes, so obviously I’d give her books a try. Her titles are really enticing. Beach Read is a wonderfully meta title. And who wouldn’t want to read a book called People We Meet on Vacation? And as for book lovers, of course, I’d read a book called Book Lovers. And Ali Hazelwood writes books about geeky heroins. And Christina Lauren, it’s actually a a partnership. They produce fastpaced and fun romances like The Unhoneymooners, which is totally fun froth with lots of great lines.

There’s really nothing new under the sun because much like Geette Ha’s Kitty and Freddy’s pretend engagement, Olive and Ethan go on honey on a honeymoon pretending to be newly weds and they can’t stand each other. But actually, they’re the only two people in the entire wedding party who aren’t struck down by food poisoning. And although they have beef, neither can pass up the chance of a free holiday, which is fair enough because I’d probably go on holiday too with someone I couldn’t stand if it was free.

 
Anna Huang leans towards the dark and dramatic, and she’s an absolute favorite with teen girls who want to read about the steamier side of romance. My 13-year-old loves her books, and I find it hard to be authoritarian about it when I was reading Jackie Collins at her age. Huang’s twisted love series is huge. I haven’t read any Colleen Hoover, but she clearly is quite happy to stray away from the hearts and flowers, and she doesn’t shy away from big issues like domestic violence and abuse. Good for her, because I’ve heard that it ends with us, for example, has a lot of emotional honesty as it’s based on Hoover’s own mother’s experience. And she’s attracted a lot of criticism as the abuser in this book is not portrayed as a horrific monster.

But this probably makes the book more realistic. But to have an opinion about it, I’d have to read it or at least watch the movie. Going back to books that I have read, I did read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reed. I wouldn’t normally have picked up this book, but it was the most promising on offer in a hotel library, and I love hotel libraries, and I had a plane to catch, and I did quite enjoy it. I like that it was a love story with a difference, but I found it ultimately a bit disappointing. It totally lacked tension. The protagonist difficulties were far too easily resolved and also I predicted the twist a little bit too early. And I also felt and maybe this is wholly unfair that Jenkins Reed wasn’t completely familiar with the world that she was writing about i.e.

Whereas Jackie Collins, for example, was completely authentic about the same subject. She knew that world absolutely inside out, and I didn’t doubt a single one of her details. And she was absolutely brilliant at sustaining tension right to the last page, which is a really rare skill, and it’s one that writers today would do really well to master. The authors like Talia Hibbit are broadening the genre in new and refreshing ways. Aliah Hibbit’s Brown Sisters is ultimately a romcom, but it includes very real diverse characters with a bit of chronic illness and neurodevergence thrown in.

It’s a story told with a lot of warmth and heart. So, my preferences for stories with emotional depth and real world messiness. And probably my all-time favorite romance book is David Nichols One Day. And in fact, I really don’t think it’s fair to label it that way. I absolutely loved it. It follows Dexter and Emma who are two students who meet each other on the night they graduate and then it follows the course of their relationship over 20 years with a single day snapshot each year on since Swan’s day. And what I really loved about it is how the characters develop in front of us and how the dynamic between them changes over time.

And it’s not a conventional romance at all, but it is very deeply romantic and it’s structured in an absolutely genius And I only read it once years ago and it’s definitely time to read it again. Another book I really loved was Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, which is a very funny rise story about a record shop owner who’s a typical bloke. He’s emotionally stunted and he takes his girlfriend for granted. And during the course of the novel, he really grows up. And I loved it so much that I had a go at Fever Pitch because someone persuaded me that you didn’t have to be a football fan to read that book. Which actually turned out to be really bad advice. So, you can tell that I do love a love story, but I like them to be character-driven and to have some depth, bittersweet, emotionally rich, and not necessarily tied up with a neat red bow.

And the focus on these books is on personal growth and they’re told in very witty ways with a strong narrative voice. It’s interesting that two of my favorite love stories are written by men. But before I’m accused of sexism, I did not enjoy Nicholas Sparks the notebook. I thought it was a sentimental twaddle, a total schmez Nicholas. but my derision has not remotely affected his book sales.
I love Tony Parson’s Man and Boy and also Graeme Swift’s Mothering Sunday. So, who knew men can do romance, too. I’ve heard amazing things about Dolly Alderton’s Ghosts and also Monica Highley’s really good. These may well be my next plane reads as I’m just about to take my daughter to New York for Easter and she’s never been before and is so excited. She wants to go to Joe’s Pizza to go shopping and of course she wants to go to an ice hockey game. And this is relevant because did you know there’s an absolute niche genre of ice hockey romances which she is absolutely obsessed by and they are absolutely huge on booktop and they ought to start a smut talk. Maybe I should start one actually.

This podcast wouldn’t be complete without listing a few of the greatest romantic novelists of all time, which is probably how I should have started it. Obviously, Jane Austin is the undisputed queen of the field. Her novels have been endlessly read and reread, adapted, parodied, and above all, adored by readers for over two centuries, and all of them are love stories, but they are elevated to another plane by the sheer wit and ironic tone, not to mention the development of truly wonderful characters. She only wrote six books. My favorites are Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, followed by Emma and Sense and Sensibility.

I think Persuasion and North Anger Abbey are decidedly weak by comparison, and I’m looking forward to a slew of hateful comments for daring to diss two of Miss Austin’s novels. Mansfield Park is a really interesting one. I never get tired of reading it, even though Fanny and Edmund are two of the most poofaced, humilous, goody two shoes lovers imaginable. They really need to get drunk and have a good shag. But sadly, it’s just not going to happen. The Bronte’s on the other hand, we’ve already discussed the peerless weathering heights and Charlotte’s Janeire is another fabulous book. Emily and Charlotte were far more passionate than Anne, I feel, and more inclined to rough up their characters. Charlotte’s heroine, Lucy Snow in Valley, falls in love with a French professor. A fascinating character, and it’s a very slow burning romance, but nonetheless very deeply felt.

When I was a romantic teenager, I read Philip Aar’s Daughters of England series, a family saga which began with the miracle that’s in Bruno’s in the 1500s, followed by the lion triumphant and the witch from the sea. Each book follows the fictional fortunes of a different generation of daughters from the same family set against a reasonably accurate historical background. And this book, Saraban for Two Sisters, which I still have 30 or 40 years on, tells the story of twins who find themselves on opposite sides of the Civil War.
and I have to reread it to see if it has the same effect on me because when I finished this book, I was so deeply affected that I couldn’t think of anything else for weeks and I actually went into a bit of a decline. and I probably cheered myself up by picking up a Jill Cooper. In fact, when I was in my early 20s, I was invited to a party that I’ve been really looking forward to for weeks. And it was on a Saturday and around 3:00 in the afternoon before getting ready for the party, I decided to pick up Riders and I didn’t make it to the D. It’s a really thick doorstopper of a book and I finished it when the sun was coming up. basically fortified by mural lights and coffee.

It is such a brilliant book and the sequel, Rivals, was just as much fun to read and equally gripping. And I hardly ever watch TV, but I did make an exception for the recent Rivals series, which was so amazingly adapted and so true to the book. And yes, it has tons of sex, but Jill’s really a romantic at heart, and her books are just wonderful. And sure, there are elements which haven’t aged very well. Some of the male characters occasionally beat the female ones up, but it happens once or twice, but when it does, it’s pretty memorable. but they are so funny and truly page turning and they really earn that overused label, un-put-down-able. Dafne Demoria really has to have a mention as well.

Her books are very dramatic gothic romances full of psychological suspense and she actually probably deserves a podcast all to herself, as do so many of the writers I’ve mentioned today. Rebecca is a wonderful book with the sinister Mrs. Danvers and the shadow of Rebecca hanging over the second Mrs. Dwinter who actually is a bit of a wet wipe. In fact, my husband does a really great impression of Lawrence Olivier as Max Dwinter. I’ll have a go myself, although I’m really rubbish at it. It’s a hatch I could never hatch. I love you, you silly little fool or something equally cringey as that.

Jojo Moyes is a contemporary favorite who apparently writes love stories that grapple with big emotional and ethical themes. The trouble is I do hold a bit of a grudge against her as she was invited to host a book club session at the Chipping Norton Literary Festival. I was a trustee for many years and it’s very sadly defunct now due to funding pressures and identity politics. and we sold a number of tickets for the event along with a few of her books. and then she cancelled after we’ printed the program. And sure, these things happen. You may be thinking and it could have been due to any number of good reasons. But actually, she can lead to attend a bigger festival elsewhere. But I have decided it’s probably time to forgive her after all these years. By all accounts, her books are fabulous. And she may not have even been aware of it.

Even then, she was pretty big and someone else was probably managing her diary. But my shrink says I have to get over it, so I will. So, I haven’t mentioned the tragic love stories of Leo Tolstoy and Thomas Hardy. And in fact, I’d really love to do a whole podcast on tragic love stories, but it would be full of spoilers. War in Peace is an immense book full of drama with a huge cast of characters. But the most memorable thread of the story is the burgeoning love between Natasha and Prince Andre and how it all goes horribly wrong. She’s young and immature and is tempted away from Andre by Caragen and lives to bitterly regret her moment of folly. It’s really tearjerking stuff and plays havoc with the waterworks.

In fact, I didn’t read War in Peace. I listened to it and it’s such a big book that each section had to have a different narrator, but it was really really worth the time and effort and I would highly recommend it. You may have heard of it, by the way. I’ve mentioned Anthony Trollope a number of times. His books are also doorstoppers with a vast number of themes, but ultimately the central thread of each of his stories is a love story. And most of the lovers in his books are too poor to get married or are denied their parents’ consent for one reason or another. but in the majority of cases, they get their hearts reward in the end, but not always.

And Trolip also includes more than one heroine who actually proposes marriage rather than meekly waiting for the bloke to do it, which I think is really cool. And he’s great at injecting humor into his books and is a master at populating them with comic characters. So, I’m a really huge fan despite the aforementioned xenophobia and anti-semitism and also the fondness for marrying close relatives, that’s probably enough for me as I’m starting to repeat myself, which is a real risk when it’s 1:00 in the morning. You’re trying to finish something before you go on holiday. Thank you so much for listening and please comment, and share.

But before I go, I do have a couple of questions. Have I missed one of your favorite romances out? If so, we’d love to hear from you. Would you be interested in a podcast on tragic love stories, even though it may be stuffed with spoilers? Obviously, Dr. Shivago and Anna Coranina would get a mention, but there are no surprises there because everyone knows the Russians aren’t a happy bunch, but there may be other stories where the spoilers may ruin the surprise. Our next podcast is going to be something completely different. I’m really looking forward to interviewing Andrew Pierce about his memoir, Finding Margaret, which tells of his search for his birth mother. His book has been published by Biteback Books and has become a well-deserved Sunday Times bestseller. So, we hope you’ll join us for that. Good night.