I have really fallen down the Georgette Heyer pit this year. I’m not sure why. I tend to blame it on a rainy afternoon in the seaside town of Lyme Regis, and a certain dusty old bookstore there. But this can only be half the truth, because after reading my way through the couple I bought there, I went to the other end of the technology spectrum and bought a couple more on Kindle for my iPhone. In my defence, I had thoroughly run out of things to read, and was facing two days staring down the barrel of the city state of Luxembourg. So: FRIDAY’S CHILD.
I understand from my friend the internet that this is among the most popular of all Heyer’s books, and I would say deservedly so. Heyer really churned these things out, and I sort of like this idea I have of her, ferociously cynical, chain smoking, turning out these frothy romances by the dozen. I am even therefore quite fond of the ones where she is obviously re-working an old theme and can hardly wait to be done and get back on the golf course or whatever. This is not one of those.
I need hardly describe the plot, but I will anyway. This is one of the ones where a couple has to get married for not very believable non-romantic reasons (in this case an inheritance) and end up falling in love after all. They joy of this one is that the many characters are entertainingly well-drawn and a real spirit of fun animates the writing. Heyer would be ashamed of me were I to go so far as to quote the drivel, but it did make me laugh.
What also made me laugh was a strange feature of Kindle which is called ‘X-Ray’. I have no idea what this is supposed to be, but it seems like it is intended to provide some kind of summary of the main characters. Some are described as if a human read the book (e.g. ‘Ravensby: a friend of Sherry’s’) but others clearly just pull some text from wherever the name first appears (e.g., ‘Ferdy: Ferdy looked at his watch’). But enjoy this one:
God: God is often conceived as the Supreme Being and principal object of faith. The concept of God as described by theologians commonly includes the attributes of omniscience. . .
Clearly at some point someone says ‘God’ so the algorithm goes to the dictionary. It’s hilariously machine learned. I also very much like the vision of some man sitting at a desk having got to the ‘G’s and having to come up with a definition of God.
I’m not sure how this blog post ended up with God, but there you are: I guess this time he’s the Omega.