Surrender My Love: Cocker Spaniel Zoos

Okay – so instead of offering constant apologies I’m going to abandon all schedules. My aim will be to do two posts a week, but no promises as to when they arrive. Surprises for all! I suggest taking advantage of the rss feed for now…

Last time we saw Krista she had just been pushed down the stairs by an unknown assailant. She wakes up surrounded by all of the tour group, including an especially shaken Ryan (he calls her ‘darling’). Luckily she’s unhurt, except for a twisted ankle. As is often the case with near-death experiences and injuries in romance novels, the incident brings Krista and Ryan closer together: he carries her all the way to the bus. 

Another reference to marriage rituals and customs is made as they all drive to Marrakesh. Halfway there Hamid points out Imichil where the “Moroccan marriage market” is held. Eve is disdainful and wonders that “selling women like slaves” still goes on, but Hamid is not happy at the suggestion that it’s slavery. He argues that “slavery has nothing to do with it […] Imichil is a tribal area where our people merely cling to their ancient customs” (83). And then the men make a series of jokes about their own wives: basically, ‘take my wife, please’. 

When they finally reach Marrakesh, Ryan makes Krista take a bath for her sore muscles. Sexy! The next morning they’re actually getting along for once and banter over their croissants. 

It’s funny, because usually these ‘tourist’ setting novels are not actually about tourists. Often the hero and heroine are in the country because one of them lives there or works there or some other reason. But in this novel, Krista and Ryan actually are tourists (despite their ostensible ‘zoo’ job rationale). So the next place they go is the souk in Marrakesh, a hotspot of Moroccan tourism. They see a snake charmer and make jokes about belly dancers.

And then they actually do go to the zoo, the Toubkal Zoo and Botanical Gardens, which sadly are not that impressive.  The zoo does have some camels. And a few lions and leopards in small, but clean cages. And some pedigree dogs, including cocker spaniels and German shepherds! Yes, dogs.

This is suspicious. Why is Hamid taking them to a boring zoo? Is he just a terrible guide or is there something else going on? He leaves Ryan and Krista to look around the zoo while he conducts some ‘business’.  

In any case, after a quick tour, Krista wanders off by herself (she has a habit of doing this). She doesn’t like to see Eve and Ryan interacting, but won’t admit it. Hamid catches her alone and asks her another favour. He wants her to look up a friend of his when she’s in Switzerland (their next destination). Apparently this friend is studying biology in Heidelberg, but will be on vacation in Switzerland. He will be hanging out at the zoo there and Krista could just meet him easily. Hamid suggests she show the friend the little book in Arabic that he gave her and he could translate the supposed proverbs that it contains. 

So suspicious! And it’s not even a very good cover? That’s not really the kind of favour you ask of someone.  Please, meet my friend who hangs out in zoos. Why?

And then Hamid warns Krista that she and Ryan might want to cut their trip in Morocco short, because she is in danger. She doesn’t think it’s likely they’ll do that, but she does promise to talk to Ryan about it. To me, it actually sounds like Hamid is threatening Krista but it’s going over her head. “I sincerely hope there won’t be any trouble” he says, “but sometimes innocent people get hurt in our political maneuverings” dot…dot…dot… (120). 

Well, what is Hamid involved in, and why is he so intent on having Krista bring his little book to Switzerland? And why doesn’t she find this suspicious at all? Next installment!

Surrender My Love: Twin beds and dark stairways

Apologies for the lateness of this post!

When we last saw them, Ryan and Krista (I keep on accidentally typing Ryan and Trista – I think we all know why) had just met the other members of their Moroccan tour, including genial Jeff, seductive Eve and their guide Hamid.

As the bus trip begins, we get the full complement of trivia  about Morocco. For example, Krista wonders why there are so many people going towards the cemetery. Hamid informs us all that “This is Friday, a Holy Day in the Moslem religion.  Families go to our cemeteries to spend the day with the dead” (40). Someone, of course, asks about how many wives men are allowed and one of the travelers answers: “'Each man can legally have four wives,' he droned in precise tones. ‘The present king has two—a Moroccan woman who is the mother of the Crown Prince and a French wife as well’” (42).

It’s not surprising that Janice Radway, in Reading the Romance (1984), found that the small-town American romance readers she spoke with felt that reading romances educated them about the world.  Many Harlequins from the 1970s, especially Harlequin Presents, (and Signet romances too, as we see here) set in international settings play up this aspect, sometimes even offering a short ‘facts about the country’ at the back of the book.

We sense the first hint of the promised mystery and intrigue when their tour is slowed down by a roadblock up ahead. Apparently there was an assassination attempt on the King a few years ago and security has been stepped up since then. Before they reach the roadblock, Hamid gets off the highway and takes them to a small café in a nearby town, supposedly because the line for the roadblock might clear a bit later. Krista takes a little walk off from the rest of the group and Hamid joins her. He gives her a gift of a small booklet written in Arabic and bound in red Moroccan leather and asks her not to tell any of the other travelers, because they might be hurt. 

This is very suspicious and Krista doesn’t seem enthused (although she is more confused than suspicious - she doesn't know she's in a romantic suspense novel), but I suppose there’s not an easy way to refuse the purported gift of a book. 

In any case, they get through the roadblock just fine and reach their hotel in Fez. Krista had mused that Fez looks “like something out of the Arabian Nights”, but their hotel is “an extravagantly modern two-story stucco building which looked more like Palm Springs than the fabled interior of Morocco” (56). Krista and Ryan, of course, have to share a room, since the original bookings were made for the previous Director of the Zoo and his wife. And they’re actually married! The room, however, has two twin beds, which you would think would satisfy Krista’s sensibilities, but she also goes to the trouble of dragging a heavy leather screen from the balcony inside and placing it in-between the two beds.  I wonder whether a twin-bed arrangement was the standard one for hotel rooms at the time? Anyone? I’ve never seen this in my experience: it’s usually either two full or double beds or one double or queen. 

Ryan is a little insulted by this. But the rest of the night is uneventful. 

The next day the group tours the city and ends up at the college of Bou Inania. They all climb a dark and twisty staircase up to the roof of the college to see the view of the medina. Everyone is impressed by the architecture, the mosaics and the fountain. While Ryan and Jeff are taking photos, Krista takes the stairs back down to the bus.  This is when the intrigue really gets going, as the quiet stairwell suddenly feels "oppressive and threatening" (74). Then, Krista is pushed by an unknown person and falls down the stairs. 

Who was it? And why would they want to hurt a lowly zoo employee? Maybe we’ll find out on Monday…

Surrender My Love: I got fake-married for this?

Another desert romance from the 1970s. This one is, surprising, not a Harlequin. It’s published by Signet: Surrender My Love, by Glenna Finley, 1974 (not to be confused with Johanna Lindsey’s historical romance of the same name).

Like Court of the Veils, this romance is more of a desert romance than a sheik romance. It’s set in Morocco, but none of the main characters are sheiks. The back blurb also says it’s a “tale of love and danger” but I haven’t reached the danger part yet…So, be prepared for excitement!

Surrender my Love has the most terribly motivated fake marriage that I have ever read. Krista Blake and Ryan Talbot both work for an American zoo.  Their boss and his wife were invited to a zoo tour and government junket in Morocco (and Europe, although the book is set in the Moroccan part of the tour). At the last minute, they are unable to go and Krista and Ryan take their place. For reasons that are not clear to me, Ryan and Krista get married before they go on the trip because they think that will cause less workplace gossip? But they’re planning on getting an annulment afterwards, which will, I assume, cause an enormous amount of gossip.

THIS MAKES NO SENSE. Obviously, Ryan is secretly in love with Krista, and that’s his motivation, but even then, it makes no sense that they’ve gotten married. This is 1974! They’re on a trip for work! A zoo trip! Other fake-marriage or fake-engagement romances are often also fairly implausible, but at least they make sense. A tycoon thinks that a business owner will only sell him the business if he believes the tycoon is a stable family-man? That makes sense. It's a silly reason to get married, but it makes sense. There is no indication in this novel, however, that anyone else cares whether they are married or not. Sigh…

Anyway, the novel begins with their ferry trip from Spain to Morocco. Krista and Ryan are not getting along well. They snipe at each other and Ryan offers Krista unsolicited advice about the possibilities of sunstroke. They exposition the reason for their fake-marriage. Krista is skeptical about the necessity of it (yes!), but Ryan suggests that one reason for it is that zoo curators “don’t operate in the ‘beautiful people’ league. No affairs—no swinging swap sessions—we’re the conservative, dull, reliable sort who just pay taxes” (9). Okay, then.

When they arrive in to the dock at Tangier, Krista is surprise to find that it doesn’t look “very different from the rest of the world” (17). While Ryan had earlier referenced the romantic trope of sheik abduction, with a waiter in place of a sheik (“you’ll probably fall madly in love with a Moroccan waiter. Over here, they snatch you up and carry you off to the edge of the Sahara” (16)), he dismisses Krista’s expectations that Morocco will look like “a Charles Boyer movie”, as he describes it (17).  References to other media set in the Orient are popular in sheik romances, even if the references disclaim the connections. In fact, this reminds me of when I went on a bus tour for research in Morocco – we watched Casablanca on the bus on our way back to Casablanca!

In some ways, this book is like a tour of Morocco: we’re presented with a lot of interesting facts and trivia about the country and customs. For example, Krista and Ryan discuss whether the men they see in the port are wearing djellabahs or caftans; Ryan tells Krista “for your information, they're djellabahs.  Caftans are the same thing but a more deluxe model. They come in all colors” (18). We also learn that the reason some of the signs are in French is that “the French and Spanish left their mark when they occupied this part of the world” (19).

Krista and Ryan’s fellow travelers are: 

Hamid, the tour guide, who is in his early twenties; Herb Freeman, who’s in hospital administration; Jeff Snow, who’s in PR for the State Department; Mr. Weston, who’s in Public Health in the States, and his wife; and Eve Lenz (the Other Woman), who’s a pediatric psychologist, originally from Vienna and now living in the States.  Mysteriously, Eve was apparently a consultant to the Vienna zoo before she moved to the States. 

A very mixed bag. And they’re all piled into the bus and taken on a journey through Morocco. 

Next up… Is Ryan attracted to the glamorous Eve Lenz? And why are there so many roadblocks?

All of the mistakes...

I can’t believe it’s already the beginning of term. How did the summer end so quickly? I’m too busy already…

A short post today, then:

Film fans in the 1920s were not so different from some fans today – they liked to catch out the filmmakers on inaccuracies and errors in continuity. Here’s a recurring column from Photoplay from 1922 (from the Internet archive, as usual, volume 22, page 213) “Why Do They Do It”:

Maybe Moran was a Weather Prophet!

Among the letters is one about sheik movies, written by Achmed Ali Berez, late of Oran, Algeria. If the letter is not simply made up, then Photoplay had quite the reach indeed! Achmed writes in to say that “It is amusing to one who has been brought up in the desert to see pictures such as ‘The Sheik’ and ‘The Sheik’s Wife’. Permit me to criticize.” 

Some of Achmed’s criticisms of these films: 

• “One does not see an Arab with glasses and still less with pince-nez.” This must be a reference to ‘The Sheik’s Wife’ because I don’t remember anyone wearing glasses in ‘The Sheik’.  Valentino certainly doesn't.

• A lengthy paragraph about the importance of horses and horseback fighting. So I suppose horses might be compared with women so often in sheik romances just because horses actually were very popular?

I also like the next letter, written by “A Nurse, Bluefield, West Virginia”, pointing out the inacurracies of “The Glorious Fool”:

• “Why didn’t the head nurse wear a cap? Where did Helene get her method of taking a temperature? She put the thermometer under her patient’s arm, then took a nap.”

Inaccuracies everywhere! It’s interesting to speculate on what pages like this reveal about movie culture. Should films reflect real-life practice (a perennial topic of discussion about representations of policework and forensics on tv shows like CSI)? Or is it simply fun to find errors (like one of those newspaper spot the difference pages)?

Monday – a new sheik novel!

New post on Thursday!

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday - I was enjoying the Labor Day weekend too much!

Palace of the Pomegranate: The noble yet savage palm tree

And now the thrilling finale! Sadly, this is (I feel) not one of Winspear’s best romances and it actually ends quite abruptly.  But let’s go back to where we left off…

Grace is pointing a gun at Kharim, threatening to shoot him unless he gives her an escort out of the desert and back to Reza Shahr. “She would be unafraid to use it, for she was Grace Tillerton Wilde, and the derring-do and ruthless will of Jonas were in the marrow of her shapely bones” (112).  The derring-do of a toffee baron, that is.

Kharim tries to talk her out of it, but ultimately he takes her by surprise and disarms her. Grace tries to run away, but he catches her. He puts her to bed and then she reveals that she was never 'intimate', shall we say, with her husband. Once Kharim hears this, he refers to her as “now mon enfant rather than ma belle” (120). As I suggested previously, Grace’s virginity marks her as not a ‘woman’, despite her age. Now she’s even been downgraded from attractive male youth to ‘my child’. 

After this, nothing much seems to change. Grace and Kharim argue. Kharim gives her a beautiful brooch. Kharim compares Grace to a thoroughbred. Grace thinks about the cruel, cruel desert. And she learns that they’re on their way to Kharim’s palace: the titular Palace of the Pomegranate. She’s also taken to calling Kharim ‘seigneur’ (which harkens back to The Sheik’s monseigneur). So now she calls him seigneur and he calls her mon enfant. 

One day, when they are almost at the palace, Grace and Kharim are riding and arguing and she has finally had enough. She whips her horse into running into the desert. But her escape attempt is not successful. Very strikingly, Winspear writes:

“Her confidence billowed like her windswept cloak…and then came sudden and shocking deflation as Beauty [her horse], in his wild free motion, stumbled upon one of the sandstone rocks half buried in the sand” (143). 

Beauty breaks his leg and Grace has to simply wait there until Kharim finds her. As in The Sheik, it is the horse that suffers, as Kharim has to shoot it. I wonder if there’s something to the fact that in both novels horses are compared to women and then bear the brunt of women’s efforts to escape patriarchal power. Psychoanalytic speculation welcome!

And then this incident is capped with Grace riding back to camp in Kharim’s arms “like a child” (150).

At last the tribe has reached their encampment outside of Kharim’s palace.  This is the occasion of Shalena’s wedding to Achmed. Grace dresses up and thinks that she looks “almost as if she had stepped out of the canvas of an Ingres painting” (155) – another reference to past representations of the Orient. Kharim, she thinks, is “as noble and savagely graceful as the tall palm trees” (159). I’m not sure I think of palm trees as ‘savage’, but that could just be me.

Anyway, the wedding goes well, Shalena is very excited and Achmed is happy. When Achmed carries her out of the tent, “Grace saw Shalena suddenly tighten her arms about Achmed’s neck. Love for him had overcome her moment of terror, as love was meant to do” (167). Grace begins to wonder what her own feelings about Kharim are, exactly. And just as Grace is wondering, she feels like Kharim is planning to get rid of her. He has said that he will take her back to Reza Shahr after all. Good old push and pull! 

The palace is beautiful, as we might have expected.  Sheik’s palaces in sheik romances are never ill-kept, moldering heaps.  Grace thinks that “she had surely found Sheba’s garden at last, only to know that one day soon she would be turned out of it” (174). She believes that Kharim could never love a woman “not of his own heritage” (174), although he’s never said anything of the kind. 

But then she has a conversation with a second Eastern woman with a speaking part! This is an older woman, Hathaya, who is Kharim’s housekeeper. She reveals that Kharim’s mother was one lady Rachel. 

Vindicated! My ability to predict plots is pretty good, if I do say so myself. Kharim’s mother is indeed Rachel Leah Bourne, the well-known travel writer, whose books inspired Grace to travel into the desert . 

Rachel and Kharim’s father had met and married, but he died in a military skirmish while she was pregnant. She returned to the Palace and raised Kharim under the guardianship of his grandfather, the old khan. Hathaya speculates that because of his mother’s Englishness, “it is inevitable that [Kharim] will have eyes for an English woman” (183).

This gives Grace hope. She dresses for dinner in a Persian-style outfit: trousers and shift and veil. And Kharim comes to dinner dressed in a European dress-suit. It’s like Grease, when Sandy and Danny try to fit in with what they think the other wants by dressing in tight tight pants and a cardigan, respectively! Sadly, no singing follows.

Instead, they go to the roof. They stand there and stare into each other’s eyes and without anyone saying anything, everything is apparently resolved: “like a star bursting into stunning silver pieces the truth struck at them” (190). They kiss and Grace thinks that “he had been born of an English mother, but in his heart and his bones he was a Persian, of a different creed and culture…yet Grace knew as he held her that they were one heart, one soul, mingling forever in their two bodies” (190). The End.

This was an interesting book, if emotion-wise a bit all over the place. It didn’t feel like a book set in the 1970s (despite the cover’s '70s aesthetic) – it really felt like it could have been set at the same time as Hull’s The Sheik. The hero does turn out to be ‘actually’ Persian, while still having the ‘not really’ of an English mother. I’m looking forward to seeing how the next book deals with this...

Next up: a 1920s magazine post! I feel like I haven’t done one in forever!