Books We Love (Or Not)

This is an annotation I wrote for my mentor, suspense author Mike Kimball, at the Stonecoast MFA program at University of Southern Maine. I’m analyzing the elements of successful thrillers and romance novels in order to write more effective romantic thrillers. Please feel free to cite my work, with attribution, if it’s useful for your own efforts. Let me know if you find it useful!

Happy writing,
Xenia

THRILLER AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS IN EYE OF THE NEEDLE, A FILM WITH DONALD SUTHERLAND

Last month, I analyzed the elements of romantic suspense, drawing from my recent class in the genre taught by Harlequin romantic suspense editor Leslie Wainger. This month, as agreed with my mentor, I analyzed the 1981 movie Eye of the Needle, starring Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan. I have concluded that this story succeeds fully as a thriller with a strong romantic subplot, but cannot be termed romantic suspense.

As discussed in previous annotations, the Romance Writers of America defines romance as a story that centers around two individuals who fall in love and overcome insurmountable obstacles to achieve a “happily ever after” ending. Romantic tension arises from the mounting obstacles that seem increasingly more likely to prevent the hero and heroine from achieving that happy ending. In the World War II-era thriller Eye of the Needle, the story involves a forbidden romance between a ruthless German spy/assassin and an unhappy English housewife on an isolated British island. The dark hero, Henry Favor, also functions as the villain, which is a frequent trope of romance novels. Henry transitions from villain to hero status after he is shipwrecked on the island—a climactic scene which I would argue functions as the first act climax. When this murderous German spy meets gentle heroine Lucy, a lonely housewife and mother burdened with an embittered cripple for a husband, Henry’s kindness toward Lucy and the tender love between them transform Henry from an unsympathetic villain to a sympathetic—if flawed—hero.

Alternately, one might also argue that Lucy is the real protagonist in Eye of the Needle. In Lucy’s story, Henry begins as a romantic hero whose gentle courting captures her heart. But he becomes the villain when Lucy discovers his brutal murder of her husband David—whom, despite his selfish and sometimes monstrous behavior, Lucy nonetheless continues to love.

Leslie Wainger’s argues that, in romantic suspense, the romantic and suspense plotlines should be braided together, each an integral part of the other, forming a harmonious whole. Eye of the Needle achieves this objective by braiding together the story of Henry’s espionage work for Germany with the love between Henry and Lucy. Henry’s primary goal is to prevent the Allies from a successful invasion of Normandy—an event upon which the fate of Germany and the free world hinges. In my view, the story’s global scope is another key element that elevates this story beyond personal and psychological suspense to thriller status. In the first act, Henry’s external conflicts range from British counterintelligence efforts and pursuit, to the storm that prevents his rendezvous with a German U-boat, to the difficulty of making contact with his German would-be rescuers on this remote island. The story’s first act focuses on overcoming these external conflicts.

Henry’s internal conflicts only emerge in the second act, when he falls in love with Lucy, and delays his departure and the completion of his mission in order to prolong his romantic interlude with Lucy. Thus, the second act focuses largely on the romantic and sexual tension between Henry and Lucy. This tension revolves around a compelling reason (the island’s isolation and the inability to escape it) that forces the romantic hero and heroine into prolonged proximity, and makes it impossible for either character simply to walk away. This second act therefore meets the conventions of a romance, albeit one with suspense elements. The second act climax, I would argue, occurs when David discovers Henry’s nefarious deeds, and Henry is forced to kill him.

When Lucy discovers the murder, her goal becomes to escape from Henry, save her son from this cold-blooded killer, and ensure Henry’s arrest by the British authorities. Thus, in Henry’s story, Lucy is transformed from an internal obstacle to an external one, set in direct opposition to Henry. The romantic stakes have risen from psychological (i.e. the emotional risks of falling in love and destroying a marriage) to physical danger for both characters. Henry’s obvious love for Lucy remains an internal obstacle, because clearly he does not wish to kill her. Yet her escalating resistance forces a series of physical confrontations between the couple that can only end in violence.
The third act climax occurs when Lucy is forced to kill Henry, thereby preventing the completion of his mission, and enabling the Allied invasion of Normandy to proceed. Therefore, the thriller is satisfactorily resolved, but this is hardly a happy ending to the romance.

Because one of the defining characteristics of a romance is a happily-ever-after ending, Eye of the Needle ultimately does not succeed as a romance novel. Nonetheless, the strong romantic subplot elevates this thriller to a story that transcends its genre, and makes it relevant and compelling for a romance-focused audience.

Copyright 2009 by Xenia Navarre

Commonalities and Distinctions between the Thriller and Romance Genres: Analysis of John Case’s THE FIRST HORSEMAN
August 1, 2009

During the next six months at Stonecoast, my goal as a writer is to strengthen my ability to craft strong and compelling romantic suspense. Last semester I focused on the romance genre with Nancy Holder, and complemented this work with online courses, conferences and workshops on romance writing. Consequently, I feel I’ve become more competent in that genre. The primary goal of my work with Mike Kimball is to study and learn the elements of the suspense/thriller genre. John Case’s political bio-thriller THE FIRST HORSEMAN is an excellent vehicle for learning my craft.

In THE FIRST HORSEMAN, D.C. investigative journalist Frank Daly must work with virologist Annie Adair to prevent a deadly conspiracy between religious extremists and the rogue state of North Korea to resurrect and release the deadly Spanish influenza virus that caused a global pandemic in 1918. Neither the FBI nor the CIA are cooperating, and the Temple of Light fanatics don’t hesitate to harass, abuse, drug and murder any outsider who becomes a problem for the cult. Clearly, the protagonists Frank and Annie are carefully chosen to have the skills, knowledge, and motivation to behave heroically—and, ultimately, successfully—in this unique situation. However, the author spends no more time than necessary to develop these characters. Although the developing romance between Frank and Annie is a significant subplot, this focus on plot and complexity is one distinction that differentiates the thriller from a romance novel. For instance, in this particular thriller, we find multiple villains with differing motivations, a large cast of secondary characters that either help or hinder the protagonists, substantial exposition to illustrate the highly scientific nature of the threat, and a global scope of action that ranges from North Korea to Siberia to Washington, D.C., among other locales. Unlike romance novels which tend to be character-driven, THE FIRST HORSEMAN is clearly a plot-driven story.

As with most fiction, the first chapters establish reader expectations for the story, starting with a series of seemingly unrelated characters and events whose significance is not fully clear to the reader. Nonetheless, by the end of the first paragraph, the author has introduced a note of unease by describing a character as “nervous…and excited…and scared.” By the end of the first page, the reader is already being thrilled by the pathologically cold plan of the cultists to commit a grisly murder. The first sentence that terrified me is: “The thing was—what made her nervous was: the whole deal about the teeth, about pulling out the teeth.”

As the plot develops, the story skips across the globe, with weeks passing between events. Similarly, the action is driven not only by Frank and Annie, but by a host of secondary characters including a CIA analyst, a pregnant cheerleader who is an avid Temple of Light believer and murders on the cult’s behalf, and a starving North Korean farmer whose village is decimated by a government research project to weaponize the Spanish flu. This abundance of strong secondary characters and points of view marks another distinction between thrillers and the tightly-focused (even myopic) plot of a romance. In addition, a thriller is far more likely to range across space and time than a romance, which tends to focus on one or two strongly-realized settings suitable to the developing love story. Finally, the consequences in a thriller are much more likely to be catastrophic and global in scope, whereas the consequences in a romance (with some exceptions) are often focused on the hero and heroine.

Another distinction between the two genres is that a thriller seems far more likely to devote significant attention to exposition and background. In THE FIRST HORSEMAN, the author uses narration, lengthy dialogue between characters, and faux newspaper articles to explain the significance of the Spanish flu and the deadly consequences of its resurrection. In a romance, any digression of more than a few lines from the romantic action tends to be discouraged, especially within the first chapters. The use of dialogue to inform readers about background tends to be kept strictly to a minimum, and romance readers are quick to object if they detect an “info dump,” especially early in the story. Yet these “info dumps” are essential to plot development in THE FIRST HORSEMAN, and they also build suspense.

Moreover, the author’s own background as an investigative journalist in Washington, D.C. informs his research and perspective, and qualifies him uniquely to create a convincing investigative journalist hero. As the story progresses, the POV narrows to focus largely (though not exclusively) on journalist Frank Daly as the protagonist, and we invest in the character as well as the plot.
Overall, this analysis of a thriller has illustrated for me an important point from a recent romantic suspense workshop I attended. In romance, writers tend to characterize themselves as either plotters or pantsers (seat-of-the-pants, organic writers.) My own writing style falls somewhere between those two extremes, but I’ve never considered myself a plotter. In the workshop, senior Harlequin editor Leslie Wainger stressed the importance of a strong plot and story structure in romantic suspense, and urged writers to outline before beginning to write. In my current work-in-progress THE RUSSIAN TEMPTATION, I find myself following her advice.

Copyright 2009 by Xenia Navarre

Here’s another of the papers I’ve recently written for the Stonecoast MFA program at University of Southern Maine, on the writing craft as seen by one of its recognized masters, the late John Gardner. You’re welcome to quote from my material with attribution if you like. Please give a shout-out if you find this stuff useful!

Characteristics of the Promising Writer: A Guide for Teachers from On Becoming A Novelist from John Gardner

One goal of my participation in the Stonecoast MFA program is to develop a solid foundation for teaching writing to adult students. As a novice teacher, I have worked during this first semester to develop a reading list that includes useful texts on the craft of teaching writing. One text recommended to me was On Becoming A Novelist by John Gardner. Among other focus areas, Gardner devotes substantial attention to an important question frequently posed by writing students to their teachers. Specifically, he discusses how teachers can honestly answer students wanting to know if they “have what it takes” become a writer and/or if they “should” become one.

As the author notes, novice writers often seek reassurance from teachers, mentors, and other respected writers on whether the novice should embark on a creative writing career. Gardner draws from his experience and observations to identify several traits that generally characterize a writer with potential. First, the born writer generally has a certain “verbal sensitivity” or an “ear for language,” complemented by a “gift for finding or (sometimes) inventing authentically interesting language.” (p. 3-5) Drawing from my own experience judging contests, participating in workshops, and critiquing the work of colleagues, I interpret this “verbal ear” to manifest itself in a writer’s voice and style. Although these aspects of good writing may not yet be polished in a beginner, I believe the seed of a unique voice is often present in the work of any promising writer. Somehow, the promising writer is able to use language in a unique way—without being derivative, resorting to cliché, or going overboard and smothering the reader in excess. On the other hand, says Gardner, if a writer has too much verbal sensitivity, he/she learns to balance this with other elements of fiction, and “holds himself back a little, like a compulsive punster at a funeral.” (p. 6)

An example drawn from my own recent reading illustrates this point. In the World War II spy thriller Night Soldiers by Alan Furst, the young Bulgarian hero plays chess with the Russian officer who is tutoring him in espionage. Countless chess tutorials have been described in fiction, but never in quite this way. “Levitsky the tailor…called it ‘the Russian game.’ Thus, the old man pointed out, the weak were sacrificed. The castles, fortresses, were obvious and basic; the bishops moved obliquely; the knights—an officer class—sought power in devious ways; the queen, second-in-command, was pure aggression; and the king, heart of it all, a helpless target, dependent totally on his forces for survival.” (p. 42) Among other reasons, this description is unique because it reflects the young Communist’s developing political views, which his Russian mentor is carefully cultivating: the need to sacrifice individuals for the collective good, the deviousness of the officer class (i.e. the elite or bourgeoisie), the helplessness of the king (i.e. the recently-deposed czar), etc. The narrative also foreshadows the young hero’s future disillusionment with the Russian political system, in which—as in chess—the weak are sacrificed. Thus Furst displays his “verbal sensitivity” by using rhythm, elegance, and restraint to present a commonplace description in a unique and meaningful way that provokes a flash of insight in the reader.

The second characteristic of a promising writer, says Gardner, is an accurate eye for the “telling detail”—the ability to select and describe precisely the right detail that paints a vivid image, yet reveals a broader sense of the character, setting, or situation being described. To illustrate this point, let’s look at the description of the young and wary Queen Elizabeth Tudor—who nearly lost her life before being crowned—in Fiona Buckley’s historical mystery To Shield The Queen. “[The queen’s] clothes were like the outer defenses of a castle. I had to gaze hard to see past them, to the shield-shaped face, the golden-brown eyes under faint, arched eyebrows….These too were defenses of a kind for they told one nothing: her face was truly a shield.” (p. 18) Thus we receive from a couple of tiny details (e.g. the queen’s gown like a castle’s defenses, the “shield-shaped face”) the overwhelming impression of a cautious and guarded woman shielding herself in a vulnerable position.

The third characteristic of the promising writer, as identified by Gardner, is the ability to create strong and vivid characters. One must “move like a daemon from one body—one character—to another….[One] must be able to report, with convincing precision, how the world looks to a child, a young woman, an elderly minister, or the governor of Utah.” (p. 30) Excellent examples of this ability abound in good fiction. One strong example is drawn from the medieval romance For My Lady’s Heart by RITA award-winning author Laura Kinsale. Her heroine is a powerful and devious nobleman whose rivals have threatened to assassinate her for her inheritance. When she is wooed by the king’s son the Duke of Lancaster (who would claim her lands if he weds her), the heroine must reject him convincingly to avoid provoking her enemies. While the vast majority of unwedded noblewomen during this period would undoubtedly seek to encourage the king’s son, the heroine must plot to humiliate him, for “the Riata must be shown that she would not have the duke, and they must be shown it soon and well. She suffered Lancaster’s attentions to grow more and more direct. She began to encourage him, though he needed no encouragement from her to lead himself to his own humiliation. She was angry, but smiled. She regretted him, but she smiled still, ruthless, laughing at his wit, complimenting his banquet. It was no sweet love that drove Lancaster now, but ambition and a man’s lust. She could not save him if he would not save himself.” (p. 27) Thus, we are deeply embedded in the heroine’s unique point of view, and we witness the powerful Lancaster’s courtship through the lens of the heroine’s anger and desperation. Returning to Gardner, he offers some encouragement for the novice here, noting that even if a writer does not begin with a gift for strong characterization, he/she can usually develop it “to some extent.”

As he progresses to describe the secondary characteristics of a promising writer, Gardner surrenders to a certain dry humor and presents these traits in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner. For example, the talented writer is alleged to display “a tendency toward churlishness” when he/she encounters bad fiction. In this case, “one’s honor is sullied—the honor of the whole profession is sullied—and one’s purpose in life is undermined, especially if readers and reviewers seem unable to tell the difference between the real thing and the fake.” (p. 34-36) Many frustrated writers would undoubtedly sympathize with this description. Another alleged character trait of the promising writer is childishness, “an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying over nothing.” (p. 34) This becomes useful, Gardner says dryly, when a writer is approached at a party and asked “’what do you do?’ meaning: ‘How come you sit around all the time?’ …Here the virtue of childishness is helpful…his tendency to cry, especially when drunk, a trick that makes persecutors quit.” (p. 46)

Still speaking irreverently, Gardner continues an extensive list of other secondary characteristics that should help the teacher identify and encourage a promising writer, such as “remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual feature of early adolescence and mental retardation)…embarrassing earnestness, often heightened by irrationally intense feelings for or against religion; patience like a cat’s; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence….” After this rather dubious list, the writer is left with the impression that if he/she does not have “what it takes” as defined by Gardner to be successful, this may not be a bad thing, and the writer may be a happier person without these burdens!

Overall, On Becoming A Novelist by John Gardner provides useful insights for novice teachers on how to identify a promising writer, as well as other issues relevant to teachers who strive to provide good mentorship. However, the book is not devoid of shortcomings. Among other problems, Gardner sometimes betrays a sneering disdain for genre fiction, including science fiction, detective stories, and “women’s magazine fiction.” In addition, for the would-be teacher like myself, the book seems long on colorful anecdotes that lead us to admire the author’s wit, but somewhat short on practical guidance for the novice teacher. Nonetheless, at minimum, the book is useful in facilitating writers’ understanding of themselves—what makes us tick, and what qualities we can cultivate in ourselves in order to become better writers.


Copyright 2009 by Xenia Navarre

I wrote the essay below for the Stonecoast MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction at the University of Southern Maine. Please feel free to cite my work with attribution if you like for your own academic or other research. If you find the arguments useful or interesting, please give a shout-out on the blog or email me at Xenia@XeniaNavarre.com! I’d love to hear from you.

During the first half of this semester, my annotations for the Stonecoast MFA program have analyzed key elements in “classic” romance fiction, including Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and Nora Roberts’s Montana Sky. For reasons discussed in the previous annotations, these novels soundly meet the criteria of romance fiction described by Pamela Regis in A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Although secondary plots and characters enrich these stories, each is—first and foremost—a romance novel. In contrast, my analysis in the following pages explores a historical novel with romantic elements that transcends the genre, The Queen’s Fool by Philippa Gregory. Although the love story in this novel adheres to Regis’s romantic elements and is central to the plot, The Queen’s Fool transcends the romance genre by enmeshing the heroine’s journey inextricably with the central political and religious conflicts of her time, and using the heroine as both a lens and a vehicle to explore these broader issues. In so doing, the author raises the stakes to encompass a life-and-death struggle for Tudor England and, by inference, for any society troubled by religious tension. Yet Gregory also gives this conflict a deeply personal dimension which is expressed through the heroine’s journey.

Clues regarding the story’s broad scope and high stakes are embedded in the very first chapter, which sets the stage. The novel opens with an unidentified man’s sexual pursuit of a young woman in a garden, conveyed through a rather impersonal omniscient point of view (POV). By p. 3, we learn that the young woman is fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth Tudor, and that the pursuer is her stepfather Tom Seymour, who is married to Henry VIII’s widow, Queen Katherine Parr. Immediately the stakes soar, because we see the political implications for England if this seduction is successful. By p. 4, the novel’s heroine is introduced—a young Spanish émigré, the Jew and bookseller Hannah Green, who witnesses the flirtation between Elizabeth and Seymour, and sees a prophetic vision of Seymour at the scaffold. Now the stakes for this seduction have become a matter of life and death. By opening with this omniscient glimpse of high political and personal stakes, Gregory has already informed the reader that the novel’s broad scope will transcend the boundaries of romance. Yet Gregory has also met the first of Regis’s requirements for a romance, by using the adulterous and dangerous flirtation between Elizabeth and Seymour to portray a microcosm of society out-of-balance.

Several pages pass before we settle into first-person POV of the heroine, Hannah Green. She becomes the lens through which we view the story and the vehicle through which the action occurs. In the very first pages of Hannah’s POV, we find clues to the personal, life-and-death stakes for our heroine. We learn that the heroine mourns her mother’s execution and is “hiding from grief as well as the Inquisition….[W]e were convinced Protestants now. We could not have been better Protestants if our lives had depended on it. Of course, our lives did depend on it.” (p. 6-9) Moreover, the author has already established a link between the heroine’s personal stakes and the broad political and religious stakes that will hinge on the story’s resolution.

In addition to the heavy lifting these first pages have already achieved, the author manages to introduce the novel’s false hero, Lord Robert Dudley. Hannah’s fascination with Dudley is immediately apparent, which gives the impression that Dudley may be the story’s romantic hero. “I snapped my eyes open and leaped to attention. Before me, casting a long shadow, was a young man….He was the most breathtakingly handsome man I had ever seen….At the moment his dark eyes flicked to mine, I felt myself freeze, as if all the clocks in London had suddenly stopped still and their pendulums were caught silent.” (p. 10-11) This tension-fraught meeting between the heroine and the apparent hero is the second of Regis’s required elements of romance.

In the bantering dialogue between Dudley and Hannah that follows, a mutual attraction is apparent, thereby providing the third of Regis’s required romantic elements. By p. 25, Dudley has used Hannah’s attraction to him for his own purposes, by “begging her for a fool” to the king so that the unwilling heroine may be planted at court as a spy. Since it still appears that Dudley may be the story’s romantic hero, his Machiavellian use of Hannah (which will continue throughout the novel) may be viewed as a primary complication or “barrier” that impedes the romance. Another significant complication is Dudley’s marriage to Amy, although his wife is “off-screen” for much of the story. The presence of these impediments to romance is the fourth of Regis’s required romantic elements.
Despite his shortcomings, Dudley is not convincingly discredited as the romantic hero until quite late in the novel, during the siege of Calais in which both Hannah and Dudley are caught up. When the French invade the city, civilians are dying in the streets around them, and Hannah’s life is in obvious jeopardy, Dudley’s effort to protect her is modest at best. “He…twisted a ring from his finger, threw it at me, careless if I caught it or not. ‘Take this to the Windflight,’ he said. ‘My ship. I will see you aboard if we need to sail. Go now.’” (p. 403) Then he thunders off on his own mission, leaving Hannah vulnerable and entirely reliant on her own resources to survive. By this point, it is apparent to the reader that Dudley is not worthy of being the romantic hero and will not grow into a worthy hero. Thus, a happily-ever-after romance between Hannah and Dudley is decidedly not in the cards. Where, then, is the story going?

Much of the novel focuses on the heroine’s efforts to survive and thrive amid conflicting intrigues, during which Gregory deviates entirely from the customary romance plot. Before the crisis at Calais, Hannah and the false hero Dudley spend substantial periods of time apart and, while the romance between them is latent, the heroine is again used as a lens and vehicle for the novel’s broader political and religious conflicts. It is important to note that Hannah does not merely observe and comment upon these national conflicts—to the contrary. Due to her ethnic and religious origins, Hannah is acutely involved and endangered by the conflict that arises between Catholic Queen Mary Tudor and her Protestant sister Princess Elizabeth. We know Hannah’s mother was burned at the stake for heresy in the Spanish Inquisition. Understandably, Hannah evinces symptoms of what a modern reader recognizes as post-traumatic stress disorder, and Hannah has an obsessive fear of meeting the same fate. When Mary decides to wed the Spanish Prince Philip (an ardent Catholic), Hannah’s father says, “I cannot stay [in England] if it is to become another Spain….Every Sunday, every saint’s day, they burned heretics, sometimes hundreds at a time. And those of us who had practiced Christianity for years were put on trial alongside those who had hardly pretended to it. And no one could prove their innocence!” (p. 158)

The threat to Hannah becomes even more acute when she is arrested under suspicion of heresy. Although she is quickly released due to an influential friend’s intervention, her arrest serves to raise her personal stakes still higher. We see that torture and death by burning are not merely a hypothetical possibility, but a real danger for her. Her harrowing arrest and imprisonment also serve as an effective personal illustration of the national agony in England, as Catholics and Protestants struggle for dominance. Thus, the author uses Hannah as a vehicle to reflect both the personal and global stakes of the conflict. Because of the scope and consequences of these conflicts, The Queen’s Fool stretches well beyond the boundaries of the customary romance novel.

To complete our analysis of the story’s romantic elements, we must discuss briefly the secondary hero, the young Jewish doctor Daniel Carpenter, who eventually emerges as the true hero. Although Hannah is betrothed to Daniel early in the story, it is not a romantic arrangement, and she does not initially love him, since her attention is entirely fixed on Dudley. The first real indication of Daniel’s role as the true hero comes when he kisses Hannah for the first time and she notes “for some odd reason, the feeling of absolute safety that he gave me….I wanted to…let him hold me against him and know that I was safe—if only I would let him love me, if only I would let myself love him.” (p. 162) The attraction between these two, both physical and emotional, is now apparent. Yet Hannah and Daniel are often separated for lengthy periods, and Dudley (a primary impediment to the Hannah-Daniel romance) has not yet proven his falseness.

Another impediment to the Hannah-Daniel romance occurs when Hannah discovers Daniel’s infidelity during the period of their separation. Hannah is “filled with resentment that love should have brought me so low that I was whimpering at betrayal….I did not want to be a girl in love any more….I strode away [from Daniel] as if I would walk home…to England, all the way to Robert Dudley, and tell him that I would be his mistress this very night if he desired it….I had tried an honorable love and it had been nothing but lies and dishonesty: a hard road and paid with a false coin at the end.” (p. 369-71) When Hannah leaves Daniel, her disillusionment over Daniel’s past betrayal becomes a primary complication and impediment to their happily-ever-after.

For much of the novel, the author uses Daniel and Dudley to externalize Hannah’s inner conflict: her desire as a lifelong refugee to remain in England and have a stable life (represented by Dudley who is rooted to England and the court, and who demands that Hannah remain in danger to assist him), set against Hannah’s need for safety and freedom (represented by Daniel, whose top priority is always to protect Hannah, who learns to allow her substantial personal freedom, and who encourages her to embrace her Jewish heritage.) It is only after we see Dudley’s benign indifference in Calais when Hannah’s life is jeopardized, and after Hannah is given the subsequent opportunity to become Dudley’s lover and rejects him, that she recognizes the true worth of Daniel.

In similar fashion, the author uses Hannah’s conflicting loyalties to Mary and Elizabeth Tudor as a device to personalize the English nation’s divided loyalties. Hannah is drawn to Mary for her kindness and steadiness (though these qualities deteriorate as Mary slips toward fanaticism after losing and being abandoned by her husband.) At the same time, the adolescent and sexually-awkward Hannah is drawn to Elizabeth’s feminine confidence and charisma. Moreover, both royal sisters show a sincere affection toward Hannah. These divided loyalties torment Hannah until the end, when she finds the maturity to forgive Daniel for his past infidelity (which he sincerely repents) and the wisdom to recognize the true and lasting love between them. This personal growth gives Hannah the perspective to make her peace with both Mary and Elizabeth as aspects of herself. She tells Daniel, “I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don’t want to be Mary or Elizabeth. I want to be me: Hannah Carpenter.” (p. 500)

At its heart, The Queen’s Fool is the story of a young woman’s growth from rebellion to maturity, which is reflected in her evolution away from the false hero Dudley to the true hero Daniel. As a key indicator of Hannah’s growth and a reflection of the larger conflicts, the love triangle between Hannah, Dudley, and Daniel is a primary plot thread. However, The Queen’s Fool is also the story of a nation at war with itself, the battle between two religions and the related tension between fanaticism and tolerance. Among her other skills as a historian and storyteller, Philippa Gregory’s genius lies in her ability to relate—with equal immediacy and relevance—the parallel stories of a nation consumed by political and religious conflict (spearheaded by the warring Tudors), and the suffering this conflict imposes on the individuals caught up in it (represented by Hannah Green.) As such, the historical novel The Queen’s Fool transcends the intimate scope of the romance genre, and tells us a story of love, discovery, and acceptance that impacts the future of a nation. The agonizing consequences of England’s religious conflict bear relevance for any modern nation struggling to chart a course between religious extremism and tolerance.

Copyright 2009 by Xenia Navarre

Nora Roberts is widely considered to be one of the most talented and successful romance authors in the genre today. Her fame is well deserved. Even a quick glance at her work reveals a masterful hand at painting vivid and unique settings, a deft use of research to reveal character and deepen setting without slowing the pace, sparkling dialogue that is distinctive to each character, and a narrative that skillfully blends tension with the pleasurable aspects of love. Each of these accomplishments is fueled by Roberts’s spot-on characterization, which draws readers into the story and brings every scene to life. The author’s task is made harder by the fact that several romantic heroes and heroines often share space in her novels. Accordingly, this essay focuses on the author’s use of characterization to fuel the story and deepen reader involvement in the novel Montana Sky.

The story opens in the point of view (POV) of a minor character, the neighbor Bob Mosebly, who functions in this chapter as a representative of the neighborhood’s “collective POV.” This viewpoint is well chosen, because it gives us an immediate snapshot of how this community views powerful deceased rancher Jack Mercy, around whose legacy the plot is built. It is essential that readers have a clear picture of this dominant personality whose decisions drive the story’s main characters, and Roberts does not disappoint. In the story’s very first paragraph, Bob Mosebly thinks, “Being dead didn’t make Jack Mercy less of a son of a bitch. One week of dead didn’t offset sixty-eight years of living mean. Plenty of the people gathered by his grave would be happy to say so….Jack had vowed to die the way he had lived. In nose-thumbing style.” (p. 3-4)

When introducing the primary heroine, Jack’s half-Indian rancher daughter Willa, Roberts uses POV to slingshot us from the “collective” into the heroine’s point of view. At the same time, Roberts introduces Willa’s goal (running the ranch) and her motivation (proving herself to her dead father). “[T]ime would tell if Willa had enough of Jack Mercy in her to run a ranch of twenty-five thousand acres. She was thinking of the…work that needed to be done….It was up to her now. It was all up to her.” (p. 5) Thus, only a few pages into the novel, we already have a clear picture of Willa’s goal and motivation, and (by inference) some sense of what her conflicts will be. After giving us this intimate peek, the author pulls the camera back to show us Willa from her Hollywood sister Tess’s perspective: “Cowgirl Mercy….Sullen, probably stupid, and silent.” (p. 18)

Roberts also uses these first pages to introduce the secondary heroine, Willa’s timid sister Lily. Again, the author slingshots us from the collective POV of the neighbors to the secondary heroine. While looking at Jack’s portrait, “many felt that those hard blue eyes damned them as they sat drinking his whiskey and toasting his death. For Lily Mercy, the second daughter Jack had conceived and discarded, it was terrifying. The house, the people, the noise….Self-consciously she fingered the yellowing bruise she’d tried to hide with makeup and sunglasses. Jesse had found her. She’d been so careful, but he’d found her, and the court orders hadn’t stopped his fists…But here, maybe here, thousands of miles away, in a country so huge, she could finally start again. Without fear.” (p.7-8) This introductory scene for Lily accomplishes several objectives: creating an immediately sympathetic secondary heroine; giving us her goal (to stay at Mercy Ranch) and her motivation (to be safe); and hinting at both external and internal conflicts (escaping Jesse, and learning to love again). At the same time, this hard-working scene introduces one of the two villains, Lily’s abusive ex-husband Jesse Cooke, who will be discussed in greater detail below. Then, to deepen our sense of Lily, Roberts pulls the camera back and shows us Lily from her sister Tess’s perspective: “Nervous Lily, Tess thought…with her hands pressed together like vises and her head lowered, as if that would hide the bruises on her face. Lovely and fragile as a lost bird set down among vultures.” (p. 18)

For a third time, Roberts slingshots us from the collective POV of the neighbors into the viewpoint of the third sister, polished screenwriter Tess. “Those who did remember had already decided they much preferred the mother to the daughter. Tess Mercy could have cared less. She was here in this godforsaken outback only until the will could be read. She’d take what was hers, which was less than the old bastard owed her, and shake the dust off her Ferragamos. ‘I’ll be back by Monday at the latest.’” (p. 11) Again, we’re given a snapshot of Tess’s character, her goal (to “take what was hers” and return home) and her motivation (financial gain and professional success). This perspective also gives us some hint of what her conflicts are likely to be. Because Tess is a complex character and not immediately sympathetic, Roberts takes the additional step of giving us Tess’s journal entries, which provide a more intimate look into this screenwriter’s psyche. Tess labels those around her as “characters in the cast,” and her labels reveal as much about herself as the characters she observes. For example, the secondary hero who falls in love with Lily, Indian horse-trainer Adam, is the Noble Savage. Willa is alternately called Danielle Boone, Annie Oakley, and the cowgirl queen. (p. 72-73)

Even the minor characters in Montana Sky are vividly painted, as Roberts uses “thumbnail sketches” to provide unique snapshots of each character without slowing the pace. Again employing the handy mechanism of Tess’s journal, Roberts describes elderly ranch foreman and father figure Ham as “straight out of Central Casting. The bowlegged, grizzled cattleman with a beady eye and a calloused hand.” Ranch hand Pickles (the killer’s first victim) is “a sour-faced, surly character who looks like a bloated string in pointy-toed boots.” And ranch hand Jim Brewster (who is later revealed as the primary villain) is “one of the good ol’ boy types. He’s the lanky, I’m getting to it, boss sort…..He’s given me a few cocky grins and winks. So far I have been able to resist.” (p. 73-74)

As with the heroines, Roberts uses POV shifts as a device to introduce the heroes. In the case of primary hero Ben McKinnon, the author opens by drawing the camera back to limited omniscient POV. Ben “sat as comfortably in the saddle as another man would in an easy chair. After thirty years of ranch life, it was more his natural milieu….His eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s and often just as cold in a face that had the weathered, craggy good looks of a man comfortable in the out-of-doors.” (p. 31) Next, Roberts brings us closer to illustrate the primary romantic conflict between Ben and Willa—a conflict that drives the story—through one brief paragraph of dialogue, which also gives us Ben’s motivation. “She doesn’t need either one of us to run Mercy…but I’ll do what [the will] says to do. And hell…it’ll be entertaining to have her butting heads with me every five minutes.” (p. 32) Finally, Roberts brings us still closer, right into Ben’s POV, to illuminate his ambiguous feelings toward Willa. “[H]e admitted to himself that he’d lied. He did want her. The puzzle of it was, the less he wanted to, the more he did.” (p. 38)

Similarly, the author chooses limited omniscient POV to give us our first glimpse of Montana lawyer and secondary hero Nate Torrance, who falls in love with Tess. “He looked like a cowboy, walked like a cowboy. His heart, when it came to matters of his family, his horses, and the poetry of Keats, was as soft as a down pillow. His mind, when it came to matters of law, of justice, of simple right and wrong, was as hard as granite.” (p. 16) Then, bringing us closer, Roberts illuminates both Nate’s goal and Ben’s regarding Mercy Ranch in just two lines of dialogue. Ben says, “’Nate—we’re not going to let her lose that ranch.’ Nate adjusted his hat, reached for his keys. ‘No, Ben. We’re not going to let her lose it.’” (p. 33)

As a final example of using POV to reveal character, let’s look at the way Roberts introduces the secondary villain, Lily’s abusive ex-husband Jesse. In this case, the author brings us deep into his chilling POV right away in order to illuminate his goals and motivation for stalking Lily. “The little bitch, letting that half-breed paw her. Sniveling little whore thought she could get rid of Jesse Cooke, figured she could run and he wouldn’t catch her. Put the cops on his ass. She was going to pay for that….It would all be worth it in the end. When he had Lily back, when he reminded her who was boss.” (p. 54-55) As far as the reader is concerned, we know as much as we need in order to despise and fear the villain—just as Lily does. Moreover, throughout the novel, whenever the progression of the romantic plots threatens to decrease story tension, Roberts uses the villains’ POV (for both Jim and Jesse) to ratchet up the suspense. She does this so skillfully that these mini-scenes featuring the villains are sometimes only two to three paragraphs long.

To summarize, Nora Roberts’s use of POV in Montana Sky sweeps us through a complex plot that includes three separate romances, the complications caused by two separate villains working both against each other and against the hero/heroine, and the resolution of several secondary emotional storylines (e.g., Tess’s need to accept her Las Vegas showgirl mother, the flamboyant Louella). Because of the intimacy that POV creates between these characters and the readers, we are deeply invested in each storyline, and unable to put the book down until every conflict is satisfactorily resolved.

Copyright by Xenia Navarre 2009