more trashy novels!
Feb. 8th, 2007 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Judith Krantz is an old favorite of mine. Specifically, my mom (for some reason lost in the mists of time) had a copy of Mistral's Daughter hidden in the middle of a stack of romance novels (itself hidden in her bedroom), all of which I plowed through one summer when I had too much time and not enough books on my hands. None of them were worth anything except the Krantz... which was on a higher level (that is, actually rereadable... my other trashy favorite of the time, Sidney Sheldon, I cannot read anymore, period) ...and which I adored and still do. I have no idea whether it's actually any good. My recent experiences with Krantz would suggest... probably not.
So recently I felt in the need of some trashy books and read three of hers (Till We Meet Again, Princess Daisy, and I'll Take Manhattan). They all feature beautiful, glamorous, sexy, yet vulnerable heroines, engaged in some extremely glamorous profession (magazine publishing, movie-making, etc.), searching for love. Mary Sue at her finest-- and I'm actually not being sarcastic; it's actually entertaining (though I don't think I'll be rereading any of them again). Also, they all have an amoral wicked villain with no redeeming features, so it's nice to see the villain get his (or her) comeuppance. Okay, you've got the plot now.
But I still think... biased though I almost certainly am... that Mistral's Daughter had something... more... Mistral is, though I never saw his appeal to all the women in the story, a larger-than-life character in both his virtues and his faults, something I haven't seen in any of her other books. Maggie ages totally gracefully from a young beautiful hero to an old beautiful hero without giving up her place in the story (as opposed to, e.g., Eve in Till We Meet Again, who basically fades away once her kids are born). And I looooved the villains. Instead of getting the "oh, he is a wicked guy, and that's the end of it," we got a couple of people whose worldviews were more-or-less understandable (I'm sorry, but mad destructive love for your half-sister (in Princess Daisy) is NOT understandable to me) and actually kind of neat, the sort of people I could see myself being, deliciously, if I had no moral sense. I think the parts from the villains' points-of-view are actually my favorites of the book. And one of the villains got a really satisfying comeuppance.
But yeah, although I may reread Mistral's Daughter (again), I don't think I'll be reading any more of her books anytime soon.
So recently I felt in the need of some trashy books and read three of hers (Till We Meet Again, Princess Daisy, and I'll Take Manhattan). They all feature beautiful, glamorous, sexy, yet vulnerable heroines, engaged in some extremely glamorous profession (magazine publishing, movie-making, etc.), searching for love. Mary Sue at her finest-- and I'm actually not being sarcastic; it's actually entertaining (though I don't think I'll be rereading any of them again). Also, they all have an amoral wicked villain with no redeeming features, so it's nice to see the villain get his (or her) comeuppance. Okay, you've got the plot now.
But I still think... biased though I almost certainly am... that Mistral's Daughter had something... more... Mistral is, though I never saw his appeal to all the women in the story, a larger-than-life character in both his virtues and his faults, something I haven't seen in any of her other books. Maggie ages totally gracefully from a young beautiful hero to an old beautiful hero without giving up her place in the story (as opposed to, e.g., Eve in Till We Meet Again, who basically fades away once her kids are born). And I looooved the villains. Instead of getting the "oh, he is a wicked guy, and that's the end of it," we got a couple of people whose worldviews were more-or-less understandable (I'm sorry, but mad destructive love for your half-sister (in Princess Daisy) is NOT understandable to me) and actually kind of neat, the sort of people I could see myself being, deliciously, if I had no moral sense. I think the parts from the villains' points-of-view are actually my favorites of the book. And one of the villains got a really satisfying comeuppance.
But yeah, although I may reread Mistral's Daughter (again), I don't think I'll be reading any more of her books anytime soon.