Helpful Score: 1
(4 stars) While it's certainly not a "bodice ripper" in the modern sense, Winsor certainly laid the groundwork for the genre with her novel of the multiple amorous and mercenary adventures of one Amber St. Clare Channell Dangerfield Radclyffe Stanhope. Lots of thrusting, pointed and pert breasts, lots of hard, bronzed muscled skin, lots of eyes filled with passionate anger and angry passion. You know what I'm talking about. The devouring, hungry kisses and languid afterglows are all here without the modern intrusion of leaky body parts, swabbing tongues, and climaxes filled with fireworks.
This is a book that deserves its reputation as trash literature. It was a page-turner, the prose for the most part unremarkable, simplistic and easy to digest. The characters had very little development, even the historical figures. Amber herself goes through trials and dangers that would fill multiple lifetimes for ordinary mortals, but she is very nearly the same person on the last page as she is on the first. She forgets, puts things out of her mind, is diverted from any learning experiences by some fit of emotion, usually having to do with her marital Moby Dick, Bruce Carlton. For a three-dimensional portrait of a country girl who scrabbles her way to the top of the whore heap, look elsewhere.
By the beginning of Part 5, her amusing factor had worn off and I was itching for her to develop another dimension (which she never did). She was deliberately clueless, and I have to ding the book a star because it started to drag on that count. The scene where Amber goes to a ball in a dress meant to wow everyone and ensnare Bruce in her arms once again fell pretty flat for me, in no small part to the character of Almsbury who forces a suddenly ashamed Amber to stay and dance in a scene that immediately recalled Bette Davis and Henry Fonda in "Jezebel." Does Amber learn from this court humiliation? Hah! Nice one. She has one more desperate and humiliating ploy in store to win Lord Carlton, almost on the very last page. The title is very appropriate, for Amber is certainly forever pummeling away at what she cannot change, all the while never herself changing.
After Amber's novelty wore off, I enjoyed far more the scenes in Charles' court with Frances Stewart, Barbara Palmer, George Villiers, and the clawing intrigues where Amber and Bruce were not present. At first I thought these two separate narratives were oddly alternated, but I started to find a connection between the two. The royal sphere and Amber's own gauche one were both rotten and unlikable in their own ways. However, I preferred the Charles-centric chapters best. Maybe it was just the obligatory spaniels.
The costume and furnishings porn became overbearing after awhile, once Winsor had completely evoked the sights, smells, fashions and decor of the era. Like a store-bought cake with lots of rosettes and ribbons that make the frosting a mile-high in places, the obligatory paragraphs of clothes and room interiors started to give me a gluttonous stomachache.
I appreciate Winsor's research (the plague portion rightly deserves its fame), and it did much to make the book worth the read, but I am quite glad there was no sequel. Unless Winsor's ability to create rounded characters had improved, I have a feeling that "Amber In America" would have been a second verse, same as the first.
This is a book that deserves its reputation as trash literature. It was a page-turner, the prose for the most part unremarkable, simplistic and easy to digest. The characters had very little development, even the historical figures. Amber herself goes through trials and dangers that would fill multiple lifetimes for ordinary mortals, but she is very nearly the same person on the last page as she is on the first. She forgets, puts things out of her mind, is diverted from any learning experiences by some fit of emotion, usually having to do with her marital Moby Dick, Bruce Carlton. For a three-dimensional portrait of a country girl who scrabbles her way to the top of the whore heap, look elsewhere.
By the beginning of Part 5, her amusing factor had worn off and I was itching for her to develop another dimension (which she never did). She was deliberately clueless, and I have to ding the book a star because it started to drag on that count. The scene where Amber goes to a ball in a dress meant to wow everyone and ensnare Bruce in her arms once again fell pretty flat for me, in no small part to the character of Almsbury who forces a suddenly ashamed Amber to stay and dance in a scene that immediately recalled Bette Davis and Henry Fonda in "Jezebel." Does Amber learn from this court humiliation? Hah! Nice one. She has one more desperate and humiliating ploy in store to win Lord Carlton, almost on the very last page. The title is very appropriate, for Amber is certainly forever pummeling away at what she cannot change, all the while never herself changing.
After Amber's novelty wore off, I enjoyed far more the scenes in Charles' court with Frances Stewart, Barbara Palmer, George Villiers, and the clawing intrigues where Amber and Bruce were not present. At first I thought these two separate narratives were oddly alternated, but I started to find a connection between the two. The royal sphere and Amber's own gauche one were both rotten and unlikable in their own ways. However, I preferred the Charles-centric chapters best. Maybe it was just the obligatory spaniels.
The costume and furnishings porn became overbearing after awhile, once Winsor had completely evoked the sights, smells, fashions and decor of the era. Like a store-bought cake with lots of rosettes and ribbons that make the frosting a mile-high in places, the obligatory paragraphs of clothes and room interiors started to give me a gluttonous stomachache.
I appreciate Winsor's research (the plague portion rightly deserves its fame), and it did much to make the book worth the read, but I am quite glad there was no sequel. Unless Winsor's ability to create rounded characters had improved, I have a feeling that "Amber In America" would have been a second verse, same as the first.
