Faro's Daughter, Georgette Heyer

Oh! To be a feisty young woman in a regency world, straining against the confines of lace and champagne, playing all manner of audacious pranks upon a stern, older gentleman, yet knowing all the while that Mr. Stern Older Gentleman will one day tame you, you naughty little shrew, making you his wife and teaching all us cheeky young women this valuable lesson : There is no point fighting it, you will succumb to me in the end.

I should really point out about now that I really didn't mind this book so much. True, my feminist sensitivities died a little inside- choking delightfully on a oesophagus of their own vomit, but laying that aside, it wasn't that bad. And I could, perhaps rant in a similar feminist vein about Austen.

The story is basically this: Dirty Commoner works in gaming house serving members of the ton (upper class), spending her nights drinking, giggling, dealing cards and generally sitting upon the mantelpiece as a trophy for all to admire. Dirty Commoner manages to sneakily sneak up upon noble, yet naive young man of wealth and fortune, ensnaring him with her feminine wiles. Naive Noble proposes and Dirty Commoner, who doesn't love him, or (for some bizarre feminist reason) doesn't actually want to marry at all (I know, right? What the hell is wrong with her!), decides to string him along regardless because clearly, it's no fun wiggling your rump about if no one's there to watch it. However, dun dun dunnnn - Naive Noble happens to procure himself an irascible uncle/cousin/father/thing and Stern Gentleman struggles to contain his bile at the idea of Dirty Commoner marrying Naive Noble. Will someone please think of the children!

What Stern Gentleman didn't realise, however, is that his interference would only transform Dirty Commoner from lace-on-legs (I would say tits-on-a-stick, however this is a Regency World, and as we're all aware, sex is a relatively new invention, having only been developed in the 1960's) to some kind of Sarah-Palin-in-a-corset. Nobody puts Dirty Commoner in a corner!

So naturally Stern Gentleman and Dirty Commoner engage in thinly veiled pranking war (thinly veiled because we all know they just want to get down and do the nasty) and somethingsomethingsomething everyone marries happily in the end. Oh! Was that a spoiler? This is a Georgette Heyer novel, did you really need to be told it was happily-ever-after? Pssh.

And for the grand finale? Although the book follows pretty much exactly the same pattern for every single other Georgette Heyer novel i.e. Man + Money + Woman + Extreme Loathing = Happy Marriage, the book itself has its moments. The dialogue in most Heyer novels is particularly witty, reminiscent of Austen, one could say (blasphemy?). And historically, Heyer, as always is infallibly correct. The storyline itself however, remains predictable. On saying that, however, you should probably ask yourself, does anyone ever read a Georgette Heyer looking to be shocked out of their socks? Probably not. The vast majority of Heyer fans read knowing that there will be no surprises, and therefore no possible reason to think whilst reading.

Faro's Daughter, by Georgette Heyer. Sourcebooks Casablanca; Reprint Edition (1st July, 2008)