Character Flaws: Where Are the Sluts of Yesteryear? -- "Glamour" by Louise Bagshawe

Please forgive my sporadic postings. Really, I should just make that banner art for this blog, or send it to Dooce for one of hers. 

But I digress (see? another banner!). Today I come not to praise a book, but to question the hell out of it in my sporadic, digressive "feature," Character Flaws. That book, dear readers, is not my usual lit-fic. No,  it's Glamour by Louise Bagshawe, which follows on her 2007 Sparkles, and confused the living daylights out of me since I'd read other novels by a broad named Bagshawe and thought perhaps she'd changed her name. Turns out that Louise's sister Tilly was the first romance author in the family; her Adored and Showdown came out a few years back.

I might be forgiven for conflating les soeurs Bagshawe, since the content of their books is as similar as their DNA. A woman or women is/are stunningly beautiful, whether or not she/they know(s) it, but adversity happens, and before you know it, our plucky heroine(s) must conquer all, rise to the top, experience all of its goshdarnwonderful luxuries and bittersweet sexual adventures before adversity happens again and that pluckiness saves the day, allowing our heroine(s) not only to say "Nyaaaaah, nyaaah, nyaaaah" to her adversaries, but also to wind up floating/flying/driving/cruising/whatevs away with Our Hero(es). 

A curious thing revealed itself as I was reading Young Bagshawe's new book. With all of the 1980s big hair and slashed tshirts giving way to the 1990s tribal chic and branded store clerks (matching aqua trousers and various sand-colored shirts!), I was briefly convinced that I was back in the world of Judith Krantz's Scruples and Shirley Conran's Lace. In those books, stunning cashmeres and silks were carefully described, only to be flung off at the appropriate moment so that secondary sexual characteristics and genitalia could be revealed, manipulated, and exhausted. It wasn't High Art, but it could be, ahem, satisfying in its own way.

Now, many different kinds of writing can be satisfying, and there's no reason why a fluffy romance romp has to turn into a manuscript fit for submission to Ellora's Cave. Each has its own place, and chacun a son gout and all that. However, these Bagshawe books are so otherwise reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s Big Juicy Beach Reads that the missing sex became its own sort of MacGuffin (second time today I've used that term, but it's so handy). I kept expecting something randy around every corner, but all I got was one character's fiance ogling her nude workouts. There was plenty of longing, and plenty of horniness, and plenty of satisfaction -- for the characters. They were in a near-constant state of arousal or afterglow (another topic for another time, but I found it nearly offensive that the two Arabic men featured were painted as Masters of the Arts of Love, in some weird turnaround of the proper harem female). 

They just were never actually in flagrante delicto. Oh, euphemistically they reached peaks and rode waves and were driven to edges, but the scenes are the literary equivalent of Vaseline'd lenses, chiffon veils, and ostrich-feather fans. While the latter, of course, are meant to tease, here the burlesque is so affect-less that what could be feathery and flirtatious seems merely simplistic and stale.

The parts of Glamour that had some were the descriptions of the three protagonists' clothes and of their various makeovers/appearance changes heralded by plot elements, from their Sweet Sixteen-party gowns to their various wedding garments. While the author takes some pains to make each woman incredibly independent and ambitious, only one woman actually achieves success entirely on her own. I rather thought her (no spoilers!) story was worthy of its own book. 

Next Time: Sherlock Holmes finally goes to AA.

Comments

[S. Krishna]

HA - loved this review!

[Joanne]

Loved your review, Bethanne, and I can't imagine ever wanting to read this book (I don't even like the cover!). Thanks for saving me some very precious time!