SPOILER ALERT!!!!
THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT THE BOOK’S PLOT. I USE THESE TO EXPLORE THE SOCIAL THEMES AND DOUBLE STANDARDS IN OUR SOCIETY. IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK/DON’T WANT SPOILERS…READ NO FURTHER. YOU WERE WARNED!!!!
“Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women feel just as men feel, they need exercise for their faculties, a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
http://rowenatisdale.com/books/
Conversation between me and Rowena Tisdale, the Sultry Scribe, when she approached me to review the Heart Could Forget:
RO: Are you sure you want to review this? It may not be the genre you typically read.
DM: I’ll give it a shot.
I do like to read outside of what may be my normal comfort zone. Much like my review of Ryen Leslie’s River, this was not a book I would have normally picked up in the book store on my own.
So why did I choose to read it?
I follow Rowena’s blog and I am intrigued by her sensual writing and characters and I wondered how that would translate into the genre of “Chick Lit.”
Unlike traditional romance, with it’s happily ever after ending, “Chick Lit” is a more fluid and less-defined category. The story revolves around a female protagonist and her evolution as a character. While it can have a happy ending, it doesn’t have to.
Themes
Chick Lit usually has deeper themes than traditional romance which is driven more by the will they/won’t they plot of the story. For myself, the biggest take away I got from Ro’s writing is still the prevailing double standard of expectations about sex and sexuality and roles that exist for men and women. Ro’s story (even though her MC, Sara is single), is almost a modernization of Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, where men are rewarded and praised for following their passion and having multiple partners and extramarital affairs. Women on the other hand are cast into one of two categories: the good girls or the whores.
“Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.” Leo Tolystoy, Anna Karenina
Ro’s story opens with Sara, a 36-year-old single mom working in DC as an IT professional. She’s an empty nester, unsure what to do with her new found freedom after sending her beloved son away to college. Her friends want to see the lovely Sara, who has worked so hard her whole life to support herself and her son, find love.
By chance she meets DC’s most eligible bachelor, reporter Eric. A charismatic womanizer, everyone warns Sara (some of them quite snarkily) that she’s not Eric’s type, and that he’ll only break her heart. But Eric seems genuinely smitten. Eric sets about romancing Sara in a way she’s never experienced before. Admittedly, even I was a little in love with Eric by the end of part one of the book. The other part of me was looking at the remaining pages thinking two things:
- This is too good to be true
- There’s a lot of book left—something bad is about to happen
“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.” Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Enter Nathan
So a little background on Sara. In her teens she was awkward and shy. She volunteered on a political campaign for a politician on whom she had a crush, Nathan Remington. In doing so she got raped by one of the adult staffers, and that was how her son came to be. She set aside her emotions attached to what happened in order to love her son, but she always carried a torch for Nathan.
One night, while waiting for Eric at a DC political event, she encounters Nathan again. The sparks instantly fly. Nathan takes her into a back room and they have passionate mind-blowing sex. Afterwards, he informs her that Eric has been cheating on her.
“I’m like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he’s cold, and his clothes are torn, and he’s ashamed, but he’s not unhappy.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Sara is torn with guilt and passion. She cheated willingly on the man she loved, and she struggles to come to grips with just how much she enjoyed it. She also longs to have Nathan touch her and make love to her again. She experiences a sexual awakening, craving Nathan in a way she has never wanted anything before in her life.
Meanwhile she’s devastated by the revelation that Eric has been cheating on her.
As one might expect, Eric and Sara break up.
Nathan comes back onto the scene, demanding that Sara become his exclusive mistress. He sets her up to be a VP in the company in which she works and publicly be on the arm of one of his closest associates, since in the eyes of the public, he’s happily married. He can’t be seen to be cheating.
“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I have to admit, when I got to the part where Sara has sex with Nathan, I wanted to just throw the book across the room. For me, the idea of someone just casting aside everything they love for a fling is a tough pill to swallow. But maybe I have just never been overwhelmed by passion, like Sara is in this story. The other part about this was Nathan himself. He may be good-looking, charismatic, sexy, but he is possibly the most narcissistic and frightening male character I have read. I kept reading because I really want to know where this is going to go. Ro writes incredibly compelling characters, even if you want to slap some of them (Nathan).
“There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Sara and Nathan embark on a very steamy and passionate affair. It’s obvious that Nathan is incredibly obsessed with Sara. His possessive, passionate behavior is all consuming. He desires nothing less than absolute control over Sara’s life. Sara gives in, allowing it to devour her.
Even as she experiences luxury that she has never known before, swept away in the glamour of being the mistress of one of the most powerful men in the country, she longs for the love she had with Eric. Part of her even wonders why she can’t have both.
“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Sara’s devolution and evolution as a character is what really drives the story. Her change from the good girl, to high glamour mistress then back to normal speaks volumes about how our society views women who dare explore their sexuality outside what is deemed acceptable. In the high-stakes DC society in which she moves, the men are admired and praised for having mistresses. Women line up to throw themselves at womanizing Eric. Men applaud him for being able to have more than one woman at a time. When Eric and Sara are together, people constantly let her know that she’s not his type and she not only doesn’t belong with him, but she doesn’t belong in the DC political crowd. It’s subtle, but his behavior to her is similar to Nathan’s. He puts her on a pedestal, showering her with gifts and love. It’s okay for her to be his mistress. But when she’s another man’s mistress, she’s a gold-digger, a whore. Now much of his words and pain come from losing her, but it is still a vivid reflection of how women are treated in our society.
Meanwhile Sara submits to Nathan’s subjugation, because she is indeed desperately in love with him. She experiences the full wrath of society’s condemnation for her behavior. But before long it eats at her like a cancer. She loses her closest friends. But it is her son that calls her on her behavior. This is her true wake up call that brings her back to herself.
At the risk of putting too many more spoilers into this review, I will leave it to you to find where Sara goes from here. I will say this. Rowena’s book will make you angry. It will make you cry. If you like descriptions of passionate sex, you’ll love this. But it will also make you think. It will make you ask, why can’t she have both? Why is it that it has been over 140 years since Anna Karenina was published (written in 1873, published serially until 1877) and women are still punished for having sexual desire, while men get a free pass?
Reference
It’s been ages since I read Anna Karenina. I used this link below for the quotes in my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2507928
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned. My review of The Soul Web will be coming soon.
