{"id":24741,"date":"2014-03-19T06:30:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=24741"},"modified":"2014-03-02T12:05:18","modified_gmt":"2014-03-01T23:05:18","slug":"more-on-mary-stewarts-madam-will-you-talk-what-i-love-most-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2014\/03\/19\/more-on-mary-stewarts-madam-will-you-talk-what-i-love-most-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"More On Mary Stewart’s “Madam, Will You Talk”: What I Love Most About It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>… besides the gorgeous writing, but I talked about that on March 5.<\/p>\n

I may also have mentioned that Madam, Will You Talk<\/em><\/strong> was Mary Stewart’s first novel published, way back in 1955. So — dated, right?<\/p>\n

In fact, not so much, if at all.<\/p>\n

And there is one way in which I believe this novel stands up really well, almost sixty years later, and which is probably what I love most about this book. Stewart’s heroine, Charity, is both ‘everywoman’ and could be ‘any woman’, but she is also does lots of brave and resourceful stuff and certainly doesn’t wait around to be rescued by the hero, or any other passing man for that matter.<\/p>\n

In particular, there are two car chase sequences in the book, one in which she more than holds her own (including temporarily disabling the opposition’s vehicle) and the other in which she turns the tables on a psychopathic killer.<\/p>\n

It’s a great portrait of how courage can be about nerve and grit as well as physical strength and guns.<\/p>\n

The other thing that I really like about Charity, besides being courageous and resourceful, with a clear moral compass. She also takes considerable pleasure in clothes and jewellery — in other words, Stewart cuts through the all that “stuff” that would have us believe (and I cite CS Lewis and Susan, just for starters) that the third aspect renders the first two null and void.<\/p>\n

Bollocks to that, I say (to paraphrase my namesake Helen in the film, Sliding Doors<\/em><\/strong>.) Anyway, I certainly enjoyed meeting Charity and will always esteem Mary Stewart for offering a romantic heroine who is still very relevant — as well as much rarer than I would like —\u00a0 fifty nine years after Madam, Will You Talk<\/em><\/strong> was first published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… besides the gorgeous writing, but I talked about that on March 5. I may also have mentioned that Madam, Will You Talk was Mary Stewart’s first novel published, way back in 1955. So — dated, right? In fact, not so much, if at all. And there is one way in which I believe this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-other-writers","category-recommended-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24741"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24779,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24741\/revisions\/24779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}