An' I wish I was dead 'fore I done what I did
On the strength of D. K. Broster's The Wounded Name (1922), I am prepared to declare the article which was the subject of my previous post stuffed full of wild blueberry muffins, at least where the deniability of the homoeroticism is concerned:
And Aymar's head lay against Laurent's shoulder, and Laurent, who rather thought he was crying himself, and didn't care, was battling with a most unseasonable desire to kiss it there, before everyone; and would very likely have succumbed only that he was sure Aymar had not quite lost consciousness.
The whump and the loyalty kink in this novel go to eleven. There is a quite extraordinary amount of tenderly caring for a bitterly sensitive person who can endure any amount of opprobrium, torture, and self-loathing before going to pieces at kindness. The setting of the previously mentioned bed-sharing and anguished confession is a sea-cave and the bed itself of sailcloth and seaweed, which makes me feel rather personally come for. I don't know how to categorize the heterosexual element which is simultaneously essential to the plot and completely out of left field, except that I think the author reconciled herself to it with OT3. No reader on the planet needs slash goggles. At one point the protagonist's family conclude from his restless, distracted, high-strung behavior that he is obviously in love and the only thing they are wrong about is which of the de la Rocheterie cousins—who explicitly look almost like the male and female versions of one another right down to the famous, unusual bronze hair, a touch more recalling Tanith Lee than Emma Orczy—it is. The author likes epigraphs even more than I do: one chapter has three of them. Browning's Aurora Leigh (1856) is sampled twice and Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) furnishes the one that really matters. Did I mention there is not just nursing through a fever, but nursing through multiple fevers? There is no apparent fandom for this book on AO3 and I can't explain it. There's courtroom drama. The tags would go on forever.
And Aymar's head lay against Laurent's shoulder, and Laurent, who rather thought he was crying himself, and didn't care, was battling with a most unseasonable desire to kiss it there, before everyone; and would very likely have succumbed only that he was sure Aymar had not quite lost consciousness.
The whump and the loyalty kink in this novel go to eleven. There is a quite extraordinary amount of tenderly caring for a bitterly sensitive person who can endure any amount of opprobrium, torture, and self-loathing before going to pieces at kindness. The setting of the previously mentioned bed-sharing and anguished confession is a sea-cave and the bed itself of sailcloth and seaweed, which makes me feel rather personally come for. I don't know how to categorize the heterosexual element which is simultaneously essential to the plot and completely out of left field, except that I think the author reconciled herself to it with OT3. No reader on the planet needs slash goggles. At one point the protagonist's family conclude from his restless, distracted, high-strung behavior that he is obviously in love and the only thing they are wrong about is which of the de la Rocheterie cousins—who explicitly look almost like the male and female versions of one another right down to the famous, unusual bronze hair, a touch more recalling Tanith Lee than Emma Orczy—it is. The author likes epigraphs even more than I do: one chapter has three of them. Browning's Aurora Leigh (1856) is sampled twice and Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) furnishes the one that really matters. Did I mention there is not just nursing through a fever, but nursing through multiple fevers? There is no apparent fandom for this book on AO3 and I can't explain it. There's courtroom drama. The tags would go on forever.
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It sounds like it!
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Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) furnishes the one that really matter
I want to say 'One Man in a Thousand, yes?' but that's Rewards and Fairies. What's the PoPH one?
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I've not written any fic for The Wounded Name, partly because I found the het romance really off-putting and didn't want to return to it for fic—but you're right that there is a lot of potential there, especially in the courtroom drama. (The Flight of the Heron, in case you've not already found it, has a thriving small fandom under the tag 'The Jacobite Trilogy'!).
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P.
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SOUNDS GAY, I'M IN though.
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But anyway, the het is not what anyone reads this book for. Isn't Laurent's duel adorable? Awww. "Adorable" is not usually a word I'd apply to duels, but...
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WN really is an h/c feast of epic proportions and there are some lovely set-pieces in it - the duel, Gris-Gris and the orchard scene, to name but a few. And her ability to paint pictures with words is right there, too. I found the ending a bit "Huh? what happens next? Is it what I think it is?" but I suppose even DKB couldn't go there in the 1920s.
She obviously enjoyed herself immensely while writing it. :)
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