Jo on Heyer

[sartorias]

Over at Tor.com today, Jo Walton talks about why she likes Georgette Heyer. Interesting discussion and comments.

Though I've rambled about Heyer and silver fork novels I still keep trying to figure out why Heyer's more upbeat romances work as well as they do. (The serious ones are really, really awful

Comments

[akirlu]

I think, and have long thought, that what Heyer did best (much though she seems to have deprecated it) was write the literary equivalent of 1930s screwball comedies. Her stories have a lightness, a frivolity about them. And though they are stories about a fantasy gentry and nobility, they quite happily take the Mickey out of members of those classes. With very few exceptions, these people are NOT idealized. They are irresponsible, or captious, or bumblers, or fops, or misers, or gambling addicts, loaded up to the eyeballs with foible and buffoonery. But these characters have a childlike freedom from real care, and the plots are fantastical, airy, insubstantial, and ultimately un-serious. Their world, as you say, is a sort of Disneyland of pretty dresses, grand manners, and high adventure. Each story is a jeweled filigree orrery, spinning along a predictable path to a foreordained conclusion. She wrote charming escapism, pure and simple. In some ways, she hits very similar notes to the works of P.G. Wodehouse, though she was less comical.