Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | FICTION STA | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
A rich, outrageous, Dickensian novel in the comic tradition of The Crimson Petal and the White about a boy raised as a girl in the richest home in 19th century England.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This gender-bending romp about a boy raised as a girl in 19th-century England-penned by musician John Wesley Harding, writing here under his real name-more than lives up to the hype it will surely, ahem, engender. On a night in 1820, effeminate and ineffective (at least according to his mother) Lord Geoffroy Loveall, happens upon a baby abandoned in a trash heap. He brings it home to Love Hall, the grand estate that he is set to inherit, and pronounces the baby his daughter and heir. There's just one problem: the baby is a boy. Geoffroy refuses to accept this fact, but the happy news causes his ailing mother to die on the spot. The baby-named Rose-is raised as a cosseted and doted-on proper young lady, and the legitimate heir, a ruse that works beautifully until Rose begins to wonder about the facts of life: why, for example, does she suddenly feel the urge to pee standing up, like her friend Stephen, rather than squatting like his lovely sister, Sarah? Adolescence (and a few whiskers) only causes further confusion-as does the word "BOY," which begins to ominously appear around the estate. Eventually, Rose's cover is blown, and the scandal prompts several sets of greedy relatives to descend, claiming the Loveall inheritance as their own. There's a huge cast of characters, plot twists aplenty, loads of historical detail (including original Victorian ballads) and a satisfying, tied-together ending that also, in two epilogues, manages to offer up a poignant take on historical interpretation. Yet this lengthy and involved tale makes for speedy reading. Best of all, Rose's original narrative voice is engaging from the get-go: smart, funny, observant, and even hip. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. (Apr. 11) Forecast: Like The Crimson Petal and the White and Sarah Waters's Fingersmith, this clever historical potboiler could soar sales-wise, especially with the added Harding hook. 15-city author tour. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
I'm a boy, but my mother won't admit it: an entertaining yet philosophically inclined stroll along some decidedly little-visited lanes and mews in Georgian England. It makes sense, at least of a sort, that British musician Stace--whose nom de guitare is John Wesley Harding--should pick up a tip from Pete Townshend, and perhaps Mick Jagger, about gender-bending and its associated dysfunctions and malfunctions and then let the story roll. That story is, superficially, simple: a youngish English lord named, with all due symbolism, Geoffrey Loveall, is out on an errand that takes him through the back streets of London. Though he "had no curiosity about his surroundings," Loveall "knew to keep half an eye on the passing world to soothe the tottering of his carriage," and with that half-eye open finds an abandoned baby. His mother, the arch Lady Loveall, is a little suspicious of the discovery: "Have you read this baby into being? Found it in the library? Did you bring it to life in your dollhouse? I cannot believe for a moment that you have created it in a natural way." Ah, natural ways just won't do in aristocratic circles, and with the help of a mysterious governess, the foundling boy is on his way to being raised as a girl to meet a perceived gap in the makeup of the Loveall household. Adventures and misadventures ensue, and Stace pulls off a neat trick by shifting narrators in midstream, keeping the reader guessing and on his (or, dare we say, her) toes as Lady Rose Loveall does his thing. Stace's abundant cleverness sometimes slips into preciousness, but the narrative is full of surprises, mixing up an utterly modern--and even postmodern--story of sexual awakening and self-discovery with a quirky but believable portrait of life, at least of a kind, in early modern England, all very well done. Blend Tristram Shandy with, say, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and you have something of the spirit of this spirited tale: a most promising debut. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Charles Dickens meets V. C. Andrews in this literary saga of transgendered identity and dysfunctional family dynamics in early-nineteenth-century England. The novel is based on the song The Ballad of Miss Fortune0 , written in 1997 by John Wesley Harding (the author's stage name), about an infant boy who is rescued from a rubbish heap by a wealthy English lord and raised as a girl. The newborn, thrown into the refuse by a back-alley abortionist, is ministered to by a maternal stray dog until the mutt and her peculiar litter attract the attention of a nobleman riding by. The frail and foppish Lord Geoffroy Loveall, still obsessively mourning the tragic loss of his younger sister in a childhood accident, decides to take the baby and raise him as his daughter and heir. Rose has a happy, delightful childhood reared in the huge manor house of Love Hall until adolescence rears its ugly head. Once Rose's true sex and bastard origins are discovered, his greedy, scheming cousins (a family to put the Borgias to shame) move in and seize Love Hall and all its contents. Fleeing the only home he has known, a mustached and begowned Rose embarks on a series of adventures in a quest to come to terms with his identity. --Michael Gannon Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In 19th-century England, Lord Geoffrey Loveall raises the baby boy he has rescued as his little girl Rose. Stace is better known to rock fans as John Wesley Harding. With a 15-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
