Two More by Mary Roberts Rinehart
May. 10th, 2013 06:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calzephyrThe unfortunate thing about this past semester is that I had very little time to read. I also had very much trouble falling asleep, and Mary Roberts Rinehart was an unlikely rescuer in both departments. At first I assumed that Dangerous Days was a suspense novel, and in some ways it is, but it is chiefly a World War One diary about the intersections between various classes of American society before and just after the US enters World War One. It was published in 1919, a year after the war ended. As a book with a traditional beginning, middle and end, it doesn't quite work. It has at least three climaxes and the ending spans several chapters. It still works out though as a detailed record of everyday life during this period as the wealthy Spencer family slowly unravels amid external pressures. The war brings a crushing halt to the merriment of the upper class as Natalie Spencer struggles to keep her son Graham from becoming a soldier and Clayton Spencer tries to make a success out of his munitions plant. Add in sub-plots about a lower class German American immigrant family, the threat of Communism and romance, and you have a nice collection of vignettes. The downside is that it goes on and on for 50 chapters, and after Chapter 20, I was using it as a sleep aid. Part of the problem was that my Kobo wasn't reading the eBook from Project Gutenberg correctly. I kept thinking, "When is this book going to end??" because it was supposed to be 263 pages. Kobo was reading each page as three pages instead :-D
Similarly, I assumed When A Man Marries to be a romance of some sort, which it is, but it's mostly mystery and suspense from 1910. It's funny to see that writers even back then had discovered the joy of piling on cliches and milking them for all they are worth. Rinehart gleefully traps her upper class characters in a house for seven days under the pretense of a smallpox quarantine - the butler comes down with spots and has to be carted away. The story is told from the point of view of a plucky lady named Kit (it wouldn't surprise me if she was a Mary Sue) has to fend off the affections of another man because she is pretending to be another's man wife. Being trapped without servants wreaks havoc on the group's noble sensibilities, and they all begin to grate on one another, especially when jewellery starts disappearing. It's a laugh out loud comedy of suspense and errors, and I can just picture Ms. Rinehart writing each word with great aplomb.
A small warning - as with most works from the past, both books contain mild racism and epithets towards Germans and Japanese people.
Similarly, I assumed When A Man Marries to be a romance of some sort, which it is, but it's mostly mystery and suspense from 1910. It's funny to see that writers even back then had discovered the joy of piling on cliches and milking them for all they are worth. Rinehart gleefully traps her upper class characters in a house for seven days under the pretense of a smallpox quarantine - the butler comes down with spots and has to be carted away. The story is told from the point of view of a plucky lady named Kit (it wouldn't surprise me if she was a Mary Sue) has to fend off the affections of another man because she is pretending to be another's man wife. Being trapped without servants wreaks havoc on the group's noble sensibilities, and they all begin to grate on one another, especially when jewellery starts disappearing. It's a laugh out loud comedy of suspense and errors, and I can just picture Ms. Rinehart writing each word with great aplomb.
A small warning - as with most works from the past, both books contain mild racism and epithets towards Germans and Japanese people.
