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THE ANONYMOUS AMANUENSIS
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Awe-Struck E-Books,
Feb 2005
Reviewed by Joy
Calderwood
Regency
Eve Dixon,
destitute spinster, isn’t suited to any of the jobs in which spinsters
are usually employed. Teacher, governess, or companion are the
acceptable jobs for gently bred young women whose family resources have
melted away. Certainly not secretary, and especially not secretary to a
gentleman. But Eve’s experience working with her grandfather Sir Wilfred
and her Uncle Alfred have proven that she is well suited to secretarial
work. She is determined to find a better employer than her uncle, and do
the only work she finds rewarding.
Sadly, she learns
her skeptical Uncle Chas and her friend Tom are right. No one will trust
his business affairs to a woman. Determined not to crawl back to her
family and live the life of a poor relation, Eve learns to dress and
behave as a man. With her sex no longer overshadowing her skills, Eve is
immediately hired. James Quinton is a son of an Earl who has gone into
trade. This unconventional behavior made Eve’s new boss an outcast from
society for several years in the past, but his ability to do the unusual
does not mean he would accept Eve if he knew who she was. James Quinton
hates women. Naturally, Eve and James fall in love. James, of course,
doesn’t know what the feeling is. The necessary unmasking is well
handled, with a series of surprises.
THE ANONYMOUS
AMANUENSIS is for those who like their Regencies with a twist of the
fantastic. Given the impossibility of the situation, author Judith Glad
has imagined a heroine who does exactly as she should do, if a woman
really had gotten a job under male disguise. Glad writes about Eve so
smoothly that, for most of the book, the reader is not distracted from
the all-important suspension of disbelief. Given the general niceness of
Eve’s friends and surroundings throughout most of THE ANONYMOUS
AMANUENSIS (James’s mother excepted), her sudden decent into hell is a
shock. I thought as I read that there were two people Eve should have
been able to depend on, so she wouldn’t fall into desperate
circumstances. This kept me from believing the last part of the book.
Little did
Georgette Heyer know, when she picked Regency England as the setting of
her enchanting romances, that she was founding a genre. Still less did
she guess what uses her setting might be put to. Heyer’s Regency
settings and lifestyles were so meticulously researched that her lively,
rule-bending heroines seem to fit right in. Ever since then authors have
been borrowing the setting, the rule-bending grows ever more extreme,
and readers keep buying the books. The Regency tone is still too
charming to resist.
January 2004 Review
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