Christmas Revels

I rarely buy anthologies, precisely because so many of them are hit and miss; for every decent novella by a favourite author, there are two or sometimes three sub-standard stories by writers whose books I would never buy. Occasionally even those stories by favourite authors suffer from anthology-itis: they are too short for good character and plot development.

Here is an excellent idea, however: a collection of Christmas novellas by one of the best authors of the Regency/historical period, Mary Jo Putney. All but one of the novellas are reprints of stories previously published in earlier multiple-author anthologies, but since I hadn't read any of them that wasn't an issue for me. The single new story is a contemporary novella, a sequel to The Spiral Path, Putney's most recent contemporary novel.

A Holiday Fling, the contemporary story, is the first in the collection. Jenny Lyme and Greg Marino were minor characters in The Spiral Path, and we didn't see them interact with each other. In this novella, we discover that they had been lovers more than ten years earlier when working on a movie, but their lives had gone in separate directions. Now Jenny needs Greg's help to save her village's community centre, and so he flies to England to spend Christmas with her. The attraction between them is as strong as ever, and they are unable to stay out of each other's arms. This time, though, is it just another holiday fling, or can they make a future together?

The Christmas Cuckoo is a tale of mistaken identity and belonging. Major Jack Howard has returned from the wars because he has unexpectedly inherited an earldom. Unwilling to comply with his great-aunt the countess's dictates as to how an earl should dress and behave, especially since he knows very well that she resents the fact that he has inherited the title, he jumps on the first stagecoach out of London. En route to its destination, he gets drunk and is mistakenly left behind at a stop... where he is found by a young woman expecting her brother's friend Captain Jack Howard. Meg had high hopes that Captain Jack would fall in love with her sister Phoebe, but finds herself falling in love with Major Jack instead. The mistaken identity ensues since Jack is too drunk to realise that Meg has the wrong Jack Howard, and soon he is in the welcoming warmth of a loving family for the first time in his life. Is it too much to ask to enjoy one happy Christmas?

In Sunshine for Christmas I found a surprise, and very welcome, sequel to The Rake. Ally's former fiancé, and the man who broke her heart and sent her running away from her family, was left lonely and devastated at the end of the book, for he really had loved Ally and he had to live not only with the knowledge that he had lost her through his own fault, but also the guilt of knowing that it was his careless words which had sent her fleeing from her home and into hiding. Miserable and unable to bear the joy of Christmas all around him, Lord Randolph travels to Italy. There, he meets Elizabeth Walker, an unfashionable woman old enough at thirty-something to be considered unmarriageable. Yet she interests him in a way that no-one else has ever before. Can these two lonely people overcome the differences between them to find a future together?

The Christmas Tart is probably the weakest in the collection. Nicole, a French émigrée of good family working as a seamstress is falsely accused of theft by her employer. She is fired, without references, and all her money confiscated. As she contemplates the very few options open to her, she is mistaken for a prostitute by two gentlemen, who buy her as a present for their friend Sir Philip Selbourne. Can Nicole sell herself to survive? Would Philip want a barely-willing sacrifice in any case? What will Nicole do, alone and penniless at Christmas?

Finally, the treat of the anthology is The Black Beast of Belleterre, a Beauty and the Beast fable. James, Lord Falconer, is very ugly. He knows, because his father always told him so, and an accident when he was a child made him even more so. Now that he is an adult and inherited his father's estates, he always wears a hooded cape so that no-one can see him. His neighbour is a gambler and in debt to James. When James hears that Gardsley is about to sell his beautiful daughter to a pox-ridden old man, he offers to take Ariel in cancellation of Gardsley's debt to him. But he cannot bear to allow a young woman as lovely as Ariel to see his ugly face, so he hides himself from her... until Ariel decides that she wants to get to know her husband. Can she get past his scars, mental as well as physical, to make this a marriage of love as well as expediency?

My only complaint about this collection is its price; it's a trade paperback rather than standard size, and thus more expensive. This was bought for me as a surprise, and very welcome, Christmas present, but anyone considering buying it for themselves might want to be sure that they hadn't read any of the novellas before.

Mary Jo Putney

Reader Reviews:

An antidote to hit-and-miss anthologies! (4/4 people found this helpful)

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