Flesh and the Devil by Teresa Denys-- a rant
To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I hated, hated, hated this book.
It's too bad, because I've heard raves about Teresa Denys's work for years. I tried to read The Silver Devil back in 2011, but I was put off by the MMC's cruelty and violence. Last year, I started reading up on 16th century Spain, and Denys's book Flesh and the Devil was one of the few HRs set in Spain at all. So I decided to give it a try. I'd read a lot of old school romances since then, so I figured I could handle it.
So, it turned out I could handle it. However, it took me three months to read it. Three months! The only reason I finished it is so I could write this review. A lot of people do love Denys's work, and as she died tragically in a car crash in 1987, I will hold off on full snark: instead, I will make a compliment sandwich. So here goes.
First of all, the concept of this book is very cool. It's 17th century Spain, and a naive young noblewoman, Juana, who after unsuccessfully attempting to elope with the boy next door, is shipped off to marry an inbred titled monster, a duke, who lives in a terrifying palace. The palace in question drips with menace. It is peak Gothic in all the best ways-- Virginia Coffman or Victoria Holt would be proud. I wanted to luxuriate in this awful place. We do get to see quite a bit of it too, as Juana attempts to navigate it, in the first half of the book.
There's also a lot of fun historical tidbits, and I enjoyed the politics-- especially the key role the Hapsburgs played in the book-- and the depiction of an unusual time period. 17th century Spain is an unusual setting, to say the least, and I was getting excited for something dark and unusual.
But then hero starts playing a major part in this book, and that's when my interest cratered. The MMC is the inbred duke's servant/valet/man-of-all-work, and he is a redhaired English mercenary with green eyes so bright they might as well be radioactive. Literally (and I mean this) in every scene he shows up in, he's described as some synonym of cold. He's cold, he's icy, he's austere, he's clinical, he's scientific, he's sardonic, he's detached, remote, satiric, etc. etc. etc. If I drank a shot every time this happened, I would have alcohol poisoning. This happens over and over and over again, for the book's entire stretch of 170k words, so I was so done by the end. This guy was so boring. If I'm going to read about a monstrous anti-hero in my bodice-ripper, I'd want him to have an emotion or two, you know? However, even though he's cold, icy, etc., the author is eager to assure us that every woman finds him the sexiest man in the world, and he's the greatest duellist in the world too, even though his idea of fighting is lifting men over his head and chucking them at other people, like Conan the Barbarian.
Anyway, he's a monster too, like his boss. He hates Spain and Spanish people, especially noble Spanish women; he has a massive chip on his shoulder, and he is also massively entitled. Since the heroine insults him, he decides that he's going to teach her a lesson by raping her. Then he kills his inbred boss, and after they leave the Gothic castle, he kidnaps her and blackmails her into marrying him, which is somehow OK for Plot Reasons. He keeps telling her she owes him a debt, and she better be grateful. The story then devolves into a very long and very protracted mess with aimless wandering about the wilderness and last minute baddies traipsing onto the stage and then dying by accident. Anything remotely political or historical is tossed aside for the world's most boring road trip. Also, the Inquisition is, of course, brought up a whole bunch of times, but for all the blather about it, it never plays a role. After a great deal of wandering, the hero is revealed to be an aristocrat by a deus-ex-machina lawyer who is practically brought down by wires, and our Catholic main characters travel to an England which is either run by Cromwell or Charles II. Good times!
So yeah. The romantic arc just did. not. work. The hero remains a robot until 80% of the way through, and he barely thaws at the end after the heroine is all "I LOVE YOU!!!!" I didn't understand why. I will quote you the paragraph where she realizes how this guy raping her repeatedly, kidnapping her, and forcing her to marry him was really was the best thing to happen in her life:
He had taught her to fight him when she was a sheltered child who knew nothing but pampering and indulgence, and now she would use the spirit that he had roused to fight on his side against death.
And later:
But she could no longer live out her life to a pattern. She had long ago broken with her father's plans for her destiny, as perfect and regular and destructive as a spider's web. Bartolome's [the duke's] death had snapped the chief thread of it, setting her free without the sticky threads of tradition and expectation to impede her. Thanks to the man who hated her, she was free to make her own pattern, choose her own destiny. She could go anywhere in the world. . . .
In other words: "I was so pampered and sheltered, his abuse taught me how to fight and become a real woman!" This reminds me of Sansa's "arc" in the later seasons of Game of Thrones. Abuse and suffering can make you a better, stronger person! It can make you free! But even Sansa in GoT-- while somehow empowered by her abuse-- didn't fall for her abuser, Ramsay. Somehow this book is worse than GoT in its depiction of abuse. That's really something.
The characterization is not great in this book. Not only is the MMC a dull emotionless entitled robot, the FMC is all the worst tropes of early romance fiction, packaged into one character. She's feisty, but also dumb as a rock. She continually opens her mouth and says the first thing that crosses her mind, without even thinking for one second if it's a good idea. Her maid kills herself, and the FMC barely reacts, only to express how annoyed she is that people didn't tell her sooner. (This suicide is later retconned in the book to the inbred duke killing the maid instead. I told you, this book is a mess.)
The other big issue I had with this book is the way Spain and the Spanish is depicted. Our English hero is the only rational character in the entire book: whereas the Spanish are a "predominantly dark race" where everyone is impetuous, irrational and governed by scheming priests. Also, there is not one attractive locale in this entire book. The palace is place of horrors, whereas the wilderness is one brown, sand-blasted wasteland, with brackish streams and barren plains. Basically, it's all a shithole. This is a pretty typical 1950s English depiction of southern Europe, and it reminds me of midcentury authors like Henry Treece or Mary Stewart. But it's disappointing to see these tropes repeated in a book from the 1980s.
There's a lot of things I frankly hated about Flesh and the Devil. But Denys's prose is truly beautiful. Here's a quote from one of my favorite passages:
She was flying, she thought as she felt the hard thrust of his possession within her: her body moved in an instinctive response that she was not aware of, opening itself to delight, and she thought inconsequently that it was like being mounted on some great winged horse and soaring out over the whole world. Blind rapture surged inside her as passion gripped them both, and she could hear herself moaning with a new poignant, agonizing sweetness that she could neither bear, nor bear it to cease. Above her, as she opened her eyes, she could see the azure sky darkening to a fierce blend of copper and velvet blue, and the water - the water in the pool was liquid gold, the last reflection of the dying sun. No wonder, she was thinking, that Icarus flew too near the sun and melted his waxen wings.
Denys's prose is so gorgeous-- I truly wish she had lived longer to write more. After reading it, I thought of what I wanted to see here-- I would have liked the action to stay at the creepy palace, rather than leaving it. The MMC did not work as a character, but the duke's villainous uncle has an Italian henchman named Martinetti who reminded me of Allegretto from Laura Kinsale's For My Lady's Heart. In his brief scenes, he steals the show with his elegance, wit and ruthlessness. I wanted to see more of him, rather Coldy McClinical.
So there you go. I have heard The Silver Devil is a better plotted and paced book. Maybe I'll try reading that again eventually. But for now, I think I should reread some Laura Kinsale.
