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Still one of my most favourite non-cannon couples ever. I love the atmosphere of the 20th century. And I love Olivia Williams.

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back on my nonsense, how's it going?

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Little Book Review: The Love Token

Author: Priscilla Hamilton.

Publication Date: 1979.

Genre: Historical romance (Italian Renaissance).

Premise: Fifteen-year-old Gemma Albizzi is plucked from a convent, where she’s lived since her parents’ death, by her unscrupulous rich uncle who pushes her to marry the old and vile Galeazzo Malinconico, who plans to use her as a spy. Dispirited by Malinconico’s cruelty, Gemma starts an affair with Gian-Carlo Correlli, a gold-digging nobleman. She grows weary of his corny lines and just-okay love-making before she realizes he’s bad news, and soon falls in love with Richard Trevor, her husband’s English guard. Between her husband’s plans to eventually kill her, her husband’s boyfriend’s plans to kill her ASAP, Gian-Carlo’s too-subtle attempts at extortion, and general early-fifteenth-century Florentine/Venetian political drama, will she live to see her sixteenth birthday? Will she ever develop a decent grasp of what’s happening around her? And will the book please decide just how homophobic it’s going to be? Because frankly it gave me whiplash.

Thoughts: I have a soft spot for a certain type of Old School romance that I call “One Heroine, Three Dudes, Three Cities.” It’s where a heroine (beautiful, passionate, adaptable) encounters three men: one unappealing perv whom she marries, one attractive lightweight (either a feckless first love or a sympathetic rebound), and the hero (an alpha male, usually English and high-class). She also travels to at least three cities/countries/states (in this case, Florence, Venice, and Istanbul). Variations include “One Heroine, Two Dudes, a Bunch of Random Pervs, and Three Cities” and “One Heroine, One Dude, a Bunch of Random Pervs, and Three Cities.” (Glynda is a rare example of “One Hero, Three Ladies, Three Cities,” but it’s also “One Heroine, One Dude, a Bunch of Random Pervs, and Three Cities.” It’s a weird book!) The Love Token is an enjoyably ludicrous example of this genre, with a pleasant central romance and a well-described setting, but it’s sometimes shockingly distasteful.

My favorite thing about the novel is how Gemma never fucking knows what’s going on, yet navigates most situations pretty well. If there’s a stick, she’s sure to get the wrong end of it. Most notably, she doesn’t get that Gian-Carlo’s trying to wheedle money out of her and agonizes for a long time over her “fickleness” when she realizes she doesn’t really like him that much. She also fails to notice when a dressmaker is blackmailing her, doesn’t pick up on many of her husband’s efforts to torment her, and has wildly wrong ideas about why she’s being imprisoned at one point in the story. Her obliviousness transform her into Teflon, and it’s really funny to watch the bad men of the novel smugly think, “Gemma is overcome with lust for me” or “Gemma will hate what I’m doing so much.” Gemma doesn’t give a shit, you guys. She also has some awareness of her lack of awareness, and she navigates situations where she knows nothing pretty sensibly.

So, what do I find distasteful about the novel? I, who chuckled through Woman of Fury? First, the heroine is fifteen, younger than any romance novel heroine I’ve ever seen, and the shock of her youth is compounded by her almost-immediate victimization in the narrative. (October Wind does have Catalina, a heroine who’s fifteen at the beginning of the story, but she doesn’t have any sexual or even particularly romantic encounters until she’s eighteen or so, plus she’s in a love triangle with two dudes her age.) Second, there’s the homophobia. Gemma has an evil gay husband who’s also sadistic and cowardly, and his pitiable boyfriend Paolo is treated rather callously by the narrative. Gemma also has some really out-of-the-blue nasty opinions on the lesbians that she meets in Istanbul. Weirdly, Richard is extremely chill about gay people, even commenting that he’s known plenty of cool gay dudes. It’s so weird to have a hero who’s kind of the least problematic part of his novel!

Hot Goodreads Take: Not a lot of people reviewed this book, but the most prevailing negative opinion is that Gemma is stupid. I think the way she embraces her cluelessness paradoxically gives her wisdom.

#little book review #the love token #priscilla hamilton #romance novels #tw: homophobia #tw: abuse