Subject: A TIMELY AFFAIR by Janice Bennett

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Date: 2 Jan 91 21:50:53 GMT

A TIMELY AFFAIR by Janice Bennett
	   Zebra Regency Romance, 1990, ISBN 0-8217-2930-6, $3.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		       Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Okay, I can hear you already--when did Evelyn start reading romance
novels and what is this review doing in a science fiction newsgroup?  Well,
it's like this....

     A TIMELY AFFAIR is a time travel novel.  When I read the (favorable)
review in LOCUS, I decided to give it a try.  After all, science fiction is
science fiction, and though the person I was with in the bookstore when I
bought it pretended not to know me, I persevered.  And then every time I
opened it, he had some comment to make.  But I did read it, and here I am to
tell you about it.  And right up front I'll say that this book constitutes
my entire experience with the romance genre (and the Regency sub-genre in
particular), so take my comments as coming from someone with no practical
background.  I know something *about* the genre, and understand the different
time periods that show up in romance novels, and know that the infamous
"woman in a long white dress fleeing from the house across the moor with a
full moon in the background" is found on Gothic romances rather than Regency
ones, and that these days heroines in romance novels are allowed to have sex
(whereas twenty years ago this wasn't true, at least not until after they
married the man in question), and so on.  But I hadn't *read* any of these.
(Or do PRIDE AND PREJUDICE or TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES count?)  Anyway,
back to the matter at hand.

     The novel's main character, Andrea Wells, is a romance novel fan in
current-day Minneapolis.  In particular, she is a fan of Regency romances.
(Is this product placement for the Zebra line?  Well, at least they don't
have her reading specific novels in their line.)  So much in love with
Regency London is she that when she gets fed up with her over-possessive
boyfriend, she packs up and heads off to London to visit all the places
she's been reading about.  (I can relate to this--when we went to London,
Mark pointed out where Gorgo came up out of the Thames and where they found
the alien spaceship in FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH, and of course I visited
Baker Street.)  While there she sees an article in a tabloid about an old
manor which fascinates her.  When she goes there on a tour, she starts
seeing apparitions: ghostly servants dressed in Regency costume, well-
dressed nobles, etc.  The current resident notices this and decides--on a
truly flimsy bit of plotting--that Andrea is just the person to go back in
time to find a lost heirloom that will save her from ruin.  This is achieved
via the same method used in Richard Matheson's BID TIME RETURN or Jack
Finney's TIME AND AGAIN: the time traveler places her- or himself in a room
full of objects from the period and wills her- or himself back.

     Well, needless to say, it works.  (If it didn't, there wouldn't be much
story now, would there?)  She goes back, meets the man of her dreams, looks
for the treasure, etc., etc.  This is all clouded by the fact that she knows
he will die in a fire in the West Tower on a certain date.

     As a time travel story, this is pretty thin.  The period details I
assume are true to Regency romances, though perhaps not to reality.  The
LOCUS reviewer objected to the somewhat heavy-handed social commentary about
the harsh conditions of the time.  But it's a no-win situation--had the
author left it out, her heroine, being a modern woman who should know
better, would appear insensitive.  But there are a lot of period details
missing.  True, people in novels seem never to go to the bathroom, but
certainly a modern-day woman sent back almost two hundred years could be
expected to notice the differences.  (For that matter, she is back for
several months yet never seems to have to deal with any feminine hygiene
issues, to put it as delicately as possible.)  A book that does deal with
all these questions, by the way, is THE MIRROR by Marlys Millhiser; readers
may find it an interesting comparison.  Admittedly Andrea has picked up some
information about dress, language, etc., from her reading, but her ability
to cope with all the things not mentioned in most romances is a little
unrealistic.

     Do I recommend this?  Well, if you like both genres (science fiction
and romance), you would probably like this book.  And if you liked Jack
Finney's TIME AND AGAIN or Richard Matheson's BID TIME RETURN, I would
recommend this, with the disclaimer that Bennett is not as good a writer as
Matheson or Finney.  So if you haven't read their books, read them first.

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 908-957-2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or [email-masked]