Beggar's Choice

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as her later work
Review: This isn't a Maud Silver novel. BEGGAR'S CHOICE was first published in 1931, during that long gap in the Silver series between GREY MASK (1928) and the 2nd Silver novel (1937), wherein Wentworth mastered her craft with a number of non-Silver efforts. In this case, Wentworth experiments a little with the epistolary style - that is, much of the book is in the form of diary entries and letters. If you're not familiar with her work, this isn't typical of her style; the viewpoint character or characters are usually treated in third person, giving the reader a window on their thoughts without being told directly by them. What with Car Fairfax's diary entries, much of this book is in 1st person, told not as it happened but as he wrote it down afterward - because it was so strange that if he didn't get it down in black and white while it was fresh, he'd have thought he was going crazy. It loses some pizzazz, since we know he must have come out of it all right.

Car's father liked to live high without anything to live on, so when he died, Car was left with a pile of debts, and had to leave the rather expensive regiment he'd belonged to. Unfortunately, his civilian job as secretary to Peter Lymington's father ended with the collapse of the firm, and its presence on his resume branded him as knave, fool, or both. Too proud to sponge on friends or family, he's at rock bottom, and watching over Faye - Peter's wife, left behind while Peter gets the money to get her to join him in the USA - when he can barely look after himself. (There's nothing between Car and Faye - not on his side, at least; he's in love with someone else, and has no hope of being able to afford to settle down properly.) He quarrelled with his uncle, and they're both too stubborn to give in. Then someone approaches him with an odd proposition...

Frankly, this book is a mess in terms of figuring out what's going on. The unevenness of style - 3rd person to epistolary and back - doesn't work well. We see too much of Faye and not enough of Isobel, the girl Car's really supposed to be interested in. We even see more of Car's disagreeable cousin Anna - is she after the uncle's money, in trouble, or both? - than of Isobel. Even Car's character isn't as developed as that of most of Wentworth's later protagonists.

All in all, interesting mostly as an example of an author's growing pains.

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as her later work
Review: This isn't a Maud Silver novel. _ Beggar's Choice_ was first published in 1931, during that long gap in the Silver series between _Grey Mask_ (1928) and the 2nd Silver novel (1937), wherein Wentworth mastered her craft with a number of non-Silver efforts. In this case, Wentworth experiments a little with the epistolary style - that is, much of the book is in the form of diary entries and letters. If you're not familiar with her work, this isn't typical of her style; the viewpoint character or characters are usually treated in third person, giving the reader a window on their thoughts without being told directly by them. What with Car Fairfax's diary entries, much of this book is in 1st person, told not as it happened but as he wrote it down afterward - because it was so strange that if he didn't get it down in black and white while it was fresh, he'd have thought he was going crazy. It loses some pizzazz, since we know he must have come out of it all right.

Car's father liked to live high without anything to live on, so when he died, Car was left with a pile of debts, and had to leave the rather expensive regiment he'd belonged to. Unfortunately, his civilian job as secretary to Peter Lymington's father ended with the collapse of the firm, and its presence on his resume branded him as knave, fool, or both. Too proud to sponge on friends or family, he's at rock bottom, and watching over Faye - Peter's wife, left behind while Peter gets the money to get her to join him in the USA - when he can barely look after himself. (There's nothing between Car and Faye - not on his side, at least; he's in love with someone else, and has no hope of being able to afford to settle down properly.) He quarrelled with his uncle, and they're both too stubborn to give in. Then someone approaches him with an odd proposition...

Frankly, this book is a mess in terms of figuring out what's going on. The unevenness of style - 3rd person to epistolary and back - doesn't work well. We see too much of Faye and not enough of Isobel, the girl Car's really supposed to be interested in. We even see more of Car's disagreeable cousin Anna - is she after the uncle's money, in trouble, or both? - than of Isobel. Even Car's character isn't as developed as that of most of Wentworth's later protagonists.

All in all, interesting mostly as an example of an author's growing pains.