Rating: 
Summary: Not outstanding.. but not bad
Review: This is the first book by this author that I have read. I can tell you I am not overly impressed. I have read better (I love Lindsey). The author was able to keep my attention because I was hoping the next page would show a difference between the two main characters. There isn't alot of sexual situations in this book... I don't know if this is good or bad.... but I will not rule this author out because of this book either. I have to be fair and try her other works before I say NO to her.
Rating: 
Summary: All Kathleen Woodiwiss Books
Review: I have all of her romance books and read them over and over again. She is a fantastic writer and I enjoy her books. I especially like the ones that center around the Birmingham family. I am eagerly awaiting her new book. I hope she continues to write these great books.
Rating:
Summary: The one that started it all!!
Review: When there is nothing new and exciting on the Romance scene I pull out my keepers. THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER is one of them. I first read this book in 1971 when the romance genre was definitely not what it is today. ... I am as turned off my rape as everyone else, but I didn't see the first time that Brandon and Heather were together as a "rape". The much more sophisticated and politcally correct readers of today should suspend their modern day morals and look at that first scene in the context of when it took place (200 years ago) and when it was written (30 years ago). True Heather was a bit of wimp by our standards (but certainly not by her eras). She was sweet and innocent even after induring brutal treatment by her aunt ... Brandon was very much a man of his time. The first of the true alpha Males that woman love to love but many would find hard to control and to live with! Brandon felt himself falling in love with Heather almost from the beginning and in his own macho male way started to take care of her by taking her away from her aunt and making her his wife. I thought that fact that he didn't join her in the marriage bed was punishment for him and NOT for Heather, and maybe in this way he makes up for being a bore in the beginning of the novel. ...look at it as a book that was written at a time when this was new stuff and appreciate it for the kick start that it gave woman's romance. I still think the story is wonderful and well written and one of the 3 really great books that Kathleen Woodiwiss has written along with THE WOLF AND THE DOVE and SHANNA.
Rating:
Summary: First Romance I've ever read
Review: when I first read this book, it was because my mother had advised against it. This book is by far one of the best books I have ever read. I like this book because of it's historical back ground. Most people think of sex when they hear someone say romance. This book is not full of sex. It actually has a story line to it and it gave me a better sense of what that time period was like. It helped me, concidering while I was reading this book, i was studying about that time period in History. I think this book is very well written. I recomend it to anyone who might be interested in this kind of book.
Rating:
Summary: The classic that started it all
Review: I'm astonished by the amateur reviewers who aren't intelligent enough to read and analyze this book within the context of the time during which it was written. It was written in 1972, it was one of the first times women were allowed to read about sex outside of male pornography, and it was before the darkest and most delicious of female fantasies were sanitized by the modern scourge of "political correctness". It's immensely readable and the prose isn't purple, it's excellent writing. Perhaps Brandon should have been redeemed sooner; perhaps Heather should have displayed more spine, but within the historical setting of 1799 and given the age of the characters (17 & 35), it's actually probably more accurate than many of the romances written today where all the young misses are feisty and all the gents are enlightened. I first read the book when I was 15. I'm 39 now and still have trouble putting it down whenever I pick it up. As someone else so wisely said, it was written to be enjoyed, not analyzed. And I will never understand the readers/women who claim to be feminists, yet want to censor other women's fantasies as part of your political agenda. As a woman and a feminist, I'll read whatever I please, thank you, and that includes this marvelous classic.
Rating: 
Summary: Flame and the Flower
Review: Flame and the Flower was the first historical romance novel I ever read, and nearly 25 years later, I am still an avid fan of the genre. Though I've read many, many historicals since this one, none have touched my heart as the Flame and the Flower did. It is a sweet, wonderful love story that I read over and over again. I searched my whole life for a man like Brandon!!
Rating:
Summary: Sweet!!!!!
Review: This is my first real romance novel, and as a fourteen year old hopeless romantic and a sappy type who fell for Titanic and such, this has been the best book I have read by far. Im an avid reader, who usually isnt into romances, but I picked up The Flame and The flower while sick one day. I was instantly hooked!
It was such a great tale, heartwarming and sweet! I read the sequel, The ELusive Flame (not great...) and am somewhat through Ashes in the WInd (VERY GOOD!) looking forward to reading Shanna!
Rating:
Summary: And I'm not even a fan . . .
Review: It's the God awful truth that when I think Woodiwiss, I think of the fictional mess that is Shanna (another of Ms. Woodiwiss' novels) but unlike Shanna, I actually like the Flame and the Flower. This will always be one of the most romantic stories that I'll ever have read and I haven't a doubt that it will be one of those novels forever remembered in literary history. That statement is backed by the countless times this thing's been published in the last two or three decades. People often end up critizing the way that the hero treats the heroine in the beginning of the story but I've never been one of them. Even after his forced marriage to the heroine and his vow that he'll never treat her like a true wife, he seriously couldn't be mean to her and he did try. Some people think of the heroine as stupid, I think she was a bit naive but very strong in many ways. The way that Woodiwiss describes things seemed perfect in this novel, not unnecessary or too overdone. Not too flowery, but flowingly poetic and elegant. It's very romantic and simply sweet. A passionate love story that expresses how love can still overcome all the tribulations that life creates. Simply beautiful.
Rating: 
Summary: A little romance history
Review: To get a clear idea of this book without reading all 65 reviews, it might help to have a little history. While romance elements as we know them today have been around in English and American lit since at least *Jane Eyre* (and let's not forget Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in the 1930's), the book that began the industry of the contemporary romance novel or "bodice ripper" as we know it today is *The Flame and the Flower*. As you can see from the other reviews, it generated a phenomenal following and is largely responsible for the plethora of romances out there today. This alone makes it interesting. One of the most interesting (or, if you like, horrifying) things about it, though, is that initial meeting of hero and heroine, which is indeed a rape. Sugar-coat it all you like, but truly, folks, it's rape. It's "justified" in the plot by the fact that Brandon thinks Heather is a whore; by the time period, in which men felt that women were property and commodity (some would say it hasn't changed that much); and by the "love" which exists between the couple and which, we seem meant to believe, was sufficiently latent from the beginning to make the rape at least tolerable. Now how you read this rape is (unlike the fact that it IS rape) a matter of some debate. Rapes in romance: do they express the rape *fantasy*, which a lot of women used to have, and maybe still have? The rape *fantasy* has nothing, I repeat, nothing, to do with actually wanting to be hurt in the way that real rape entails; it's a fantasy of sex without taking responsibility for it, a fantasy that frees women, who have traditionally been castigated for being sexual at all, to enjoy the thought of sex without shame. A fantasy of great sex through rape means that women aren't guilty for enjoying it; all the responsibility is the man's. I don't think women who have this fantasy need to be ashamed of doing so; it's a phenomenon almost inevitable in a world which restricts women's sexuality so drastically. However, this prevalent fantasy doesn't mean that an author can invoke a rape in a novel which is essentially an erotic fantasy of love (I mean, the whole novel is extended foreplay) without confronting some of rape's other implications. The justifications for the rape are dubious even for 1799: the novel all but says that the only thing that makes Brandon's rape a crime or a sin is that Heather is a virgin, a "good girl", sexually inexperienced. Her virginity is the signifier that makes him aware that he has done something, if not wrong, at least inappropriate. The implication is clearly that a sexually experienced woman *can't* be raped or suffer from rape (maybe because the only problem with rape is that it robs a woman of her commodity value on the marriage market?); so if Heather had been the whore that Brandon took her for (and let's not even get started on what it might say about Brandon that he's hiring a whore in the first place), the rape wouldn't have hurt her or traumatized her? Since this is a public forum, I'll confine my comments on this implication to a totally inadequate YEAH, RIGHT. 1799 or not, rape fantasies or not, this is a problem with the incident that I think readers are more than justified in demanding that authors deal with. I don't have room here to argue whether romance ultimately degrades women or empowers them, or whether there's a substantive difference between this early example of the genre and more recent contemporary romances in which women actually do things besides look good and in which a rape by the hero of the heroine would be absolutely unacceptable. I think that there is a real difference, an important one; and I think romance, like every other genre, varies tremendously from book to book. I don't think you should either condemn or praise this big a genre based on any one book, even its founding mother, so to speak. But these are calls you'll need to make for yourself. IF you're going to buy this book (and there are plenty of copies and editions still out there used, by the way), you should be aware that it is both historically interesting AND very disturbing; I gave it two stars because, as you see, a lot of people liked it and a lot of people probably will still like it. But I certainly wouldn't buy it if you don't want to grapple with these issues.
Rating:
Summary: I love This Book !!!!!!!!!!!
Review: this book is very interesting and for everyone's information brandon did not rape heather he thought she was a whore when he met her remember his crew men found her wandering among the ships and she didn't resist him that much . i love kathleen because she is a great author i have flame and the flower, the elusive flame and ashes in the wind, to tell the truth i have read these books 3 or 4 times after i first picked them up they are very interesting and you find something new in the book everytime so kathleen gets five stars *****.BRAVO.
|
