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Title: The Legend of the Seventh Virgin by Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr, Jean Plaidy ISBN: 0-385-00609-8 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: June, 1965 Format: Hardcover List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Exploring the Gothic...
Comment: Legend of the Seventh Virgin is an interesting book in the Victoria Holt canon. I am going to name another book and author: "Cotillion", a Regency romance by Georgette Heyer, who invented that particular genre. Holt, too, invented a particular kind of modern Gothic with a strong romantic element, which was an instant success in the same way as the Regency. Anyway, "Cotillion" is a novel in which Heyer subtly subverts the traditions and mores of the Regency genre - rules she herself established! - and "Seventh Virgin" is a novel in which Victoria Holt explores the themes of the particular genre that she created. (She was influenced by Charlotte Bronte, but made the modern first-person narrative Gothic historical romance her own). I think this is what makes it so particularly interesting - Holt experiments with heroines and lead characters, playing around with their roles and our expectations, manipulating the rules she herself established (and unfortunately later depended too much upon) for this genre. Snare of Serpents, one of the better of her later books shows similar experimentation with the roles of hero and heroine and subversion of our expectations.
The book is, as we expect from Holt, interesting with the customary mysterious buildings and ruins, the intriguing characters with the dark pasts, the sense of fear and dread and the eventual, startling, unexpected conclusion. However, I did not particuarly like the last chapter, which appeared to be an after-thought, a whole other separate study, as if it belonged to a collection of short stories or in a folder of experimental jottings. Having said that, Legend of the Seventh Virgin is still a great Holt, a mysterious, slightly subversive Gothic which courageously plays a game with the author's own rules and ways. If you are studying the development of the Gothic romance through the ages, you should try to refer to this book as well as to Holt's "Mistress of Mellyn" to sufficently represent her work in this genre. It is dissatisfactory in some ways, but as a friend said:
"I thought it was an interesting twist upon the Gothic plot. The characters didn't deserve the fates that would normally befall them. So they didn't"
I think this sums it up pretty well, really. A brave and relatively successful experiment on Holt's part.
Rating: 4
Summary: Nostalgic Critique
Comment: I don't generally read Romance novels. If I accidentally read one, then I generally dislike it. The genre and I are simply not made for each other. Legend of the Seventh Virgin is different, in that it and I have a history together. Between the ages of 8-11 I must have read this book 60,000,000 times, and when I saw it in the store I had to buy it to see if it was as I remember.
It may be that Victoria Holt is a formulaic writer. I've never read any of her other books, so I wouldn't know. What I do know is that the same impressions I had as a child came back to me very strongly. I loved Kerensa and I hated Mellyora. I totally supported Kerensa's decision about Nellyphant and would have done exactly the same. The one signal difference, I suppose, is that I felt much less dissatisfied about the ending than I did as a child (her fate no longer seeming so awful to me).
I kind of figure that anything that vivid can't be all bad.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Hands of the Potter
Comment: As I read this book, at first I was becoming a little frustrated. When is our lady Ms. Carlee/St. Larnston going to attain to that mountain top and stay there. Then I began to become aware that each time she began to elevate, some flaw of character or motive (greed, pride, whatever) began to become evident and she would be brought low. This is a story about real life, which is not a "live happily ever after" situation by any means. The story leaves her after a series of a strong introspection following a couple of near brushes with death and a deep emotional disappointment, at a good starting point, low again, but poised for a good revival this time. I guess the author left the sequel of the story up to the reader.
I like the story because it speaks of my own personal experiences with life and what resolves I have come to at each rise and fall .
Could the author have been familiar with the following passage from Jeremiah 18:
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
I had perceived a striking resemblance to these principals in the story.
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Title: The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr, Jean Plaidy, Eleanor Hibbert ISBN: 0385036019 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: June, 1970 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Shivering Sands by Victoria Holt ISBN: 0449213617 Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: 12 September, 1986 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Queen's Confession by Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr, Jean Plaidy, Eleanor Hibbert ISBN: 0385082762 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: June, 1968 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Road to Paradise Island by Victoria Holt ISBN: 0449208885 Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: 12 October, 1986 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Mask of the Enchantress by Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr, Jean Plaidy ISBN: 0385170246 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: July, 1980 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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