Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books Read in 2014

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Today I’m linking up with Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly blog event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, for my annual list of ten best books read during the year. This year’s list seems like one of the most unusual mixes I’ve had—and it seemed like I had a bit of a harder time putting it together. Besides a few really splendid standouts that were easy choices, there were a lot of books that I liked (I’ll talk about more of those in my general year-end reading roundup post after the New Year!), and it was challenging picking out just which ones were the best to round out the list. But here they are—in the order read, not order of favorites:


The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer
I was finally lured into trying one of Georgette Heyer’s Regency books by  seeing rave reviews of this one from what seemed like my entire online acquaintance. The Grand Sophy did not disappoint: it’s an entirely delightfully witty, madcap romantic comedy. Read my review here.


Thorofare by Christopher Morley

A big, rich, rambling, beautiful novel, this wins my award for favorite book of the year. Told mostly from the perspective of an English boy, the nephew of a college professor who teaches in America, it traces his journey to the States and the family’s life in village, city and country on both sides of the Atlantic, exploring with pleasant humor and an incredible eye for detail the curious differences and similarities of English and American culture in the late Victorian/early Edwardian era. Read my full review here.

The Third Man by Graham Greene
Written specifically to serve as the source material for the screenplay of the excellent 1949 film, this novella has comparatively less material, but it’s definitely worth reading for its crisp storytelling and wry wit, and its slightly different angle on the story through the medium of fiction. I actually read it through twice. If you’ve seen the movie and liked it, you’ll probably enjoy the way the book complements it, as I did.

Until That Distant Day by Jill Stengl
Here is that rare thing, at least in my experience—a recently-written historical novel that completely captivated me. Though it’s billed as historical romance (and there are satisfying touches of love interest involved in the plot) this is more a story of a family, a sister and brothers struggling to survive and preserve their relationships with each other as they are pulled different ways by the tumult of the French Revolution. Extremely well-written and very hard to put down!

The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan
A play, not a novel—I seem to have read quite a lot of plays this year (more on that in my year-end roundup). I saw the 1999 movie years back and liked it, but reading the play impressed me even more. The characters and the pre-WWI setting are alive on the page, the play itself an absorbing and thought-provoking study of justice and the cost of standing for conviction. I ended up reading this one twice, too. Find my (short) Goodreads review here.

Pastoral by Nevil Shute

A novel of life on an R.A.F. bomber base during WWII, centering around the sometimes difficult progress of a romance between a young pilot and a female signal officer—deceptively understated, with a feel for everyday life, like both of Shute’s books that I’ve read so far. It’s not the kind of book that grabs you with a flash and a bang, but rather one that creeps up on you quietly till you’re entirely absorbed. Review here.

Plenilune by Jennifer Freitag

Once again something very much out of the ordinary for me makes my top-ten list. In fact, I can’t quite compare it to anything I’ve ever read before. If you move in any of the same online circles I do, you may have heard ought of this book: an ambitious planetary fantasy written in a stunningly grand and gilded style. My review here.

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris

An unusual and interesting piece of WWII and film history, this book traces the wartime experiences of five famed Hollywood directors, the effect of those experiences on their lives and careers, and the often complicated and controversial role of documentary filmmakers in the army. (And isn’t that old-movie-poster cover pretty cool?) Read my review here.

Rabble in Arms by Kenneth Roberts
This is detailed, excellently-written, fascinating historical fiction, based around Burgoyne’s invasion from Canada and the campaigns leading up to the Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War. I couldn’t believe how much history I learned that I’d never had a clue about before (full-scale naval battles on Lake Champlain, anyone?), especially since I’ve walked over some of the very ground where it took place.

Pendragon’s Heir by Suzannah Rowntree

This one is slated for publication in 2015, but I read an advance version of it in 2014 and it definitely belongs on my best-of list—I literally couldn’t put it down all day. A splendid historical fantasy and fascinating twist on Arthurian legend—you’re going to want to keep an eye out for this one. As a matter of fact, you can check back here on Saturday the 20th for an announcement of the release date! (Update: Read my full review here.)

A good half of this list I acquired via library; The Grand Sophy and Until That Distant Day I bought on Kindle, while for Plenilune as well as Pendragon’s Heir I was fortunate enough to be an advance reader! Thorofare, meanwhile, was an impulse purchase of an out-of-print used book which really paid off.

Previous years’ top-ten lists: 2011, 2012, 2013.

A Fine Romance

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When I set out to write a retelling of Cinderella, I had a couple of points in mind from the first where I wanted to do things a bit differently. To begin with, I knew I wanted to give my Prince Charming character a definite personality and initiative of his own. The Prince seems to be rather a nonentity in most traditional tellings of the tale—we’re never really given any good reason for Cinderella to fall in love with him, besides the fact that he’s a prince, and we’re told (but not often shown) that he’s charming. Second, I wanted my hero and heroine to meet early in the story, so they had time to develop a friendship before the climactic “ball” sequence. In most versions of the story, Cinderella meets the prince for the first time at the ball, which means invoking the old standby, love-at-first-sight (at least on his side; she could have loved him from afar, I suppose).

I wanted to avoid love-at-first-sight for the simple reason that it has been done so often, besides being a bit less believable. It’s not the most irritating romantic cliché for me (that award would go to the misunderstanding that drags on for half a book when it could be cleared up by someone speaking one sentence), but I think it is one of the most over-used. I’m sure it does happen sometimes in the real world, but there it’s probably in the minority. Fiction seems to reverse that statistic. Oh, it’s definitely useful in terms of plot; I can see that—it raises the stakes and kicks the story into a higher gear right off the bat, and in “these days of rush and hurry” when we have to capture and hog-tie the reader’s interest as soon as possible, I’ve no doubt it looks attractive to authors. But common sense keeps me from becoming too enchanted with it when I write. Attraction or interest at first sight, definitely—that can give your plot a nudge and hint to the reader that there’ll be something doing later on. But in nine cases out of ten, you’ve got to give these characters some time to at least get acquainted before they can start considering whether this person is someone with whom they could spend the rest of their life. To me, that has a more authentic feeling.

Another cliché I’ve observed is the brand of forbidden romance with an Unsympathetic Parent obstructing the course of true love. As with love-at-first-sight, one can see its advantages plot-wise: instant conflict. But I think it’s also been overdone to the point of saturation. Now, that’s not saying I’m in favor of arranged marriages or parents exerting an unhealthy amount of control over adult children’s lives; and I know there’s enough bad parents in the world to provide material for a hundred books. But that’s just the point: they already have. I think fiction could use a healthy dash of families where children and parents respect one another’s judgment and share each other’s ideals enough that they’re not likely to come into conflict over something as important as the children’s romantic choices.

Again, that’s not saying I’d never use this plot, any more than I’ve sworn off gunfights in Westerns. As a matter of fact I have used it more than once. But I try hard to keep it from being just a clichéd wail of “They don’t understand!” In “The Ranch Next Door,” for instance, I made a point of having my heroine say she knows her parents would never object to her sweetheart on a personal level had things been different; it’s their unreasoning feud with his family getting in the way of their judgment. In another yet-to-be-published story I took it tongue-in-cheek for humorous effect.

“But Lainey”—Gerald gestured helplessly—“you don’t understand, girl. Why, I always figured for you to marry some nice feller who’s got himself set up proper in the world, and—and have the right kind of house, with one of them newfangled cookstoves, and glass in the winders, and them—doilies on the rockin’-chairs in the parlor.” 

“Pa, we’ll come to all that later. Bob wants to raise horses for the army; he—”

“Yeah, an’ Johnny Wagner wants to be a cattle king!”  

“I don’t want to marry Johnny Wagner!” 

“You’re doggone right you don’t!” barked Gerald. 

They glared at each other for a minute, slightly sidetracked.

~ “The Mustanger’s Bride”

I even have a sketch of an outline for a novel where a parent’s disapproval drives a good half of the plot. But my general rule of thumb is, if there’s going to be a parent/child conflict over a romance, there’d better be a darn good reason for it, at least in the minds of the characters. If a parent is misguided, they ought to at least believe they’re in the right, not just take a random unreasonable dislike to a potential son-in-law to complicate the story. Because that would pretty much make them a cardboard character and invalidate them as a source of wisdom on any other subject.

Do you find any of these plots overdone in your reading experience? Can you think of any examples of books with a refreshingly different or original take on the romance plot?

O. Henry’s Full House (1952)

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I’ve wanted to see this movie for several years, and the other night I finally settled down and watched it. I went into it with only moderate expectations—literary adaptations, you know—but I was pleasantly surprised; I really loved it! It is actually five separate short films, each based on one of O. Henry’s most famous stories, linked together by segments with John Steinbeck narrating some background on O. Henry’s life and writing. For me, as someone who has read the Complete Works cover to cover and never tires of recommending them, watching the camera pan over the familiar titles of the collections on the spines of beautiful leather-bound copies and listening to Steinbeck talk about the stories I’ve loved so much was lovely in itself. (For the curious, the little introductory scene, in which O. Henry—his face never seen in the shadows of a prison cell—overhears a remark by another prisoner and writes it down, was actually drawn from his story “What You Want.”) The individual adaptations are very well done, considering that so much of what is couched in crisp, humorous narration on the page has to be conveyed visually and through dialogue. The settings of the stories are opened up and moved around a bit, but the spirit of the original is maintained.
The set begins with “The Cop and the Anthem,” in which park-bench bum Soapy (Charles Laughton), determined to spend the cold winter months comfortably in jail, repeatedly and unsuccessfully tries to get himself arrested, with comic results. The script gives him a sort of sidekick in another tramp (David Wayne) who tags after him, in order that Soapy may explain his schemes for the benefit of the audience; and his personality is that of a decayed gentleman with a florid vocabulary incongruous beside his ragged appearance, providing the opportunity to work a lot of that narrative humor into the dialogue. Very well done, and Laughton’s performance, particularly in the climactic scene, is spot-on.

In “The Clarion Call,” police detective Barney Woods (Dale Robertson) recognizes that a recent murder and robbery was committed by a former friend of his, Johnny Kernan (Richard Widmark)—but since he owes Kernan a long-standing debt of a thousand dollars, he can’t bring himself to arrest him until matters are squared between them. This one is well-scripted too, and I liked Robertson as the detective, but Widmark noisily overplays the eccentricity and nastiness of his character, coming close to spoiling the effect. The moments where he is more restrained allow you to pay more attention to the story.

“The Last Leaf,” in my opinion, is the pièce de résistance of the film. The story of a despairing young girl ill with pneumonia (Anne Baxter), who becomes convinced that when the last leaves fall from the nearly-bare vine outside her window, she will die too, is one of O. Henry’s most emotional on the page, and the film version does it wonderful justice. The script gives it extra depth, I think, by making the two girls sisters and giving Joanna (Baxter) a failed romance as part of the reason for her despair. The performances by all three key characters, including elder sister Sue (Jean Peters) and the girls’ upstairs neighbor, irascible old painter Behrmann (Gregory Ratoff), are excellent, and the final scene is just as beautiful as in the story. Bring along a handkerchief for this one.

“The Ransom of Red Chief,” is, unfortunately, the weakest of the bunch, though based on one of O. Henry’s most famous tales, in which two hapless con-men  (Fred Allen and Oscar Levant) kidnap a small boy and wind up driven to their wits’ end by his antics. The dialogue is clever enough, but the pacing is very flat—it doesn’t have the same snappy hilarity as the story, with the two men reduced to exhaustion by the end. I think part of the problem is that both Allen and Levant play it with a kind of deadpan humor; I liked Allen’s performance, but thought it would have been better if he’d had a more goofy or excitable partner-in-crime to play off. Lee Aaker is just right as “Red Chief,” but his part seemed small compared to the story. (I understand that this segment was actually dropped for the first theatrical release; I can understand why.)

And finally we have “The Gift of the Magi.” You all know this one. The famed Christmas story of a young couple (Jeanne Crain and Farley Granger) trying to find a way to buy Christmas presents for each other, in spite of having very little money, is given a very sweet and faithful adaptation—again, using the dialogue and a scene with the couple looking in shop windows to expand the background of the characters. You might want to save a corner of your handkerchief from “The Last Leaf”—it’s a lovely way to end the film.

One of the things I loved best about O. Henry’s Full House is the period-correct atmosphere: the Edwardian-era clothing and hairstyles are excellent, much better than one usually sees in a film like this; the setting of old New York City with its brownstones and shop-window displays and the rattling and roaring of the elevated trains is brought to life wonderfully. Besides the original music by Alfred Newman, the score is filled with old popular songs, hymns and Christmas carols, adding to the old-fashioned feel (you can hear “After the Ball” playing in the background of the short scene with Marilyn Monroe in “The Cop and the Anthem”). It’d make a great holiday-season film, I think, considering that three of the five stories have a wintry setting and the final one winds up at Christmas!

Of course you know I’m going to finish by recommending the original stories. Viewers who already love O. Henry will probably enjoy this film most, but I think even those not yet acquainted with him will probably like it too. It’s available on DVD and on Amazon Instant Video.