Congratulations to Jessica, who won last week’s drawing for a copy of Vienna Waltz. Jessica, watch for an email from me so I can get your mailing details and pop the book in the post.
It’s been an exciting few days leading up to an exciting week. The Mask of Night was released on Kindle last Thursday, and Vienna Waltz’s official release date is March 29, this coming Tuesday. To celebrate, this week I thought we’d have a virtual book party with an open discussion thread about both books. About The Mask of Night in particular, since it’s been out a few days, but I know Vienna Waltz has been trickling into stores already and some of you received advance copies. So feel free to comment on or ask questions about both books (questions welcome even if you haven’t read the books). We’ll have another Vienna Waltz thread next week as well.
You may also have noticed that my website has a new look, thanks to my fabulous web designer and wonderful friend Gregory Paris. You’ll find detail pages now for both Vienna Waltz and Mask, with excerpts and historical notes. There’s also a new FAQ that answers some common questions about my books, in particular the order of the books. Do let me know how you like the site redesign and if you have more questions for the FAQ.
This week the Fraser Correspondence moves to November 18, just two days before the opening of Vienna Waltz, with a letter Mélanie/Suzanne writes to Raoul when Charles/Malcolm has disappeared unexpectedly during the night. I’ve decided to keep it the Fraser Correspondence (rather than Rannoch) and keep the Mélanie and Charles names. I hope this won’t be too confusing. If you’ve come to my books through Vienna Waltz, Mélanie and Charles Fraser are alter egos for Suzanne and Malcolm Rannoch and the letters I’m posting now describe events just before and then during Vienna Waltz. If you scroll a ways down in the Correspondence, you’ll find more letters from a bit earlier in their time at the Congress, that I wrote while I was researching the book.
Tracy Grant - Novelist 
March 28, 2011 at 7:26 pm
Oh wow, thank you! I’m so excited! I’ll keep an eye out for an email from you. 🙂
Congratulations on the release date finally being here! (Well tomorrow, but it sounds like it’s already out and about in some places. Also, I love the new look of the website!)
March 28, 2011 at 9:14 pm
Thanks, Jessica! So glad you like the new site. Emailing you now!
March 28, 2011 at 9:34 pm
Got my copy of The Devil’s Own this weekend. And it’s autographed! There’s even a sticker on the cover saying it’s autographed. Very cool!
Still can’t decide if I should start Mask on the kindle or wait for Vienna Waltz. They are already both out of order from the series, so it shouldn’t matter which one I read first, but it’s still such a dilemma for me.
(My husband went through the same thing with our exchange student. He couldn’t decide which Star Wars she should watch first, since she hadn’t seen any!)
March 29, 2011 at 2:10 am
So glad to know The Devil’s Own got there, Susan! I think you’ll really enjoy it. Veronica is a fabulous writer. As to the order to read Mask and Vienna Waltz in, I think either way would work. Let me know what you decide. I’m always intrigued by how the order in which readers read books in a series affects the reading experience (speaking as someone who reads many series–Dorothy Sayers, Laurie King–completely out of order). I can see how that would be a dilemma with the Star War movies. What did your husband decide on?
March 29, 2011 at 2:21 am
He decided to watch them chronologically, and we started with Phantom Menace. We just watched Revenge of the Sith last night. I think it’s a good one, but I can’t help laughing out loud at some of the ‘serious’ moments in the movie. As much as I love & respect Star Wars, there are some really cheesy moments in the series.
So now we’ve got to get 3 more in before she goes back to Norway. It will be interesting to get her opinion on the last (first?) 3 since the graphics & effects are so different.
March 29, 2011 at 2:28 am
It would be really interesting to watch them in that order. I grew up on Star Wars (I was 10 when the first one came out and I stood in line to watch Return of the Jedi the day it opened) so it’s hard to imagine coming to the series in that order. I love the way Lucas was able to return to the world he’d built. It always intrigues (and heartens me) how younger people who grew up in the era of fancy special effects still respond to the earlier movies. My cousin’s kids had Star Wars on Christmas morning this year.
March 29, 2011 at 5:38 pm
The ARC arrived last night. Thank you so much! Such beautiful cover. Looking at it closely, I think it kind of interesting that just a little bit of the woman’s one eye is visible, and that her posture seems as if she’s pausing. It looks as if she’s seen something that she’s not quite sure how to take it in.
I am trying very hard not to read it too quickly and missed some clues. I also want to read it first before I read Mask of the Night because I am curious of what it would be like to go from VW to MotN without having ever read SoaL and BaLM. (Not that I could truly experience that, having read both, but I’d like to try and imagine.)
March 29, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Oh, so glad it got there, Sharon, and you’re reading it! I adore the cover, and I think you’re right, the woman (who looks quite a bit like Suzanne/Mélanie) does look a bit like she’s just observed something surprising. Which very much fits with the story.
I’ll be very interested to hear what you think reading VW first and then Mask.
Do post more comments!
March 31, 2011 at 2:10 am
So I decided on Mask of Night first. I had some waiting time at a doctor’s office so I brought my kindle. Before I knew it, I was about 20% in. And then, of course, I had to finish as soon as I could.
LOVED IT!
It draws you in, right from the beginning. If I recall from the beginning, you get a little reminder of who everyone is, which helps. I noticed that when things from the past were mentioned, we only got summaries for the things that have been in previous books. Very clever. Now we get a little teaser of things to come.
As usual, there were plot twists that I did not see coming at all. I look forward to hearing what everyone else thinks.
It will be interesting to read Vienna Waltz, knowing some things about the characters that they do not know about each other.
March 31, 2011 at 6:41 am
So glad to hear you enjoyed the book so much, Susan! It’s always a bit nerve-wracking having a book out there, waiting to hear what people think. And now I have two, which is both wonderful and nervous-making. I worked a lot on the opening (in fact my current editor Audrey was a huge help with it as was my friend Penny), so it’s great to know it drew you in. Also glad to know some plot twists surprised you. (It’s always hard to judge how surprising one’s own plot twists are, but because the author knows the story inside out).
Do you let me know how it is reading Vienna Waltz knowing some things the characters don’t. And you’ll find that Vienna Waltz also contains some new revelations about the characters, even though it’s set earlier.
April 1, 2011 at 12:28 am
I’m in the middle of my careful re-read of Mask so I’m not ready to say too much. Something I love about re-reads is picking up the little statements that foreshadow future discoveries. I found it particularly poignant when Melanie imagines Isobel and Oliver and David and Simon at home contentedly preparing for bed and peacefully sleeping together while she and Charles are discussing her affair with St. Juste.
In fact, I am now picking up on all the times where its clear that Melanie is the romantic of the two – Charles says she is the one who has believed in the possibility of happiness while he did not.
I received my ARC of Vienna Waltz – thank you so much. And I dipped just a little – I had to see what Melanie says to Charles when she discovers him by the dead Princess. But just before that, when she’s standing outside the Princess’s apartment and she sees a figure who might be Charles, she reflects on how she has to expect that he might not be faithful. Oh, that just tore at my heartstrings. Even though I already know that, in Mask, Melanie admits that she didn’t intend to be faithful when she married Charles and he says that he did.
I love this depth and complexity of the two main characters. And I love the same depth in the secondary couples – Isobel and Oliver and David and Simon. Oh, I was so worried throughout Mask that D&S were going to go separate ways. You were exploring the question of betrayal and trust within marriage and D&S have that extra burden of having to be a hidden marriage.
You’ve said before that you enjoy writing mystery and suspense. I’m a romance reader and its the relationships that I read for. I have to admit, I got a little lost in the intrigue of who was plotting what against whom. And, I also have to say, I didn’t really care who killed St. Juste because I didn’t like him anyway. I just didn’t want it to be any of the characters I cared about. I’ll stop here so as not to move into spoiler territory.
Terrific read and even better the second time around.
April 1, 2011 at 3:12 am
So glad you’re enjoying Mask of Night on your second read, Jeanne! Mélanie being the more romantic of the two was something that became very clear to me writing Mask.
I tend to be a mystery/suspense reader who likes romance (particularly ongoing romance) in my suspense/mystery. And I like lots of plot in my romances. Striking a balance can be a challenge, though it’s a challenge I enjoy.
I envisioned Mask of Night from the first as the study of three marriages (I was heavily influenced by the portrait of a marriage in An Ideal Husband when I started writing it). I’m really glad you liked all three central couples and cared about what happened to them. As the story developed, the marriages of the St. Iveses and the Pendarveses became part of the mix as well, as did Hortense and Flahaut whose long-time relationship was similar to a marriage.
Nice to know you couldn’t resist a sneak peak at Vienna Waltz. Btw, the Waterloo books definitively answers the question of whether or not Mélanie was actually unfaithful after she married Charles, a question I deliberately left ambiguous in the earlier books. For a long time I wasn’t sure of the answer myself, and then, during a performance of Beethoven’s 3rd, it became blindingly obvious (I often get some of my best ideas at performances).
April 1, 2011 at 11:35 am
So exciting about the DearAuthor.com April recommendation for Vienna Waltz! Do you send out ARCs to the review blogs? Do you purchase any online advertising? The romance/suspense/mystery writing business is so new and intriguing to me.
April 1, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Thanks, Jeanne! I’m really excited about the Dear Author April recommendation! My publisher sends ARCs to reviewers. For Vienna Waltz, I did a Facebook ad for the first time.
April 1, 2011 at 9:54 pm
My copy of Vienna Waltz just got shipped. In the meantime, I can read a modern mystery as my copy of No Such Thing As A Free Ride arrived today. Great series
April 1, 2011 at 10:05 pm
I have just spent an enjoyable few days re-reading Secrets of a Lady and Beneath a Silent Moon, then reading The Mask of Night and Vienna Waltz. Wonderful! I thoroughly enjoyed Mask and Vienna Waltz, both of which are excellent. (To add to the debate on reading order: my preference would have been to read Vienna Waltz first and then Mask.)
I see from one of your comments above that you “tend to be a mystery/suspense reader who likes romance (particularly ongoing romance) in my suspense/mystery” – I am the same, which is no doubt one of the reasons why I enjoy your books so much. Other reasons include your strong depiction of characters – each is well-established and described, with their motivations, strengths and flaws rendered in a truly believable manner. I like the fact that each character is truly distinct from the others. The relationships between them are well revealed, principally through what they say and do.
You also evoke each place so well – the atmosphere of Scotland is different and distinct from that of London, and Vienna is different again. And you convey the feel of the period so well, inter-weaving your plots cleverly against known historical events.
Your books are wonderfully complex and multi-layered – after finishing BaSM I had to copy the family trees and then annotate them to track the changes revealed in the book! But they are also totally believable given the characters and their motivations as carefully built-up by you.
I love the fact that each book reveals more about Charles and Melanie (aka Malcolm and Suzanne), about their lives both individually and together, and about their relationship with each other and with their children. You consistently find the right balance between the mystery and the romance(s), so that neither dominates at the expense of the other.
I do hope that Mask and Vienna Waltz get the attention and acclaim that they deserve, and that we do not have to wait too long for the next book!
April 1, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Glad your copy of Vienna Waltz is on the way, Susan! Who wrote No Such Thing as a Free Ride? I’m always looking for new mystery series!
April 1, 2011 at 11:40 pm
Wonderful that you read all four books, HJ! And great to have another comment on the reading order. I’m fascinated by what order people read all four in. It’s a little hard for me to judge, as I know the stories so well, but I think just about any order could work.
Great that you annotated the BASM family tree with the revelations. I never thought of doing that, but it makes total sense.
I’m really glad you got a different sense of place from London to Scotland to Vienna–I really worked on that in all the books. I loved researching and writing about Vienna. One thing I loved there and in Mask is that Charles/Malcolm and Mel/Suzanne get to spend more time in the aristocratic side of their lives (a lot of Secrets is taverns, brothels, debtors’ prison, etc… which was also fascinating, but the masquerades and opera were a fun contrast).
Loved your comments about seeing new aspects of the characters in each book. I’m constantly learning new things about them myself, which is one of the reasons I find them such a joy to write about. The revelation about Elizabeth Fraser/Arabella Rannoch in Vienna Waltz was something I hadn’t considered before, but when I got the idea I knew it was perfect, because it makes sense of why she married Kenneth/Alistair, which is something that had always troubled me.
April 2, 2011 at 8:54 am
Re your comment about Elizabeth Fraser/Arabella Rannoch: yes, and I think it helps explain why she was such a distant mother to Chales/Malcolm and to Edgar and Gisele (that, and the fact that her own mother died when she was so young?).
PS I’m pleased to see that Googling “Teresa Grant author” finds a link to your revamped website in third spot, so new readers can find your earlier books. But is it possible for you to make it clear on your Books page that Suzanne and Malcolm are the same characters as Charles and Melanie, so new readers realise that the earlier books are about them? Or does the agreement which caused you to change their names (and yours!) preclude that?
April 3, 2011 at 7:22 am
Sorry, HJ, somehow missed this when I was doing email this morning before my Book Passage event (which went great, thanks to nearly all my family and friends in the greater Bay Area attending :-). And in the course of the q&a I found myself talking about Elizabeth/Arabella and the discoveries I made about her writing Vienna Waltz. I think as you say it explains her being a distant mother (as does her losing her own mother, good catch, not to mention being bipolar). I also think it explains why she married a man she didn’t love or even particularly like. I think she was determined never to fall in love again (though I think in a way she may have been in love with Raoul, but not in the manner of a romantic girl).
April 3, 2011 at 7:32 am
p.s.
Great suggestion about making clear Charles & Mel are alter-egos of Malcolm & Suzanne. There’s nothing that would preclude spelling that out. The FAQ makes it clear (as well as explaining about my name change to Teresa), but I’ll talk to Greg to see if there’s something graceful we could put on the Books page.
April 2, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Tracy, It’s the Brandy Alexander mysteries. All the titles start with No Such Thing as… The author is Shelly Fredman. Fabulous series. The first one is No Such Thing as a Secret.
HJ, great idea about the family tree. I would be interested in seeing what you came up with. Would it work for you to post it?
April 2, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Thanks, Susan! I’ll look for the books.
HJ, I’d love to see the family tree too.
April 2, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Loved Mask of Night.
Felt bad for Bel, not a bit for Oliver. It’s true that the dream is often better than the reality, and he didn’t know what he had until he lost it.
I’m rather surprised that Charles didn’t hand Sylvie over to Carfax after all she did. I might have.
David… he’s turning himself inside out still, trying to believe in a world that wants no part of the REAL him.
Disillusionment seems to be something of a theme in some of your novels, Tracy. A charmed character having their view of the pretty pastel world ripped away and shown a sometimes ugly reality.
April 2, 2011 at 4:49 pm
I don’t know if anyone has seen this yet.
Pride and Prejudice in emoticons.
http://bookshop.livejournal.com/1010612.html
April 2, 2011 at 5:07 pm
Thanks for posting, JMM! It’s interesting, I confess I felt sorry for Bel when I plotted the book, but as I wrote it, I sympathized more with Oliver, I think because I tend to sympathize with outsiders.
I think Charles is pretty disillusioned with Carfax by the end. And it really isn’t up to Charles to turn Sylvie in. She has a hold on Carfax. And I do think if Carfax had her killed, Charles would expose them. I think by the end Charles sees that Oliver and Sylvie were Carfaxes pawns as he was himself.
I think disillusionment is definitely a conscious theme in the books. Good catch. A lot of my characters live in a charmed world, but as a writer I’m all too well aware of the flaws of that world.
April 3, 2011 at 7:24 am
Too funny, JMM. And I should have added above that I’m so glad you loved Mask of Night!
April 4, 2011 at 2:28 am
I felt for Oliver as well. I thought your descriptions of his anguish e.g. not knowing how to play the games at school, were more direct while Bel’s anguish about feeling lonely and not loved by Oliver were more subtly hinted at.
At the end, Oliver speaks directly of finding out too late that his wife loved him and how awful that makes him feel. We don’t hear from Bel but she has found out as well that Oliver has loved and been faithful to her all along. And, as it turns out, it is Oliver who is indirectly responsible for Bel’s being seduced by St. Juste through Sylvie’s actions. I would even say that he’s directly responsible by leaving her feeling so lonely and unloved in the first place. What an enormous burden of guilt to carry on both their parts. If there is any hope of their finding happiness together, I would say that Oliver has to accept his responsibility for Bel’s seduction, tell her so and relieve her of her guilt. He has to accept her as a person with her own legitimate motives rather than as just his wife. Although the circumstances were different, this is what Charles did for Melanie in Secrets of a Lady (and why I love him so.) Since Oliver tells Charles that he still is jealous and wonders where Bel is going when she goes out, I don’t think he’s there yet.
April 4, 2011 at 2:35 am
Re: Vienna Waltz
My local, small town (6000 pop.) library already has a copy and it’s already checked out! I hope this is a sign of brisk sales in the world at large!
April 4, 2011 at 2:48 am
Oliver was physically faithful; but emotionally? If he pined after Sylvie; wondered what his life would have been like without her, that’s not really fidelity.
April 4, 2011 at 6:04 am
Love your analysis, Jeanne! Bel tells Oliver that a few months or even weeks ago realizing he’d been faithful would have mattered but now she’s not sure. I actually don’t think it was Oliver who made Bel feel lonely and unloved. Bel felt that way before their betrothal, and she told him from the first not to ever lie by saying he loved her (which put him in a position where if he ever said he loved her she’d assume he was lying).
I think Bel put up a lot of emotional barriers that caused their own share of complications. I see a lot of missed opportunities and miscommunications in their marriage. I suppose in a sense Oliver set in motion Sylvie’s actions and therefore St. Juste’s. But I think Bel would be the first to say she was a willing participant in the affair and St. Juste’s seduction wouldn’t have succeeded had she not been willing to be seduced. Oliver can tell Bel he loves her, but I actually don’t think he can relieve her of her guilt. Bel has to come to terms with that herself. I think you’re very right that neither of them is there yet. I actually had their relationship more “resolved” in an earlier draft of the book, then decided I didn’t want to wrap things up so neatly. After all, one needs things for future books…
April 4, 2011 at 6:07 am
Very cool both that your library has Vienna Waltz, Jeanne, and that it’s checked out!
April 4, 2011 at 6:15 am
That’s interesting, JMM. I don’t see Oliver as pining for Sylvie. Maybe things I wrote gave that impression, but my perspective writing it was that he still cared about her and always would, the one often does for a first love (the way Mel always will for Raoul), but that he has enough distance to see that a marriage between them probably would have been a disaster. I do, however, think Sylvie was pining for Oliver.
April 4, 2011 at 6:16 am
p.s.
I love the different takes different people have on different characters and how they sometimes differ from my own!
April 4, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Tracy, it hasn’t come out yet why Bel would feel unloved even before her marriage, although with her parents, it might be understandable. And, it seems to me quite likely that she loved Oliver even before he proposed – he’s flirtatious and has a lot of charm, clearly. And yes, she set it up to make it difficult for him to say he loved her and be believed. Yet, for a man who watched his wife so closely – he senses her moody withdrawals and the subtle change in her when she returns from France – he seems singularly blind to her love for him or, at least, her feelings of being unloved. That blindness comes from his own class insecurity about being married to the daughter of an Earl. As a result, he accepts too easily that she doesn’t love him and, even worse, hides his fidelity behind his flirtatiousness. He holds back – he could have been a lot more reassuring without having to say “I love you.”
I don’t think Bel should feel guilty. She will, of course, but I believe Oliver left her feeling lonely and vulnerable and he should have tried harder. Or, at least, he has to accept that his failure to make her feel loved left her vulnerable.
April 4, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Tracy – Although I agree that Oliver has a residual fondness for Sylvie, I don’t agree that Melanie cares for Raoul as a first love in the same way. Melanie’s love for Raoul is much stronger than that and Charles knows it, though she does not. Raoul supports Melanie’s love for direct action, her desire to make a real difference and her recklessness and love of adventure. Charles’s first reaction is always to try to pull her back and keep her safe. He’s too fair to really stop her but he does play dirty sometimes (“one of us should stay back for the children’s sake.”) And he can’t offer her the life of action that Raoul can. Unless they stumble across a dead body in a fountain, their lives, especially Melanie’s, are quiet, their contributions are writing, and talking at dinner parties and giving speeches.
Raoul offers Melanie the opportunity to be herself, in an odd way, since she would be a spy. But taking on different roles is what Melanie was raised to be from childhood. And Raoul never tries to hold her back – he gives her free rein (“he let me make the tactical decisions.”) And she can talk to him in ways she can’t talk to Charles.
In the world Charles offers, she has only two roles – “wife” and “mother”. And, despite all his progressive thinking, he can’t help but be an early 19th century English gentleman wanting to protect and shelter the woman he loves. Melanie has to prod him out of that too often.
I don’t think Melanie would go back to Raoul (“particularly not in that way”) but I do think she will grow progressively more restless and unhappy, if all she has left to do is pour tea and help Charles write speeches. Charles knows this and that’s why he asks Raoul to stay.
April 4, 2011 at 2:40 pm
I didn’t put it very well, Jeanne. I think Bel knew her parents loved her, in their way, at her siblings, particularly, David. But I I think she grew up feeling not beautiful and glamorous like her mother and sisters. She thought she wasn’t the sort of woman a man, at least not a handsome, charismatic man like Oliver, would fall romantically in love with. She’d made up her mind that Oliver wouldn’t love her before the marriage (and yes, I totally think she was in love with him). And I think you’re spot-on to point out that it’s Oliver’s class insecurity that makes him blind to Bel’s needs and makes it difficult for him to reach out. I don’t know that I think Bel should feel guilty. There were definitely a lot of faultlines in the marriage. But as you say she certainly will. I think it would take some reaching out on both sides if they have a chance of healing their relationship.
April 4, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Perhaps pining is the wrong word. I do think Oliver may have “romantisized” Sylvie in a way. It’s easy to see someone as glamorous if you don’t live with them.
(I once read a hilarious story in which a wife gave the woman her husband was infatuated with food poisoning, with all the usual symptoms. The infatuation faded quickly.)
He was happy in a way with Bel, but may have seen Sylvie as a victim of fate.
IMHO, he held onto his ideal of Sylvie until he realized what she’d done to Bel – who was the one completely innocent person in the mess – just because Bel had married him.
April 4, 2011 at 3:05 pm
Once again you’re spot on, Jeanne, and once again I over-simplified or misstated. A part of Raoul will always be the first man Mel loved, but he’s so much more–mentor, friend, partner in adventure. Such a good point that Mel is able to be more of an “official equal” in his world than in Charles’s. Which, as you say, is precisely why Charles asks Raoul to stay at the end. Though I think he also does it for himself, though I’m not sure he’d admit that yet.
April 4, 2011 at 3:12 pm
Romanticized is a good word. Such a good point about it being easy to see the one that got away as glamorous. Also, Oliver and Sylvie, like Mel and Raoul, shared a secret life, which can create a powerful bond.
April 4, 2011 at 3:24 pm
To be fair to Bel, weren’t Oliver’s feelings for Sylvie pretty much common knowledge when he met Bel and started to court her?
Not to mention the fact that he continued to be “friends” with Sylvie after marrying Bel – in fact, he helped her settle gambling debts. AND he confided in her about Bel’s affair. That’s not exactly loyalty to one’s marriage.
April 4, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Interesting perspectives on the marriage of Bel & Oliver. It may be easy to place blame on one or the other, I would say it’s a realistic depiction of a breakdown in a marriage. I saw a lack of communication on both sides. Each makes assumptions about the other, which turn out to be incorrect. But by then actions have been taken that are quite irreversible, and what’s left are the consequences. I’ve always put more value on how people deal with the bad things, since it’s impossible to avoid the bad things altogether.
We got to see that in Secrets. We learned about Melanie when Charles did, so we got to see the progression of what she went through and what she did about it, and then how Charles responded to it. We saw them work through some very raw and painful emotions.
April 4, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Yes, Oliver’s feelings about Sylvie were common knowledge. Which was obviously painful for Bel. On the other hand she went into the marriage with her eyes open in that regard (in fact I’d go so far a to say she probably thought Oliver’s feelings for Sylvie were still stronger than they in fact were).
It’s fascinating how to all define loyalty and fidelity. I’m not sure I exactly see Oliver being friends with Sylvie and helping her with her gambling debts (he doesn’t pay them for her, he arranges the sale of her jewelry for her so she can pay them) as disloyalty. I know lots of people who are still friends with exes and still confide in them. Confiding in Sylvie about Bel’s affair is a bit more questionable, but I can totally see how it happened. He needed to talk to someone, and he couldn’t go to his closest guy friends, because David is Bel’s brother, Simon is David’s partner, and Charles is so close to David.
But those gray areas about loyalty and fidelity are one of the things I love to explore as a writer.
April 4, 2011 at 5:28 pm
I too tend to see the breakdown of Oliver and Bel’s marriage as due to lack of communication and incorrect assumption, Susan. And then, as you say, they get to the point where they’ve taken actions which make it hard to piece things back together. I actually think, though in many Charles and Mel were dealing with much worse revelations in Secrets, they know each other better than Bel and Oliver do, which made it easier to get past the revelations. I actually haven’t made up my own mind where Bel and Oliver are headed, so I’m finding this discussion particularly fascinating. Do keep it up–and thanks!!
April 5, 2011 at 8:22 am
[…] very fond of Raoul and I can definitely see that tug between them. As Jeanne adeptly pointed out in last week’s comments, he represents a world in which Mel can practice her talents to the fullest and be herself, whereas […]
May 17, 2011 at 7:02 am
[…] Teresa Grant, The Mask of Night, Tracy Grant, Vienna Waltz, Waterloo Leave a Comment In the Mask of Night discussion a few weeks ago, there were quite a few comments about Isobel and Oliver. A number of readers found […]
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[…] very fond of Raoul and I can definitely see that tug between them. As Jeanne adeptly pointed out in last week’s comments, he represents a world in which Mel can practice her talents to the fullest and be herself, whereas […]