Beast by Judith Ivory

Beast Judith Ivory Romance novel    1997 Rating: A-/B+

The first time I read Beast I  thought it was mediocre.  I didn't care for the heroine, and I thought the hero was unappealing and too old.  Looking back at my records, I see that I read this in January 2000, right after I started reading romance again.  I think when I read this I was looking for a different, more traditionally romance kind of read and therefore didn't appreciate the rich complexity of the story on offer here.  

Beast is an homage to the Beauty and the Beast story, with elements of Cupid and Psyche thrown in for good measure.  Louise Vandermeer is the titular beauty, a very young, stunningly lovely heiress from Florida whose parents have high hopes for a spectacular marriage for her.  Specifically, French prince Charles d'Harcourt.  Charles is titled, rich, extremely well connected, urbane, charming, and only a little disfigured.  He is scarred and blind in one eye, and has a knee that gives him problems sometimes.  None of this hampers his success with the ladies, for he is generous, urbane, charismatic, and unique.  He is also brilliant in his own way - he has a nose for scent and an obsession with creating the perfect perfume.  To do this he needs a steady supply of the very rare ambergris which he can only purchase from someone with a rich shipping empire.  He finds that in an American, Louise Vandermeer's father, who happens to be ambitious in more than one way.  He has plans for Louise.  Big plans for a wonderful marriage.  And to his mind Charles Harcourt is the most perfect candidate to make this Happily Ever After happen.  

Charles himself is ambivalent about this sort of arranged marriage.  He wants the ambergris, but an infant bourgeois American heiress?  Not so much.  Until he sees the Fair Louise in person and is captivated by her beauty and fascinated by her intransigent arrogance.  Unluckily for Louise he sees her, but she doesn't see him.   They are on the same ship traveling to France, Charles secretly, when he spies her in a minor shipboard dalliance, chatting her would-be lover up about her ugly, crippled husband-to-be, and decides to teach her a lesson.  He will seduce her in the dark, show her what a grand lover an "ugly" man can be, and then reveal himself.  Charles, however, doesn't anticipate falling in love with his query, hopelessly and vulnerably in love.  

What is so interesting about this book is watching the power play between these two shift and morph, first with Charles being utterly in control of himself and the situation, then with things slipping slowly out of his hands and into Louise's.  Louise is not standard romance novel heroine material.  She is fully aware of her allure and willing to manipulate it.  She holds herself aloof from people and judges herself better.  She does not suffer fools or feel she has to make much of an effort to make people like her.   It is easy to empathize with Charles's wounded vanity at her ignorant dismissal of him and to want to see her brought down a bit.  On the other hand, it is hard to judge one so young for not being more wise.  Louise is only eighteen and has no experience.  The desire to rebel against expectations, to explore and see things not experienced, well, what eighteen-year-old doesn't feel that way?  Isn't that exactly how you are supposed to feel when you are young and incredibly beautiful and everything is before you but you can't see what it is?

Charles's increasing obsession with Louise makes for fascinating reading.  The book's main theme - in tune with its Beauty and the Beast homage, though slightly off-key - is that beauty really shouldn't matter, but somehow it does.  Charles isn't ugly, but good.  He's ornamental in his own perverse way, and he has many good qualities, but he isn't precisely altruistic.  Louise is beautiful and not really bad, more foolish and inexperienced than anything.  To both of them beauty matters and continues to matter.  However, Louise learns to open her eyes to more than just external traditional beauty and admire Charles for his other good qualities.  

Interestingly, again with this theme, the book's surroundings are always elegant and beautiful, richly appointed and luxurious.  The ship on which Charles and Louise meet is a precursor to the Titanic in splendor and Charles's estates are fantastically lovely.  Would Charles and Louise be so happy if they weren't surrounded by all of this?  Very likely not.  Charles has an additional sense for beauty in his nose.  His sense of smell adds another layer to book.  Ivory obviously did her homework about how perfumes are created and made, but Charles's awareness of surroundings is sensuous in the extreme.  And, as usual, Ivory's descriptions are deliberate and poetic.  

Strangely enough, Beast is lighter in tone than The Proposition.  Mick and Winnie of The Proposition are nobler people than Charles and Louise, but the latters' baggage is lighter.  Will they be happy together, though?  It's hard to predict what such a young woman as Louise will grow into, but Charles is generous enough, interesting enough, and patient enough to help her into maturity.  It's hard to imagine being unhappy with such a husband.  Besides, they have loads of money.  

If the above praise hasn't persuaded you, Dear Reader, to try Beast, there is one other unique thing found here: Louise has two living parents and both of them dote on her.  (How rare is that in romance?)  As parents, they do assert pressure on Louise to choose Charles, but they don't force her.  Which means this book has an entirely character-driven conflict, a real psychological interplay.  Those books are seldom found and when they are should be esteemed and enjoyed.  

tags: books  romance novels  judith ivory