Cotillion

I never really appreciated this book until I heard Phyllida Nash read it. Oh my heavens! I was laughing out loud. The voices for all of the characters are perfect--esp. Dolph, I think. It's expensive to buy, but your library network might have a copy. Once I started listening to it, I walked around with my walkman and earphones while doing dishes, laundry, walking the dog . . . I kept looking for things to do because I so wanted to keep listening. I love all of her books on audio, but this is one of the very best.

This is quite possibly my favorite Heyer, which is saying something, because the competition is fierce. The author plays with the usual ingredients of her books, and reverses them (the man who appears to be the hero is actually the villian.) Everybody is slightly absurd, including the heroine. In books by numberless imitators of Ms. Heyer, the heroine is always perfect. Not here. Kitty Charing is bright and good-natured. She is also very innocent, very impulsive, a crusader, a match-maker, and the despair of her putative fiancee, Freddy Standen. Freddy himself is one of Ms. Heyer's happiest creations. The plot is tightly wound, and fits together with satisfying clicks. Great scenes: Dophinton's proposal to Kitty; Freddy's ditto; Kitty meets Freddy's family; Freddy and Kitty go sight-seeing in London; Freddy discusses the Elgin Marbles with his father; Freddy discovers why Kitty is seeing Dolphinton; Kitty and Olivia encounter Olivia elderly admirer; the masquerade; the elopement; and Jack's comeuppance at the hands of Freddy.If you have never read this book, prepare for a treat.

The good news--Georgette Heyer is the standard by which all writers of Regency Romance are judged. The bad news--after reading any of Ms. Heyer's books, one becomes a true stickler for detail when it comes to other writers in this genre.Like most of her novels, 'Cotillion' is a witty and elegant romp through the world of the beau monde--its foibles and its fashions. Kitty Charing in her own right is as assertive as any modern heroine as she learns to navigate the convoluted social waters of London. Unlike those around her, she sees the good in everyone, which of course lead to some comic mishaps. Her pretend 'fiance' Freddy is wonderful as the not-quite-as-brain-dead-as-everyone-thinks-him man about town.Like all of Ms. Heyer's novels, it does help to be rather familiar with regency cant, and there are actually fan sites out there with glossaries of regency slang used in her books.

"Cotillion" is on eof Heyer's finest achievements - for it is quite a complete triumph of her writing here. Those looking for something strong in the plot may look elsewhere. The plot as such is weak and the work would have fallen flat had it been authored by anyone but Miss Heyer. Heyer turns this seemingly plotless tale into one filled with wit and laughs. Kitty is a country-bred heiress who is prepared to go to any extremes to have a time in London. She is put into a most uncomfortable spot by her guardian who insists on her marrying one of her cousins in which case only his wealth would be bequeathed to her. Else, it goes off in charity. It is in trying to make a escape from the place that she runs into one of her cousins, Freddy Standen, a self-confessed nitwit, and a dandy. But dont let that put you down - for Heyer develops Freddy into one of her best heroes. I personally love Freddy simply because he resembles the sidekicks of her other novels whome I adore (like Pel and Sir Pom in "Convenient Marriage"). Kitty is sufficient without being as captivating as Frederica or Horatia Winwood. But the tale is led on at a brisk pace filled with all fun and laughs. So have a go at it if you are down in the dumps and need something to perk you up. Freddy, Kitty, Dolph, Meg and all the other host of splendid characters will make you smile in not too long a time.

This book has been described as one of the greatest Regency romances of all time. It subtly and with cracking good humour subverts all the expectations of the genre with a great deal more subtlety, humour and cunning than most deliberate parodies. Heyer builds up her usual cast of powerful and memorable characters - no two-dimensional characters for her!She gives us a vain and slightly selfish, yet also totally generous and completely charming heroine, who you cannot dislike; a delightful, stammering and ineffectual dandy who turns out to have gumption beneath his affectations, his lovely, silly sister with no fashion sense, but a great deal of kindness, a wicked rake who yet fascinates and interests us - a cast literally of dozens of characters, all of whom are distinctively portrayed.There are no less than four romantic plots in this book, interthreaded and interwoven out of each other with exquisite grace - (hence the title - "Cotillion" - basically a gay little dance). In less skilled hands this book would have become heavy-handed and ponderous, exquisitely tactless. In Heyer's hands the book is light and flowing, fluently written, complicated and yet not at all hard to follow. It is a book for the fan of Heyer, and is best read after you have cultivated a familarity with Heyer's traditional Regencies - for example, Regency Buck. She subtly and wickedly subverts traditions she herself established.You'll laugh, you'll cry, your emotions will all be twanged one by one. It is a very fine book. A very fine book indeed. I won't tell you who the hero is, because it would ruin the book for you - but you won't be disappointed. Cotillion is a happy book, written by Heyer at the very height of her powers. It is not just a Regency Romance. It is a novel about history - Heyer's Regency novels have, collectively, been described as the most important set of books about the Regency middle and upper class lifestyle ever to be written. It is a novel about real people. It is also a novel about the Regency Romance. And it is also a seriously comic novel. Read it. Preferably after you have read several others of her Regency Romances (I recommend Regency Buck, Sylvester, Faro's Daughter, and The Corinthian as the best examples of Heyer's traditional Regency - that she subtly teased in this book), so you have the right expectations.