Var. books by Eva Ibbotson

[meganbmoore]

I appear to have a bit of an odd relationship with Eva Ibbotson's books.

On the one hand, I adore her children’s books and their wacky hijinks. They're just plain fun and have endearing characters. In them, Ibbotson also has the ability to make me forget to be critical about what goes on in her worlds. I'm not saying she's uniquely gifted in this way, but I'm not sure there's any other author who would make me forget to wonder about a book where a central concept is that one of the characters turns evildoers into cute zoo animals using her magic knuckles, but she does.

But then there are her historical novels. Most of them are now published as YA, but I think they were all marketed as either historical fiction or romance novels when they came out. These books are set in the early 20th century and feature a super virtuous and self-sacrificing heroine who falls in love with a much older playboy with Secrets and Angst and A Past. And scads of money, can't forget that. They have a super twee courtship and things seem to be going along perfectly when suddenly Something Happens. Usually a Big Misunderstanding and I spend the rest of the book aggravated with them and wanting to yell at them and tell them to JUST TALK ALREADY. (It's been a couple years since I read Countess Below Stairs, so I can't remember if this was also the case there.) I think the only ones where I cared at all if the main couple still got together in the end were a Company of Swans and A Song for Summer, and then only because I didn't think the heroine would be happy otherwise. I also spent the whole books wanting to yell at the heroines to just do something, ANYTHING, selfish. Not want to go to school or marry the person they love or eat their favorite treat, but something actually self-centered that's just about fulfilling their own desires.

And yet, despite the aggravation they cause, I adore them, to varying degrees. (Well, Reluctant Heiress not so much. The self-sacrificing and misunderstandings exceeded my tolerance level.) Ibbotson's worldbuilding is simply engrossing. Not just the (quite sanitized and whitewashed nostalgic) early 20th century settings (largely 30s Austria, especially Vienna), but also the communities that the characters inhabit, including the schools (especially the schools) and the traveling ballet and opera "families."

Like the Amanda McCabe books I read recently, I read these over a period of a couple of months.

Glove Shop in Vienna: This is an anthology and...basically, for me at least, highlighted Ibbotson's strengths and weaknesses. While none of the stories stood out a lot, the one about children and/or earlier 20th century nostalgia were good reads for as long as you read them. The rest, not so much. In particular, the ones about people considering and/or having affairs were almost tedious, and I didn't find the subject interesting. so those ones were a struggle for me.

Madensky Square: This is very different from the rest of Ibbotson's historicals, as the lead, Susanna, is much older than the heroines of the other historical novels, and while there's romance, there's a lot less of it than in the others. Set in a neighborhood in Vienna shortly before WWII, this is a "place as character" book and gets the period nostalgia the best of these books, possibly because it's about a community and not a super-selfless girl fixing everything. Also, Susanna, at least in the main story, isn't nearly as self-sacrificing as the younger heroines, and spends a lot of the book telling people to get their acts together. I really liked this one, aside from this one theme it had where wives were a burden and mistresses the True Love. I mean, I'm not sure a reverse Madonna/Whore complex is any better, when it‘s still saying that one “type“ of woman is good and the other bad, and the “bad“ one is bad for…not being like the other?

A Company of Swans: For some reason, even though I like but am not in love with ballet, I love fiction about ballet. I really liked the parts of this book that dealt with ballet. I...did not like how, despite loving ballet and dancing her whole life, the heroine basically forgot all about that when it was time to get married. IIRC, I found the Other Woman less offensive than I did the Other Woman in the other books, but despite her still being rather awful, I think I probably sympathized with her at times a bit more than I was meant to, though that wasn't much. But unlike the others, I felt her actions actually warranted some of the narrative approach (and they felt more realistic) and less like I was supposed to hate her because she was successful at her goals and not the heroine.

The Morning Gift: I initially thought that this would be another installment of "the only books there can be about Jews have to be about the Holocaust" which...is a part of the book, but the book itself focuses more on exiled Jews living in England. Those parts were actually pretty good, and the romantic plot was initially fun, but the Big Misunderstanding killed that for me completely. And I liked, really really liked, that the heroine was smart and good in school and was determined to pursue her academic career. I HATED that she completely abandoned it and never seemed to think about it again in favor of men and babies, and that it seemed understood that she’d eventually dump it to help a man with his career. I try to remind myself of both the society it's set in and the fact that it came out in 1985, but I also know that books that came out then could do better than that! Also, this is the one where the treatment of the Other Woman really really bugged me. While there were various awful things she did and she certainly wasn't a good person (though I thought she was fun as a character) I couldn't help but think that the REAL reason we were supposed to hate her was that she was smarter and more ambitious and had more money than the heroine.

A Song For Summer: Unless we include Madensky Square, this is probably my favorite of Ibbotson's romantic books. The heroine was less self-sacrificing, and while the approach was too La Di Da Virtuous And Giving Angel Of The House about her, I felt that she did what she enjoyed doing while being aware that she had other options, and able to go after them if she wanted. I also felt that she did a bit more with her life even after falling in love than some of the others did. The book overall was more serious in tone than some of the others, despite being largely set in an eccentric school and flooded with children and cooky teachers. I liked the romantic plotline here until Ibbotson;s required 4th quarter separation, and the way that went down made me kind of hate the guy and want the heroine to tell him he'd used up his umpteen chances and that she was off to show the world that you can be a suffragette and still cook and clean if it's something you like doing.


The Reluctant Heiress: This is probably the one I was looking forward to the most, as I knew it involved an opera company that was putting on "The Magic Flute" (Magic Flutes is actually the original title)b and probably the one of these that I enjoyed the least. This is the one where the heroine being self-sacrificing completely broke me, and there was endless emphasis about how she basically lived to help people and was utterly selfless. I mean, one of the first things she does is cut off all her hair-not a bob, but completely butchered, uneven tufts- so that the opera company can have wigs. The hero would have been ok if he weren't one of those who always immediately jumped to the negative interpretations and assumptions about her. Surprisingly, I didn't find the opera company itself endearing, and I generally liked the cooky supporting casts in the other books.

Not Just A Witch: This is one of Ibbotson's childrens' fantasy books, and I've really liked all of those that I've read. (I prefer them to her historical novels.) A witch who turns creatures, human and otherwise, into other animals has a falling out with her friend, who turns thins-living and otherwise-into stone. Heckie, the animal witch, decides to gather the local witches to form a council that will protect the neighborhood. She does that by turning wrong doers into animals. The moral implications of this are barely touched on, but Ibbotson's fantasy is the rarely worldbuilding that lets me not question that as I'm reading. Naturally, and unscrupulous sort tries to take advantage, causing Heckie, Dora, the other witches, and the children Heckie has befriended to join forces and demolish him.

The Great Ghost Rescue: Of Ibbotson's books, I think I like her ghost books best. They're just so odd and funny and have bizarre yet functional family units, and ghosts being traumatized by Progress. In this one, all the ghosts in England are being driven out of their traditional haunts by central heating and dams and cars and all that other icky modern (for 1975) stuff. They decide to deal with yet by setting off to find a new home. While trying out a boy's school, Not-So-Horrible Humphrey meets a meek human boy and a plot is hatched to ask the prime Minister to create a sanctuary for ghosts, and the entourage is soon joined by all the homeless supernatural. Hijinks ensue.

The Dragonfly Pool: Like Journey to the River Sea this is a historical novel aimed at younger readers, but I liked this one a lot more. This book is pretty recent (I think the most recent of the ones I've read) and is rather reminiscent of A Song for Summer, but with less romance and more hijinks. Set in a "progressive" school somewhere in Europe (I'm pretty sure Ibbotson did provide geographic context beyond "closer to Germany than they wanted to be," but I forget) in the 30s, the students are just old enough to be figuring out what they want to do with their lives and start to have an idea of what hormones are but not enough to really get caught up too much in romantic entanglements. The school is adorable and the friendships between the students and their teachers very endearing, and the road trip "Save the prince!" hijinks are fun.