First, life notes:
1. I am sitting here with Wilson v.3, made of a leg warmer - yes, leg warmer - in a moment of panicked desperation upon realizing that I'd left Wilsons 1 & 2 at the office.
2. No, I'm not going to the hospital alone and yes, I have someone to take care of me in the days immediately following the thingy and yes, I will continue to refer to it as a "thingy" because shuddup.
3. My sister had a baby girl today, her first child, my sixth (6th) niece in addition to the five (5) neffs. Mazel tov.


And now, on with the show.

Celebrate Smart Bitches Day with Paul and Sandy and no one else because alla y'all are a buncha SLACKS.

Midsummer Moon, by Laura FREAKING Kinsale (note: not her actual middle name. -ed.)

I mun start it out with an apology to the masses for lo! I am tired. First I had the work with all the working, and then home and the talking with all those talking people… It's been a very full day and I gotta sleep, so this is the abbreviated and dumber than usual quote-unquote review.

I took this book with me to work today and read the opening pages as I ate my bowl of soup at Panera. This lady came to sit at the table beside me, saw the totally Avon Historical Circa 1987 cover on it (which is emphatically FAR MORE INTERESTING than any of these reprints), and said to me: "Must be a good book." And I replied, "It's not just good. It's a Kinsale." Which is TOTALLY a terrific dorky slogan, Nora Roberts eat your heart out, and she should tell her new publisher stat, just as soon as she bestows the honor on some lucky schlub.

But I didn't actually say that. I just thought it. I like to think of these things to say to strangers, but I never do. Unless I'm like drunk or something. Anyway:

"You are Merlin Lambourne?"
"Have you heard of me?" She looked enormously pleased. "I expect you read my monograph on the Aeronautical Implications of the Perichondral Tissue of Garrulus glandarius."
"No," he said stiffly. "I did not."
"Oh. Well I can give you a copy. I had five hundred printed." She bit her lip, and then added, "There are four hundred and ninety-seven left, so you may have as many as you like."

(Hey, Laura, tell me if I'm not allowed to quote, because I never remember that Fair Something Law And Copyright Whatever, sorry. It's from page 7, though, if that lessens the sin.)

That's what I was smiling at when the stranger observed that it must be a good book I was reading. And it's a perfect example of the tone of this whole book because it's just so frikken CUTE. The whole thing is adorable. It's a comedy, but not one of those zing-zing-zing types. It's amusing. Very, very amusing - you just do a lot of smiling and laughing softly to yourself for great big bunches of it. Then occasionally you bust out laughing out loud and clutching your sides while people on the train look as though they're a little afraid you might pee your pants. But mostly it's clever, and adorable, and sweet.

Charming - that's about exactly the word. Reading it feels exactly like you're being charmed, from start to finish. Which is an absolutely lovely way to spend about 400 hundred pages.

Despite the fact that it's a light-hearted comedy, I've read it several times. Because no matter how many times I read it, there's always some new aspect of it to focus in on and enjoy - which is sorta the whole Kinsale trademark: there's always a ton of stuff going on, and it always bears up under multiple readings.

At the center of it is, of course, the romance: Merlin and Ransom. Merlin is an inventress, obsessed with building a flying machine, raised by a potty old man who taught her exactly nothing about the world outside their four walls. Ransom is Lord Ransom Falconer, His Grace the Duke of Damerell, who has one suh-EEEERiously large stick up his ass. Talk about needing to get laid. Sheesh. But thankfully, he accidentally ingests some aphrodisiac - so he loosens up right quick, ruins Merlin before we hit page 30, and is mortified and tries to make up for it for the whole rest of the book.

The basic conflict is that he wants to marry her - proper thing and all, plus he really is very fond of her and feels a responsibility toward her. It's so endearing to watch all his scowling seriousness melt away into this weakness for her. Like a schoolboy crush on the most unlikely lady. Meanwhile, Merlin won't marry him because he's a bully and he hates her flying machine. Oh, to add fun to it - he's desperately, desperately afraid of heights, and he's truly convinced she'll kill herself in the end and he can't bear that. But mostly, it's because he can't stand the guilt of having "ruined" her. She says (in on of her more comprehensible outbursts of insight) that she won't give up her aviation machine just so he can keep his good opinion of himself, so take that, Mr. Duke.

(I have a great affection for Merlin, since she has as hard a time as me when it comes to the stupid Forms of Address.)

And just a note here, about the dynamic, and how inventive it is for the genre. Usually, you meet some ruthlessly disciplined duke like Ransom, and inevitably the love interest gets him to see the world differently, changes his life, the Magic of Love, blah blah blah. That's not really this. Merlin would never consider trying to change him - he is what he is. She doesn't want to interfere in his life at all, or soften him up, or anything like that. And it's not her magical self that changes him. It's just that even though she seems a bit flakey and like she can't possibly take care of herself (sheltered and dreamy and more than a little confused about anything that doesn't contain a spring mechanism), her stubborn insistence that it's her life and her choice of how to live it - not his and not Society's and not any measure except that which she's chosen for herself - well, that's what changes him. It's just so much more real than "I'm in love and she's opened my eyes to the way of things." Instead, the way she is forces him to take a look at how he treats everyone around him. And he doesn't like what he sees. And he changes it, without consulting her Gentle Female Soul for guidance along the path, and without her saying a word. Without her even thinking that he should be any different. Just as it's her life and her choice, it's quite emphatically his life and his choice.

Anyway.

So while you have that going on - the Merlin and the Ransom and the nookie and the inventions and did I mention Napoleon' spies? Well, alla that. While that' going on, you also have Ransom's family and houseguests, this great ensemble cast, and each with their own just-fleshed-out-enough stories, and each with their respective relationships to Ransom. His relationship with his brother Shelby, and with Shelby's ex-wife, and Shelby and the ex-wife together, and Shelby with his son Woodrow, and Woodrow with Ransom, and Merlin with all of them, and that's even before we bring in the fake Irishman and the clergy. In other ensemble comedies - Heyer comes to mind, and this is quite reminiscent of her stuff - these are all just sideline stories to keep things moving along and to keep the comedy rolling. But here, all of them have this real substance - all of these relationships have a much more serious side which we know about and see quite clearly, even though it's all kept light-hearted.

Jesus, the more I think of it -- how the hell does she DO this? Light-hearted comedy where it's not all Just Surface. Huh.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the hedgehog. Which is also adorable as all hell. Oh, and nookie in the fountain, which hell-o. Yeehaw.

Okay, sorry it's late and I have to sleep sometime eventually, so I'll just say that even in re-reading the first 25 or so pages today, it made me think MAN, she should SO write another comedy, this is GREAT stuff and yeah yeah yeah I know comedy is hard but it's so unfair to deprive the world of another book like this, grumble grumble grouse grouse. Then I realized that oh yeah - she's written another one and it's just a matter of time til it's on the shelves. Thank god. And in the meantime, funnier than all of Midsummer Moon and Lucky One combined is the moment at the end of The Shadow and the Star when Samuel says "fuck". Comedic GENIUS. And that one paragraph can tide me over for quite some time.

If you, however, need more than that, then just buy Midsummer Moon. It's a hoot.