Review: Charming as a Maman Cochet Rose
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 16, 2013
Romance fans often complain that stories are not true to the time period of the book's setting. No such complaint is possible here. "His Official Fiancée" is not only set in 1913, but was written about that time.The charming, light-weight tale is also valuable as a way to take a look at life 100 years ago. Women were beginning to work in offices--pounding away on early Remington typewriters while being treated as business "machines" themselves.Some things have changed since then: educated persons were expected to have a greater knowledge of classical mythology, French phrases and names of the varieties of roses in the garden, for example.But, people are much the same as now, even if courting habits have changed quite a bit. Monica/Nancy, who narrates the tale as a sort of informal diary, and Still Waters/Billy learn to see past their stereotypical thinking of each other and find the wonderful, very human individual they missed seeing at first or second sight.This is a truly delightful, old-fashioned comedy of manners. I enjoyed it so much that I looked up information about Berta Ruck, who lived to be 100 years old and married a fellow novelist with the improbable name of Oliver Onions. Much of her work is out of print, but at least one of her books is available as a free download through Project Gutenberg. I've loaded that into my Kindle to read next.