This Rough Magic
By Mary Stewart
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Release Date: May 26, 2011 (Made available in
U. S
by Hachette in 2017; original U. S. publication
by William Morrow, 1964)
Reviewed by Janga
Lucy Waring, a young actress who is “resting” after the
play she was in folded, accepts the invitation of her three-years-older sister
Phyllida Forli, wife of a Roman banker, to join her at the family villa on
Corfu, the Greek island rumored to be the island on which Prospero and his
daughter Miranda take refuge in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Phyllida, heavily pregnant with her third child, is
delighted to have Lucy’s company, and Lucy, although disappointed that her
first London role ended so soon, is enjoying time with her sister and the
beauty of the island. She is intrigued when Phyllida tells her that the Forlis’
tenant at the Castello dei Fiori, the ancestral castle of Phyllida’s in-laws,
is none other than the legendary British actor, Sir Julian Gale, who has ties
to the island.
Lucy’s first encounter with a Gale is not with Sir Julian
but with his son Max, a well-known composer. They meet when someone shoots at a
dolphin who has first terrified and then delighted Lucy during a solo swim in
the bay. Lucy confronts Max when she sees him in the shadow of the pines above
the bay, thinking he is the gunman. He denies her charge, questions her
veracity, and rudely suggests that she leave the way she came. It’s no surprise
that she sees him as totally lacking in the charm his father exudes.
The episode with the dolphin is soon overshadowed by the
presumed death of Spiro, twin brother of Miranda, Phyllida’s maid. According to
the account of Godfrey Manning, the English author/photographer who employed
the young man as an assistant and model, Spiro was washed overboard during a
night-photography boat trip. When Lucy discovers a drowned body, she thinks it
is Spiro’s, but when it turns out to be a shady local who is believed to be
involved in a smuggling operation. Lucy feels sympathy for Godfrey, but her
feelings for Max remain mixed until a midnight seaside meeting involving saving
a beached dolphin and finding a lost diamond leads to a kiss that changes
everything. Once it is clear that Max is the hero, the mystery moves at a rapid
pace to its conclusion, but not before an unexpected swim, a scary motorcycle
ride, and Shakespeare-worthy lines shock Lucy and the reader.
If you follow romance writers and readers on social media,
you probably read some of the gleeful posts last fall when Mary Stewart’s many
fans in the community exulted over their one-click purchases of Stewart’s books
at long last available in digital format for American readers—and at bargain
prices. I was one of those posting. Perhaps you were too. Stewart (1916-2014),
credited as the founder of modern romantic suspense, holds a spot in the
history of romance fiction that is equaled only by Georgette Heyer. She was not
only immensely popular, but she was also a major influence on two generations
of writers.
Her
first novel, Madam, Will You Talk?
(1954) was followed by Wildfire at Midnight
(1956), Nine Coaches Waiting (1958), My Brother Michael (1959), The Ivy Tree (1961), and several others.
I read—and reread them all and then reread them again and again. Stewart became
the standard by which I measured other authors. I can’t count the times I
concluded my comments on a book I had read with the words “It’s not as good as
a Mary Stewart.” When I went on a marathon rereading after my purchases last
fall, I found that Stewart’s storytelling was as powerful and her characters as
engaging as they were when I first read these books more than half a century
ago. I enjoyed all the books, but my favorites continue to be:
3. My Brother Michael
(a Delphi-set story featuring a quiet Classics professor as the hero),
2. Wildfire at
Midnight (a creepy Gothic tale set in the Hebrides), and
1. This Rough Magic.
Simon in My Brother
Michael was among the first beta heroes with whom I fell in love, I date my
fondness for the reunited lovers trope to my investment in Gianetta and
Nicholas Drury in Wildfire at Midnight,
but This Rough Magic was the one I
pulled off the shelf to reread most often. It epitomizes for me all the things
I love in Mary Stewart’s books.
She makes the settings in which her characters move so real
I end the book feeling as if I have been to Greece or Scotland or England. That’s
the feeling I get when I read this description of the bay in This Rough Magic:
The bay was deserted and very
quiet. To either side of it the wooded promontories thrust out into the calm,
glittering water. Beyond them the sea deepened through peacock shades to a
rich, dark blue, where the mountains of Epirus floated in the clear distance,
less substantial than a bank of mist. The far snows of Albania seemed to drift
like clouds.
Her heroines (typically the first-person narrator) are
intelligent but susceptible to errors, courageous (physically and morally) but
capable of fear, and confident but with credible insecurities. Her heroes are
strong but not invulnerable, proud but able to admit mistakes, and honorable
but flawed. Her villains are not abstractions of evil but human creatures who
have compromised their morality or who are twisted in some way—sometimes
heartbreakingly so. Her secondary characters serve a purpose and add dimension
to the story. My favorite scene in This
Rough Magic is Lucy’s meeting with Sir Julian as the two actors, one famous
and one unknown, speak lines from The
Tempest to one another. (The literary allusions are another Stewart quality
that I love.) Finally, her books may rank low on today’s sensuality scale, but
they do not lack in sexual tension. Take this scene between Lucy and Max, for
example:
For the second time that night
I felt myself gripped, and roughly silenced, but this time by his mouth. It was
cold, and tasted of salt, and the kiss seemed to last forever. We were both
soaked to the skin, and chilled, but where our bodies met and clung I could
feel the quick heat of his skin and the blood beating warm against mine. We
might as well have been naked.
If you haven’t read Mary Stewart, you really should give
her a try. If you have but it has been a while, download your favorite (Prices
are still low), and settle in for a wonderful reread. I assure you the Stewart
magic has not faded. If you were one of the one-clickers like me, how many did
you buy? (Fourteen for me.) What’s your favorite?
