by Baroness Orczy
ages: adult(ish)
First sentence: “A surging, seething, murmuring crowd, of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate.”
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I’ve heard about this book for years. YEARS, I tell you. From people who love it mostly; I don’t remember hearing much bad about the book. And so, when finally given the push to pick it up and read it (for the in-person book group), I was quite intrigued, to say the least.

Thankfully, I’d been forewarned about the first few chapters; had I not been, I’d have thrown in the towel. As far as gripping beginnings go, this one is terrible. Horrid. Confusing and distracting, it’s supposed to set the mood, but doesn’t really do much for the story. Sure, I get that the Baroness was trying to emulate the novels of the time period (it’s set in 1792), but it was a really, really bad way to get one into an adventure/mystery novel.

Once we settled on Lady Marguerite Blakeney and her husband, the foppish Sir Percy, the story picks up. For those of you who haven’t read it (people tell you they love the book, but they never tell you what it’s about!), it’s the middle of the French revolution, and about a year int’ Marguerite’s, who’s French, and Percy’s marriage. There’s been a bit of an estrangement between them ever since it came out that Marguerite inadvertently said something which sent a couple of nobles to the guillotine. On top of that, she’s incredibly clever and fashionable and Sir Percy is, well…. not. In the backdrop of all this, the folk hero The Scarlet Pimpernel has been, under the cover of night (and under French police chief — I think; I was never quite sure — Chauvelin’s nose) rescuing and transporting condemned French nobles to the relative safety of English shores. This infuriates Chauvelin, of course, who sets out — blackmailing Marguerite along the way — to discover the identity of The Scarlet Pimpernel and get Rid of Him Once and For All.

Not a bad bit of plot, there; except that it seemed to go everywhere and nowhere at once. It seemed that the world was so populated with people flitting in and out that, while it felt busy and it felt like things were progressing, it never gave anyone a chance to really shine as a character. There are pages and pages of nothing, until the book’s nearly over when we finally figure out (called it!) who the Scarlet Pimpernel is and the adventure part begins. Except, since we’re seeing it through Marguerite’s eyes, it never really goes anywhere either. Speaking of Marguerite, there was a lot of hysterical clinging and wishing and crying on her part, which got old quite quickly. And, in the end, the real point of the plot was not really to figure out the Scarlet Pimpernel, or to criticize the French Revolution, but rather a simple love story: to reunite Percy and Marguerite.

Which is okay, I guess. It just didn’t work as well for me as I had hoped.