Although I started reading Mills & Boon romances during the 1970s and 1980s as a teenager, I left them behind for decades until recently. Indulging in them now makes me chuckle, recognising some of the wishfulness which does not turn into reality.
It didn't take long to realise how different they were from current "granny lit" - plot development for a start had to be much more detailed, given that all the body-to-body action doesn't have to occur until the last page or two. An exception may be made if marriage happened earlier in the book.
There is also social history commentary of the time, as the primary occupations of women slowly changed into more diverse roles; single parentage through circumstances other than widowhood; taking on responsibility for large corporations and so on.
But what I didn't expect in these little capsules of escapism was a tribute to my country. Although the intensity of one writer's work stayed with me - Lucy Walker's - it was thrilling to find that other authors found my home region to be a worthy backdrop to romantic drama.
Lindsay Armstrong
"I have friends who have a holiday home at Cabarita, but they've gone to America for three months and let me with a key and an open invitation to use it whenever I like. [p.128]
"Tallitha looked at the house, at the marvellous aspect - the beach below was white and clean and went for miles in both directions. Then they went up to the village - it was little more than that, a few shops and a pub - and laid in supplies. [p.129]
"Many months later she could still remember every detail of that holiday in Cabarita, and knew that it would probably be impossible to forget, even when she was very old. How could one forget? How could you ever forget the way the sun shone the day after they arrived and how the sea glittered and danced beneath a blue, blue sky. [p.130]
Standing on the outside, 1986
Ann Charlton
Although not named, this is reminiscent of Kingscliff or even Fingal Head.
" Sorry to frighten you darling - but I couldn't have you screaming, now could I? With your projections, you'd be heard in Tweed Heads. [p.3]
"The beach was empty but the row of tracks across it remained evidence of the visits of holidaymakers from the next cove. People rarely drove on to the beach because of the unsealed road and the swampy creek beside it." [pp.25-26]
"What about this place? I don't think I could bear to see a club and carpark over there changing everything. Let's wait and see. It could take years." [p.185]
The Driftwood Dragon, 1985
Lucy Walker
Lucy Walker's stories focused on "The Outback" in regional Western Australia.
Her books were renowned in England for their expositions of "the Australian way of life", and serialised in their ubiquitous
Woman's Weekly.
All of the women who married the strong, almost prenaturally silent, station owners must have been widowed at an early age, given the frequency of smoking, but it's not difficult to understand where strength in times of hardship was forged.
"Have you got a mouth of cast iron, Mick? Kate asked. "Nope," he said, wiping the back of his hand across it. "I guess I learned that from the old-timers on the inland cattle routes. A man wasn't fit to drove cattle if he couldn't drink tea boiling ... along the Canning route anyways." [p.96]
The one who kisses, 1954
This was an area I didn't visit until almost sixty years after the book was written, so learning about its magic was an unexpected pleasure. It's
not an easy route to traverse, but it's easy to see how such details captivated an audience so far away. And the illustrations in these serialisations may have helped, even when they were a plot misdirection.
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Home at sundown, first published in Woman's Weekly, December 1967 - January 1968.
Illustration from the 30 December 1967 issue by Peter Gibson |
