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blekitnyzamek · 1 month ago

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When I was preparing my own reading summary of 2024 I was reminded of some awfull book - The Ladies of Missalonghi. Which is also known (and that's how I found out about it) as a plagiarised version of Blue Castle. I began reading that thinking, that it can't be that bad. Oh my lord, it was worse.

I don't usually write reviews on Goodreads, let alone analyzes, but that time I needed to let off some steam. So, I think now, it will be funny to translate and reshare it here for the blue castle book club.

Be prepared for a looot of piffle. Please, don't read it book yourself if you value your dear brain cells.

In a nutshell: The Blue Castle but in Australia, except that the main character is calculating goose, the clan is cartoon villains and the entire plot consists of a series of predictable plot twists and one that comes completely out of nowhere.

Our main heroine is Missalonghi Wright, a nearly 34-year-old spinster nicknamed "Missy" by her entire family (similar to Valancy "Doss" Stirling, a 29-year-old spinster, hmm…), who lives with her mother and her sister (much like Valancy with her mother and her sister-in-law!) in some completely out-of-town (hmmm) in an ugly, poorly heated house (HMM). She only wears brown and unfashionable dresses (HMMM). Missy is part of the Hurlingford clan, occupying the position of the weird and ugly spinster (HMMMM) due to the fact that she is one of only two people in the family (we'll get to that in a moment) with brown hair. No, I'm not mistaken, this whole mutual admiration circle is blonde, thanks to two great things: choosing blonde partners outside the family + inbreeding. Because it's so cool and okay, yaay!

The apple of the eye of the whole family is Alice, a beautiful, charming young lady, whose brown hair is probably not such a big deal, who mourned for a long time after her first fiancé died in tragic circumstances, but has already recovered from this ""tragedy"" and is about to marry her new admirer (does it sound like Olivia Stirling? It does, but unfortunately for us, the similarities will end soon, because it will only get worse). Alice's chosen one is her 22-year-old cousin Billy, the son of the main patriarch of the family. Oh, did I mention that Alice is also 34? And did she set her sights on Billy as her future husband when he was still a teenager? No? So I'm saying it now.

At the beginning of the book, John Smith comes to the town of Byron, whom everyone says is a troublemaker, a rable-rouser, and a killer (Barney Snaith, are you with us, HMMMM??). It turns out that he has purchased a valley on the border of Byron, which, conveniently for the plot, happens to be close to Missy's house. Why did he buy this plot of land? Because he liked it and he always wanted to own the valley (Is Barney I-Always-Wanted-to-Own-Island Snaith with us???). Whatsoever, by doing this, he ruins his relations with all the residents of Byron, because it turns out that only members of that cursed clan live there.

The Cursed Clan is rich because of the bottle factory where they later sell water, supposedly the tastiest in the entire universe. There's just one problem with this factory, or rather its management - someone is buying up the shares, some mysterious investor arranging share after share and increasing the percentage of the shares he owns more and more. I WONDER WHO IT COULD BE? The plot of this factory is probably the only original thing in the whole story, except that because of it we have a scene of a meeting of villains like from a bad cartoon:

"We have to get the share papers from our aunts, they don't know what they are anyway, they'll sell them us for next to nothing and we'll be able to continue cheating them out of money."

"Ask them nicely, they'll give them to you for free, after all, women are stupid."

"Oh yes, women are stupid."

"Women are stupid."

"Hahaha."

...good Lord. And in the meantime, the main character is standing behind a fern and eavesdropping on the whole vile plan. Divinely.

So we have a screwed main character, we have a screwed love interest, the rest of the family is a caricature of a caricature (in The Blue Castle the clan, maybe hermetic, but sticks together, and here everyone is scratching their own turnip and that's ok, you can rub your hands at the thought of a few pennies gained by buying eggs below market price from an aunt who is starving, but the Hurlingfords don't trade with strangers; I would wring all their heads). We also have the character of Una, who allows us to move on to the next character trait of the main character borrowed from Montgomery - a love of books.

Valancy read nature books because her mother forbade her from reaching for anything else. Here, too, the mother imposes such a ban on Missy, but already at the beginning of the book she states that, after all, it doesn't matter to her, that her daughter is an adult and she sees that she's messing around with these romance novels, so let the girl have something for life. These romances (during the novel two descriptions of such books are quoted and boy oh boy, it was something between harlequins and trendy now new adult books) are taken care of by Una, who, attention: is a ghost. She is a freaking ghost. Which the reader learns about in the last three pages AND OH MY GOD HOW MUCH THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. SHE SELLS BOOKS. WORKS IN A LENDING STORE. GIVES MISSY A DRESS. NOTARIALLY CERTIFIES THE TRANSFER OF THE SHARES. HOW. All these events take place, they are not Missy's hallucinations, because everyone else saw the gifted dress, the documents were passed, it's such a shitty plot twist. So senseless. Ughh.

Just to make sure there are enough similarities, the main character ""has"" a heart condition. And if the plot twist with Una was absolutely stupid, this plot, damn it, this plot - I have no words for it. So the whole thing looks like this: Missy at some point gets chest pains. John Smith sees one such attack, picks her up in his arms, brings her to her house - because she fainted beetween entries to her own and his property - he brings a doctor. In the meantime, Missy, who sees the man for the second time - falls in love with him. Madly. To be held by those arms, to die in those arms, to kiss those arms, she would very much like all of it at once.

The doctor comes, says he can't see anything, asks her to come back for a consultation in a week. The other one comes, he still doesn't see anything, says: You'll go to Sydney, my specialist friend is there, he'll do something. Okay, she's going in two weeks. The other other doctor examines her, writes something down, then, by surprise, nurse catches her and twists her spine. Without warning, just for funsies. It turns out that she had a pinched nerve, now everything should be ok. He says that he'll send the letter he wrote to the doctor from Byron and that Missy should show up in a week for another check-up. Suddenly the phone rings, everyone leaves, Missy is left alone in the office and is super sad. Because how can that be? She already thought she was dying, but she wasn't, she won't be like the heroine of the romance she read recently, who died young, but had loved before (in general, at the beginning of the book she would do anything just to not be sick, but never mind). Instead of keeping her hands to herself, she starts reading what the Sydney doctor wrote about her. She finds a letter from her family doctor and, wait, I won't let this quote go, the doctor to the doctor in his review of the patient writes: She leads a stagnant, deprived existence (vide her breast development).

YIKES, EXECUSE ME? In general, throughout the entire length of the book, descriptions of physicality, erotic scenes, mentioning caresses or molestation as "hehe, what he touched was his" - I was thinking that I will throw up every d-- time. Coming back: she reads the next documents and finds an opinion about another patient, a heart patient who has 6 months, well, a year left to live. And this stupid goose takes this paper and puts it in her purse! Why does she need it, you may ask? So Missy has a plan, a brilliantly clever one. She goes to John. Something between 4 and 9 miles, so quite a long way from the threshold of her house to the threshold of his house, he has quite a lot of land around there. But she goes. With a suitcase. She left her mother a note earlier: Mommy, don't worry, everything will be great, I'll be back in two days, kisses xoxo. And here the mother doesn't abuse her daughter like Mrs. Friderick abused Valancy, I can even say that she was kind of a pleasant character.

But that's not important! Missy goes. She comes. She sits down. She waits for John to come back from the field. John comes back and she says to him as a greeting: Will you marry me? Let me remind you: they've seen each other twice before. TWO. Once Missy didn't say anything and the second time she was unconscious. John says that he was already married, he's 50, now he wants to be alone for a while, in the middle of nowhere, have some peace. What does Missy do? SHE TELLS HIM THAT IN A YEAR SHE'LL DIE, SHE LOVES HIM, SHE WANTS TO LIVE WITH HIM IN THE VALLEY, HER VALLEY, SHE WILL TEACH HIM HOW TO LOVE AGAIN. He says that she looks quite healthy, he doesn't want anything from her, he takes her home. What does Missy say to that? She goes to him the next morning and repeats the play. And he agrees. And they have sex. A lot of sex. Because Missy turns out to be some kind of goddess, despite obviously also being a virgin. Holy ravioli.

SO THEY GET MARRIED. And John says a few times how he's starting to trust our Missy, because women are liars, but she, she is in a different league. Meanwhile, after each of such a remark, she thinks that if she waits a year to reveal the truth, nothing will happen. That maybe they'll have children by then. Because she wants children. And John would actually make a good father.

The carousel of stupidity is turning, but it's not slowing down, it's only speeding up, we're getting closer to the end, stay with me. So the mysterious buyer of the shares turns out to be (!!!) John. And he, as it turns out, was also married to a Hurlingford woman in his first marriage. Only she was a bad woman, but he didn't kill her, she drowned herself, but the whole clan accused him of murdering her, so he decided that he would destroy them all later. Of course, now excluding the people Missy likes. Because he had such a trick with this factory that he now wants to have a 100% female board. So he's enlisting his mother-in-law and her three sisters, and they have to get four other people to make a full board. A board composed entirely of widows who sold at most a heifer to their cousins at discounted prices. I love this business plan.

But wait, if John's first wife was also from this family… who was she? UNA. UNA FROM THE ROMANCE RENTAL. Una, who really wanted Missy and John to get together. Who gave her a dress for the wedding. And now, because the book ends with Missy and Una talking, when Una finally realizes that she's been talking to a ghost all this time, Una now just wants to fly to heaven and chill out. BUT! She has one last warning for Missy.

“Don’t ever tell him, Missy. Let him believe his love and care cured you.” Una chuckled gleefully. “He’s a darling man, darling, but he has a terrible temper! It’s not in your nature to provoke it, but whatever you do, don’t tempt fate by telling him about your heart trouble. No man likes to be the dupe of a woman, and he’s already had a fair taste of that. So mark what I say – don’t ever, ever tell him.”

“You’re leaving,” said Missy desolately.

“With knobs on I’m leaving, darling! I’ve done what I was sent to do, and now I’m going to take a well-deserved rest on the softest, fattest, pinkest, champagniest cloud I can find.”

“I can’t do it without you, Una!”

“Nonsense, darling, of course you can. Just be good, and especially be good in bed, and you can’t go wrong. That is, as long as you heed my warning – don’t ever tell him the truth!”

I am-- I am speechless. THIS DAMN PARODY OF A BOOK--

#my braincells was dying horrific death while reading #it is not a good book #by any means #read ONLY if you are prepared for intense hate-reading #to think that someone published this #i still can't remember spelling of the title #i copy and paste it every time #oh my lord what a crap #The Ladies of Missalonghi #Colleen McCullough #the blue castle #błękitnyzamek #blue castle book club #l. m. montgomery

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