#and unpredictable enough to make it fresh if you are tired of some typical historical romance plots

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Reading An English Squire by Christabel R. Coleridge after reading Amelia E. Barr's The Squire of Sandal-Side was an experience.

Both writers have the sort of style that is engaging enough to make reading pleasant, but not so fresh or unique that it really hooks you. Both are writing pastoral period pieces of pre and peri-industrial nostalgia. Both are about English squire families deep in the North of England, and have their main plots spin around an inheritance problem. And yet their approach to the thing is so different!

Barr's story is morally blunt and very simplistic plot wise. Once the conflict of the story is set up, if you know your tropes, you know exactly what the twists are and how and when are they going to happen. The prodigal son metaphor is heavy-handed, in a way that makes it caricaturesque: mother and sister love the heir, but there are no good qualities of his ever presented that justify it. He's a lazy gambler and spendrift, but they will bend over backwards to help him out of trouble and justify him and such. Until he decides to actually settle down and marry and work a bit. Because he chooses an Italian woman. The horror! That's where the family draws the line. That's the unforgivable sin (he isn't even converting to Catholicism himself!). His "watching pigs and coveting their food" moment is his living in Italy with his consumptive wife and son. This stuff would make Charlotte Brontë say "have you considered that maybe you are being too harsh, too rude, exaggerating, even". Don't worry, though! He's not the real heir. The real heir is a good hardworking Anglican, the shades of Sandal-Side will not be polluted by nasty dirty Italian papist blood!

Now, An English Squire has a lot of simple things to it here and there, but it is making a genuine, earnest effort to understand its characters and portray them as realistically as it can. Sometimes these characters hurt each other, and collide, while both trying their best. They are flawed, capable of both generosity and pettiness. It's also unconventionally plotted, and the twists did caught me off-guard more than once. Many sad things happen through the book, and yet the general impression is that of kindness. It is a kind story, a "you catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a barrel of vinegar" story. And that was so nice?

The premise of the story is also quite unique and interesting:

Over 20 years ago, Gerald Lester, second son of the squire of Oakby, in an act of rebellion, went on an European tour, and while in Spain, fell in love and married a Spanish woman from a wealthy, respectable family, and had a son with her. But then soon enough, both his father and brother died, making him the squire of Oakby. His wife dies while he is away, and his son, Alvar (Álvaro) is taken in by her family. A few years later he remarries, an English woman this time, and has three sons and a daughter by her. All atempts of bringing Alvar to England in his youth, failed; but now that his second son, and favorite, Cheriton, has come of age, things have fallen into place that make it possible, and everyone wonders what will happen when the stranger heir arrives.

As you can imagine, prejudice is a central theme of the story, and for all the pitfalls you can easily guess by reading that summary, the treatment is surprisingly careful and respectful. There was very evident effort put on characterizing Alvar; I may laugh that a boy of his social station would not be just named "Alvar Guzman Lester de la Rosa" but something like "Álvaro Guzmán Luis Enrique José Leopoldo Gerardo Agustín Lester de la Rosa", but for the resources the author probably had at hand, he's plausible. She's even aware of the existence of Carlists!

The relationship between Alvar and Cheriton is the central one; they represent the "opposing" paradigms of the Spanish hidalgo and the English gentleman, but the author refuses the easy way of making them enemies and rivals. On the contrary, so much of the story and their mutual development and at times survival depends on the brotherly love they have for each other. Very often the text will highlight how one character's prejudice against something pertaining to Alvar's person or background is accompanied by blindness towards something very similar in the English culture and ways.

This doesn't mean that the authorial hand is devoid of biases. They are there and pop up notoriously a few times, but I can forgive them because I see awareness and effort in so much of the rest. And the contrast with The Squire of Sandal-Side brought this into even higher relief.