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Nev, the Regency hero of 'In for a Penny’ has been left with hefty financial problems by his father who has just died unexpectedly. Determined to set things right for his sister and mother he asks a practical young Cit (someone whose family has made their money in trade) Penelope if she will agree to marry him in order to save his family on the strength of one brief conversation at a party. Despite not knowing much about him Penelope takes a chance after an arousing kiss and a bit of frank discussion.However, Nev is known for being extravagant and rowdy. As is her practical habit Penelope makes a list of things she needs Nev to do in order to be comfortable marrying him, decides she doesn’t want him to see it, but ends up losing it to him anyway. Nev being the stand up, historical best case scenario kind of guy that he is, agrees rather than lying to her, locking her in a cellar and using the might of ye olde law to justify himself as in a Wilkie Collins novel. He leaves his mistress (with a generous goodbye gift) and cuts ties with his friends just before he and Penelope leave for his neglected country seat, Loweston.
Alone Penelope and Nev try their best to improve the estate and manage Nev’s inherited debts. In the middle of all the practicalities they also try to find a way to make their marriage partnership real and pleasurable for them both.
In ‘In for a Penny’ Lerner sometimes asks the reader to suspend their disbelief about aspects of Penelope and Nev’s relationship which might seem quite modern, for example, once Nev has married Penelope he would be legally entitled to use her money without consulting her while continuing with the less moral pleasures of his bachelor life: excessive drinking, gambling and sleeping with his mistress. Although the reader can feel a certain spark between them in their early meetings, Nev doesn’t know Penny well enough to love her at the start of the novel. There’s no emotional connection to explain why Nev should be concerned about the way he treats Penny once she and all she owns become his legal property.
It would be so easy for Lerner, who needs her hero to appear honourable by modern standards so her modern readers can sympathise with him, to reinforce simplistic assumptions that as Nev is the hero, he must be an exceptionally nice guy whose innate niceness elevates him above all the ‘savage’ historical people to a more ‘modern’ (read enlightened) perspective. Regency society was full of rakes who would have abused Penny’s gesture of generosity once she’d married them without fear of much reprimand from society and in comparison to these kind of men Nev might at first appear rather too enlightened for a Regency hero. However it is easy to see that Nev has realistically reasons for taking a different approach, because Lerner’s has included logical motivations for his different behaviour that make his actions consistent within the context of the novel and at the same time do not make his actions seem like an idealistic picture of enlightened rebellion against historical constraints. Nev fits with the modern readers concept of the morals a romantic hero should live by (he doesn’t abuse his wife, he doesn’t cheat on his wife with a mistress) without being a modern man superimposed on Regency England. He doesn’t give up his past life because he believes married men should be sober and monogamous, he gives it up because his father’s extravagant life ruined his family. He doesn’t keep himself from taking complete control of Penny’s money because he thinks husband and wife should be equal financial partners, but because he feels Penny has made a huge sacrifice which makes him feel guilty for his own past selfishness. He feels that he owes her a good life because of that sacrifice (and there’s the love that’s growing between them, but that comes later).
On a similar note, one of the best measures Lerner takes to keep Nev and Penny’s relationship from appearing too exceptional to be true is to place the couple in financially imposed isolation at Loweston. Being necessarily kept away from the rest of society means there’s no need for Lerner to deal with the fact that there would have to be some interaction with sexist, class prejudiced Regency men. These kind of interactions could result in Nev having to defend opposite views to these men (running the risk of making him an excepto-boy who is so much more enlightened than any other man) or in Nev abandoning his hero status in the eyes of modern readers as he joins in with sexist, classist banter. The choice of a secluded, intimate beginning to the marriage brings interesting romantic opportunities to the novel (the freedom for Nev and Penny to develop their relationship properly without huge social pressures to kill it off is one) and the key point of a romance novel is to bring interesting romance to the reader. At the same time I think that the setting of Loweston being removed from society is also a useful structuring tactic that allows Lerner’s novel to maintain a tight focus on the personal and the personal as politics. It’s this focus on specific people and how the structure of society relates to them that makes this novel engaging to read and if Lerner had been required to address outside concerns about the main characters from bit characters ‘In for a Penny’ might have lost some of its immediate connection.
At its most basic the charm of ‘In for a Penny’ is that it allows the reader to spend time with enjoyable characters who say amusing things and are all so full of life that they could each easily inhabit a whole book by themselves. I’m not sure just watching Nev’s adventure, or just Penny’s would be as fun as watching them come together to be a happy couple, but if their story were a tv series I’d be tempted by any spin offs that came from it (Percy and Louisa, Edward and Amy – I ship that second pairing so hard, historical realities be damned). So many of the main character had back stories that were entertaining and that fed into the main story, adding to the slightly chaotic, sometimes delightfully farcical activity in the book. And I loved that third person narratives were available for both Penny and Nev. Dual third person perspective may be my new favourite mode of story telling (see also ‘The Agency’).
I seem to have talked a lot about Nev so far, so let me spend a moment talking about the wonderful heroine that is Penny. I am keen on Penny. She’s my favourite kind of ideal, but flawed heroine. She has interesting, useful capabilities, such as the knowledge of book keeping that allows her to help run Nev’s estate and real insecurities that she needs to conquer to reach her full potential. Watching her work out how to be part of a happy marriage and work out that an essential part of making a happy partnership must be making herself happy is wonderful.
‘In for a Penny’ is tons of fun and genuinely funny. I like books that make me laugh, but I have a hard time finding them and the complementary blurbs on books that say things like ‘ a laugh out loud romp’ always seem to steer me wrong. While this book didn’t make me crack up it had a wryness that I appreciated. There’s a bounce to the writing that is powered by the rhythms of the humorous writing (like that call and response style of joke where one character makes a statement and the other undercuts what they’ve said, often in an aside, which adds rise and fall to a text – is there a technical term for that?).
And it’s sexy. Alright it’s full of fantasy ‘sex in the rain, in an abandoned chapel’ always great sex, but the sex is also ideally considerate and the fact that Nev and Penelope show consideration for each others pleasure makes the sex even hotter. It’s the kind of book someone looking for a bit of hawt fun might enjoy, but it’s also clearly acknowledging that both partners having fun during sex is important. I also think it’s the kind of book you might hand to a girl who is a bit unsure about what to do and how enjoyable vs painful sex is going to be, because the early sexual encounters explain the mechanics of sexual acts without taking away any of the feeling that can go into the act (although I suspect the sex in the rain scene might get her hopes up way high). Penny is, for all her self-confidence in matters of money, business and intellect, required by the historical setting to be a virgin for who sex is a rather mystified area that she’s not so confident about (although Penny’s better prepared than most as at least her mother has spoken to her about sex). Explanations from Nev are required in some cases and a lot of focus has to be placed on them learning about each other’s bodies which I think is sexy as all.
Really the only thing I wasn’t sold on in this book was the villain, Sir Jasper, who was a bit too one dimensional for me. Lerner tries to make him more human by quickly sketching motivations for his behaviour that stem from his fear of the violence of class uprising and she almost made me sympathise with him, but these small references to his fear weren’t quite enough to humanise him for me. Perhaps if he hadn’t become a psychotic villain towards the end and had instead stuck with spinning a reasonable line of twisted, villainous logic I might have felt more for him. It’s generally the villains with good intentions, but terrible plans that I find most interesting. Apart from the villain lacking complexity there is a moment when Nev’s reaction to his mistress Amy veers into sketchy territory as he realises that she never loved him and he could never get something as great as real love from her. Yes, your feelings are the most important thing at that moment aren’t they? The lady whose body and emotional performance you pay for also owes you genuine emotional attachment. His attitude is realistic in its sketchiness, but I would have loved to see Amy counter it with some realism of her own about the life of a mistress who must be practical at all times. Otherwise a fun read, decorated with a lot of smartness.
Recommended for: Fans of Regency romance. Readers off for a sun holiday (oh don’t gloat). Readers looking for a little bit of steam. Readers who like a little comedy.
Other Reviews
The Booksmugglers (with many fantastic quotes)
Gossamer Obsessions
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