Friday's Child (by Georgette Heyer)

I love re-reading my Georgette Heyer novels. I was delighted to realise that it was over eleven years since I last read ‘Friday’s Child’, which has always been one of my favourites. I remembered the general story, of course, and the conclusion, but had forgotten much of the plot detail.

The heroine of the book is little Hero Wantage, an orphan who has been brought up by her rather unpleasant aunt. She is now seventeen, and her aunt is going to send her to be a governess in Bath. Hero is very miserable and is sitting outside, crying, when Lord Sherringham, a young man in his early twenties, drives by, and stops to find out what the problem is.

Sherry (as he is known to his friends) is somewhat thoughtless, and quite extravagant in his lifestyle, but he’s known Hero since she was six years old. He’s really quite fond of her, although he’s been more used to teasing or bullying her, and she adores him.

Sherry is feeling annoyed as he has just proposed marriage to another childhood friend, the beautiful ‘Incomparable’ Isabella, and she has turned him down. He has told his mother he will marry the first female he lays eyes upon, as his fortune will only be released to him when he marries, and he’s seriously in debt. Hero points out that she is the first female he’s seen and - rather against his better judgement - he agrees to marry her, and carries her off to London.

It’s an unlikely but amusing storyline. Sherry has three close friends: his cousin Ferdy, who is very elegant but not all that bright; Gilbert, who is an excellent rider and driver; and George, who has an extremely hot temper. George is in love with Isabella and inclined to be angry with Sherry until he discovers that she turned him down, and Sherry wants to marry Hero.

Hero is naive in the extreme, but also kind and thoughtful, and quickly accepted by Sherry’s friends. He doesn’t intend to change his lifestyle at all - he makes it clear that it’s a marriage of convenience, of practical benefit to them both - but inevitably he has to help his bride learn the ways of the world, and rescue her from several scrapes. He forgets himself sometimes when he talks to her as he would to one of his male cronies, and then gets annoyed when she repeats what he says in other circumstances.

There’s a great deal of low-key humour in some of the dialogue; the four young men are very well portrayed, if a tad caricatured, and Hero herself is a most unlikely but extremely likeable heroine. It’s essentially a coming-of-age story; Hero learns a great deal (and doesn’t make the same mistake twice), and Sherry has to do a lot of maturing.

The conclusion sees one of Heyer’s best devices where the entire cast of main characters, plus a couple of others, find themselves converging in one location, to sort out all the inevitable misunderstandings. It’s cleverly done, and I had entirely forgotten that section.

I smiled a few times, almost chuckled once or twice, and found a couple of scenes extremely moving. If you like historical romances of this kind, I would highly recommend ‘Friday’s Child’, and look forward already to re-reading it yet again in another nine or ten years.

This novel is not always in print, but widely available second-hand. It's also available in ebook form.

Review copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews