jamiereadthis
Written on Dec 14, 2019
Mrs. Bertrice Martin—a widow, some seventy-three years young—has kept her youthful-ish appearance with the most powerful of home remedies: daily doses of spite, regular baths in man-tears, and refusing to give so much as a single damn about her Terrible Nephew.
Then proper, correct Miss Violetta Beauchamps, a sprightly young thing of nine and sixty, crashes into her life. The Terrible Nephew is living in her rooming house, and Violetta wants him gone.
Mrs. Martin isn’t about to start giving damns, not even for someone as intriguing as Miss Violetta. But she hatches another plan—to make her nephew sorry, to make Miss Violetta smile, and to have the finest adventure of all time.
If she makes Terrible Men angry and wins the hand of a lovely lady in the process? Those are just added bonuses.
Author’s Note: Sometimes I write villains who are subtle and nuanced. This is not one of those times. The Terrible Nephew is terrible, and terrible things happen to him. Sometime villains really are bad and wrong, and sometimes, we want them to suffer a lot of consequences.
- ASIN B07P4DPLX7
- Publish Date 26 March 2019
- Publish Status Active
- Format eBook (Kindle)
- Pages 144
- Language English
Reviews
celinenyx
Written on Jul 19, 2019
It was almost like being on holiday - a holiday where she lived in her own rooms and tormented men for fun and profit.
That. Was. Epic.
One cranky widow and a shy spinster team up to make the life of a deflated balloon of a human being miserable. It's unapologetic, it's angry, and incredibly touching.
"Oh, for God's sake. Forty-nine is extremely young. If forty-nine is not you, that would make me old, and I am not old. I have reached the age of maturity to which all humans must particularly aspire; to dismiss this pinnacle of perfection as old age is to demean all of humankind."
Was it realistic? Hell no. Did I read all of it with a giant smile on my face? YES.
We need more old lady sapphic stories.
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Trigger warnings: mention of domestic abuse, mention of rape/sexual assault. Some threat on-page, but never escalates.
Amanda
Written on Apr 6, 2019
Heather
Written on Mar 26, 2019
Any Courtney Milan book is going to be a delight but I was especially excited to hear that this novella was going to feature older women. I'm a huge fan of stories that feature older heroines. Why should we stop getting stories when we are over 30?
Miss Violetta Beauchamps has been fired by her employer just prior to being able to collect her pension. He used her inability to collect rent from a boarder as an excuse even though he told her not to try because the boarder had a surety signed by his wealthy aunt. Violetta needs money to live on so she decides to go collect the rent from the aunt herself. She isn't going to give it to her ex-employer. It is going to fund her modest lifestyle through her old age. It is just a little lie.
Mrs. Bertrice Martin was not what she was expecting. She hates her Terrible Nephew. She won't even utter his name. She isn't going to pay his debts - not when he couldn't even bother to spell her name right on the surety he forged. She will pay Miss Beauchamps to help her make the Terrible Nephew's life miserable though.
There is a time for well characterized, morally ambiguous villains and there is a time for just letting the world burn to annoy a horrible person. This story is the latter and it is a glorious romp. Bertrice knows that everything wrong in the world is the fault of men. Even if she can't really do anything systemically about it, she isn't going to make it easy for them. Sometimes you just need to hire a group of off-key carolers to follow a fellow around all day to make yourself feel better.
Bertrice appears to hold all the power with her wealth but it doesn't make her safe. Men still have all the legal power and her nephew can get her declared insane. Her recent antics might just make his case for him. Violetta can't fight back against her unfair firing in a society that doesn't give women any legal rights.
I highlighted so many amazing bits of dialogue.
"Fear at seventy years of age was different than fear at seventeen. At seventeen, Bertrice had been walking down the so-called correct path, trying not to stray with all her might. Her fears had not been her own; they had been gifts from her elders. They won’t think you’re proper if you do that. You might never find a match. Do you want to live in a garret alone for the rest of your life?"
This might be my favorite.
“My husband, God rot his soul, used to bring prostitutes home all the time. After he’d finished with them, I’d serve them tea and double whatever he was paying them.”
...
“But why would you do that?”
“Why not? It’s good sense to be kind to people who are doing work for you.” Bertrice didn’t think that was so strange a proposition. “It was hard work fucking my husband. Trust me, I should know. I certainly didn’t want to do it.”
Bertrice respects the neighborhood prostitutes all through the story. (I really want to read a story about Molly, the lace-worker turned prostitute turned philanthropist.)
This story is an absolute delight for anyone who has ever wanted to rage against the privilege given to men in society just for being born. It is cathartic and will bring a smile to your face long after you finish reading.
This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story
llamareads
Written on Mar 25, 2019
“Two wrongs didn’t make a right, but occasionally they did make an escape.”
Violetta has spent forty-seven years managing a series of boarding houses, only to be let go a year short of her promised pension due to issues caused by a tenant, Bertrice (Mrs. Martin’s) Terrible Nephew, who hasn’t paid rent for two years. The obvious course of action, of course, is to misrepresent herself as the actual owner of the boarding house and attempt to scheme Bertrice out of 68 pounds – the supposed amount of back-due rent – an amount which would allow Violetta to retire in comfort. This doesn’t go exactly as planned, of course, and they end up on an adventure involving an off-key Hallelujah choir, farm animals, paying prostitutes not to sleep with people, cheese toast, and an emotional picnic beneath an oak tree.
“I’m used to doing whatever I wish,” Bertrice said, “but I’m also used to people telling me to go to the devil if they don’t want me about. By contrast, you’re one of those.”
“One of which?”
“One of those nice people. You do things you don’t want to do all the time, don’t you? You’re used to it.”
First off – both of the ladies are elderly women (sixties and seventies), with all the life experience and ailments you’d expect. While Bertrice is a well-off widow, Violetta is instead a poor spinster, one of many “excess women” who never married. Their disparate financial backgrounds cause some friction at first, especially when Bertrice impulsively insists on staying with Violetta, not realizing she only has a single room. Not even Bertrice’s firebrand attitude, however, can protect her from the loneliness she feels now that her close friends and lover have passed away. While Bertrice is firmly in the “honey badger don’t care” stage, Violetta has spent her life letting herself be pushed to the background. Unlike Bertrice, Violetta’s experiences haven’t hardened her to life, and it’s her warmth that slowly thaws Bertrice. It was especially lovely to have both women firmly expressing that they’re people with desires, and that they haven’t stopped living life or craving someone else’s touch just because they’re reaching the antique stage.
“Discussions never helped anything; they inevitably ended in people begging Bertrice not to do whatever it was she wanted to do. She would then have to waste good effort ignoring them.”
Bertrice views men as invasive pests, to be tolerated or bull-dozered as needed, and none more so than her Terrible Nephew. As Ms. Milan says in her note, he’s not a terribly deep villain. He bullies anyone weaker than him, is financially irresponsible, and generally the caricature of a dissolute, impoverished noble. All of Ms. Milan’s novels have a deeper criticism of society, and in this one it’s just more blatant. Yes, it’s a bit direct, but c’mon, who in this day and age doesn’t want to see two women of a certain vintage rage and destroy the patriarchy? There’s places in the book where both women comment that they feel like they’ve been screaming silently for all of their lives, and this book is the literary equivalent of a primal scream of rage, with a side of justice – and it was a like a release valve for me. Like Ms. Milan’s other books, though, it’s tempered with a lot of humor. Yes, they’re going to get revenge on the Terrible Nephew – but it’s going to be on their own absolutely ridiculous terms.
Overall, this was both an absolute delight and a very cathartic read for me. Highly recommended!
I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.