Another of Grandma's romance novels

[sid]

The Keeper of the Door, by Ethel M. Dell, 1915

I actually started out enjoying this book quite a bit.  There was a definite Harlequin-esque element, with the heroine hating the hero at first sight, which was comfortably familiar.

ETA: You can read the book here, or download it here.

 

A few chapters in, I Googled Ms. Dell, and found that her books were enormously popular... and roundly blasted by the critics.  I thought that seemed pretty harsh based on what I'd read so far.  There was some goofy stilted language, like using the word 'thither', but it was all pretty entertaining and well-paced.

The heroine is a 20 year-old named Olga.  Her father, a doctor, is away, and there's a young doctor filling in for him: Max.  Olga hates Max.  Yay!  Let the fun and games begin!  Except... this is a 590 page book.  How long can it take for two people to get together?

Enter Olga's neighbor and friend: Violet.  A very peculiar young woman, very beautiful, very flirtatious.  Smokes like a chimney, and her cigarettes are provided to her by Our Villain: Major Hunt-Goring.  Since nobody cares for this fellow enough to call him by his first name, he is referred to throughout the book as 'Hunt-Goring', which the characters probably got awfully tired of iterating.  I know I got tired of reading it!

Well, I figured out that Violet's cigarettes were laced with opium!!

What I didn't realize was that that was the least of her problems.  Because, lo, her mother was a homicidal maniac and the disease is in her blood.  It's only a matter of time, folks.

Hunt-Goring wants Olga to marry him, and threatens to tell Violet the truth about her mother and her own fate.  Olga won't; H-G does; Violet snaps.

Now, Dr. Max has an interesting but regrettable habit.  See, he has this bottle, labeled 'PKR' (short for painkiller, believe it or not), which he keeps handing to people and saying: "Give so-and-so one teaspoon in a wine-glass of water... but not a drop more!  It's deadly poison!"

Can you guess what happens next?  Can you say 'assisted suicide'?  I knew you could.

I forgot to mention the part where Olga is recovering from sunstroke suffered while doggedly picking raspberries to make jam.  Combine that with offing your best friend, and apparently what you get is a coma for a few weeks followed by some convenient memory loss.  "Where's Violet?  Why hasn't she come to see me?"

ANYWAY, and here's where it gets really interesting (NOT), now Olga and her Uncle Nick go to India, AKA: Part Two.

Apparently every single book Ms. Dell wrote included a trip to India.  Here's where I started skimming and skipping, because suddenly there are new characters being introduced, after 280 pages, and some sort of subplot with Indian terrorists wanting to overthrow our British Heroes.  Gah.

Anyway, Dr. Max's little brother, Noel, is there, and falls for Olga.  Also, Our Villain turns up, still in hot pursuit.  H-G spreads the rumor that Dr. Max killed Violet because (and, boy, did I have to read between the lines here!) she got pregnant which brought on her hereditary insanity and he had to stop the scandal because he's a rising young doctor, etc.

Enter silly Indian subplot, wherein there is a bomb disguised as a present at a party, and brave Noel walks out into the garden with the bomb to dispose of it, but H-G, who hates his guts and is doped up on his own cigarettes TRIPS HIM, and the bomb goes off.  Killing H-G and... yes, you can all guess, can't you?  BLINDING Noel!

So of course Olga promptly accepts Noel's previous offer of marriage, since he's obviously a red-blooded hero and Dr. Max is a scoundrel who murdered poor dear Violet.

But then she starts getting her memory back, realizes she was the one who offed Violet, which doesn't bother her in the slightest and here everybody's been trying to protect her from the awful truth and simply making matters much, much worse.  So she sends a note of apology to Dr. Max and soon they're in each other's arms.

But then she remembers poor Noel (who's had surgery and is recovering apace) and is all, We Can't Do This!

But from the moment his lips met hers the battle was over.  With or without her will her lips clung to his; the flame of his passion kindled an answering flame in her; and the love which she had striven so desperately to restrain leaped forth to him in wild, exultant freedom, so that she forgot all the world beside. 

And then there's a really stupid ending, with Noel and this annoying little girl who plans to marry him when she grows up.  In fact, the entire 3 page final chapter doesn't even have the Heroes in it, and almost all of it involved 2 other characters that had been introduced in Part Two that I never even bothered to read about, because who cares?

I think the moral of the story is: get your cigarettes from a reputable tobacconist, don't hand somebody a bottle of poison and go off to make a phone call, and True Love awaits in exotic India (but watch out for terrorist bombs.)

Oh, and the title of the book refers to Dr. Max keeping his patients from Death's Door, no matter how much they'd rather pass through it.  I think.  He gave Olga some of that PKR for her sunstroke, and she was happily floating towards the bright white light, so to speak, but his manly presence when he took her pulse apparently sufficed to bring her back.  She was pretty pissed for a few minutes.  :-D

Comments

[delphia2000.livejournal.com]

Somehow I get the feeling these are the kinds of books that Anne Shirley would have read or written! :oD

[sid]

Would you believe I've never read any of the Green Gables books? Never watched any movies or miniseries, either. I see that the first book was published in 1908, so the timeframe would be right. :-)

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I have quite a few of her books! I think she's the one P G Wodehouse often snarks at; with men dragging women around by their hair and sheiks in deserts and all very purple :-))

[sid]

That description could fit quite a few of the big woman writers of that time period! If you happen to have the very first book she published, "The Way of an Eagle", this book is a sequel of some sort. The hero of that book is the Uncle Nick who takes Olga to India in this book! Heh, for all I know all of her books were sequels to ones that came before. With varying shades of lavender and mauve therein. ;-)

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I have a catalog of all my books so I can tell you exactly which ones I have without even toddling down to the basement:-)

DELL ETHEL M TETHERSTONES
THE SWINDLER
THE LAMP IN THE DESERT
THE SILVER WEDDING
THE WAY OF AN EAGLE
THE BARS OF IRON
THE KNAVE OF DIAMONDS

Been years since I read them, though...

[lunachickk.livejournal.com]

These things are great! Oh the drama!