Befuddled

Bedazzled by Bertrice Small

I would like to take this opportunity to talk about scars. Specifically, facial scars.

In my latest foray into the torrid wilderness of taste that are the novels of Beatrice Small, our heroine, India, fails to recognize her beloved husband, Cayman Reis/Deverell Leigh, whose child she has borne, because he now has a facial scar from the scimitar of a revolutionary janissary (whatever that may be; Ms. Small does not explain). And before you ask: no, it didn't slice off his nose or other features. I don't believe there's even puckering to an alarming degree.

So then -- why?

I think the answer may be summed up in a single word: shorthand.

Ms. Small, it seems, needed to create a conflict between her protagonists, so as to delay the inevitable happy ending until almost the last page. She'd already played her favorite narrative trump card -- oriental harem slavery and sexual exploitation -- but had to find some way to prolong the story so the book would have some heft to it. As in volume, not significance.

So our hero is stricken with a non-disfiguring scar and incidentally blames his wife for running away from him (when she was in fact re-kidnapped, annoyingly) and hence Ms. Small's opportunity for some rough-but-certainly-not-bad sex as the novel lurches to a conclusion.

And everyone goes home happy except the reader.