City of Gems

by Joanna Trollope

On the fifteenth of February, 1879, the day on which Queen Supayalat of Mandalay ordered eighty members of of royal family to be clubbed to death, Maria Beresford celebrated her eighteenth birthday.

On that day Maria knew nothing of Mandalay, the fairy-tale City of Gems. The selfish, difficult but heart-stoppingly beautiful daughter of a failed tea-planter in India devoted herself to pleasure. But when her father was sent to Burma, and she had to accompany him, she became embroiled in an exotic world of political intrigue. Her friendship with the Queen - a dangerous and unpredictable figure - and her growing closeness to Archie Tennant, a young man who has come east to seek his fortune after the ruin of his family business, brought her both danger and the key to her destiny.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Joanna Trollope Potter Curteis (aka Caroline Harvey)

Joanna Trollope was born on 9 December 1943 in her grandfather's rectory in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, England, daughter of Rosemary Hodson and Arthur George Cecil Trollope. She is the eldest of three siblings. She is a fifth-generation niece of the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope and is a cousin of the writer and broadcaster James Trollope. She was educated at Reigate County School for Girls followed by St Hugh's College, Oxford. On 14 May 1966, she married the banker David Roger William Potter, they had two daughters, Antonia and Louise, and on 1983 they divorced. In 1985, she remarried to the television dramatist Ian Curteis, and became the stepmother of two stepsons; they divorced in 2001.

From 1965 to 1967, she worked at the Foreign Office. From 1967 to 1979, she was employed in a number of teaching posts before she became a writer full-time in 1980. Her novel Parson Harding's Daughter won in 1980 the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Reviews

[Christina ~ Brunette Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Flat, flat, flat... repetitive, cardboard characters and a romance-not-romance.
Two stars only for the solid writing and the obvious historical research supporting it.

[Tocotin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this shortly after the magnificent Lacquer Lady by Tennyson Jesse. I found the similarities unnerving. It is basically the same story with two added characters – Maria Beresford, who has dethroned Jesse’s Fanny Moroni as the belle of the book, and Archie something, who has to exist because the regal Maria needs to have someone of value to worship her – not that he’s more than a conventionally decent British “chap”. The non-British characters are presented mostly with a sneer and sometimes with an outright antipathy, which includes unfavorable comments about their body build and personal hygiene. The Italian consul Andreino, for example, has dirty fingernails just as in Jesse’s book – but unlike Jesse, Trollope lovingly repeats this detail over and over again. The Burmese characters are paper-thin, including Supayalat, although an effort seems to be made at the end when Maria witnesses the King and Queen being exiled from Mandalay – it was, for me, the best scene of the book.

But.

The narrative frame, the background characters, the relationships are very similar to Jesse’s. The little details are similar to Jesse’s. Sometimes, the very thoughts of the characters are similar to the ones in The Lacquer Lady. Yes, Maria is an original character (and an interesting one), but the beautiful Fanny Moroni, whose place she has usurped as Supayalat’s favorite, is here too, being squashed flat as a half-Greek Mattie Calogreedy (and this seems to be the real name of the person who had inspired Jesse’s Fanny!). Grace is Agatha, mercilessly reduced to a hopeless crush on Archie. Andreino, Julie, the French engineer who broke Fanny’s heart, they are all here. The daughter of the Armenian Minister for Foreigners, Selah Aratoon, who was my favorite character, is here named Hosannah Manook, and is of course vulgar and flat too. And in one place her name appears simply as Selah. I was so taken aback by that that I kept staring at it for a long time.

Okay, so I’m obsessed with The Lacquer Lady – I even bought the biography of Tennyson Jesse – and it is entirely possible that both Jesse and Trollope had an access to the same source, or sources; but I think that the similarities are unsettling. I didn’t want to read a watered-down version of TLL, I wanted a different story! And The City of Gems is not even more sensitive or modern. The acceptance of racism, colonialism and imperialism is complete. There are more insistent descriptions of “little brown Burmese” and their inability to govern themselves than in Jesse’s book; the beautiful and sophisticated British women must win over “the natives” in the hearts of white men without doubt; the royal court, which throws both light and shadow over the whole world of TLL, is here relegated to the narrow margin. And no, I’m not in any way defending Thibaw or Supayalat, but the image of Thibaw as an alcoholic was British propaganda, and so is the statement that it was Supayalat who had orchestrated the infamous palace massacre of the princes and princesses (it was her mother the Queen of Alenandaw) – yet The City of Gems repeats the same tired stories almost a hundred years later.

And so – what the hell was Maria there for, if the royal court was such a horrible place, and she herself so stiff and majestic? The Lacquer Lady worked perfectly, because Fanny was such a great companion for Supayalat, and because she accepted the mode of life in the palace and fit in so well – but I couldn’t believe in Maria as Supayalat’s court lady at all. Even the scene of their first meeting was straining credulity. And then there was nothing about Maria’s life at the palace, nothing at all, until the very end when she started crying over the end of the Burmese monarchy and of the golden city of Mandalay as she had known it… if she had truly known it, because Mandalay is hardly even present in the book.

I know I'm getting all worked-up here by two equally forgotten books. Thank you for reading this!

The ending for Maria, the ideal love of Archie: five stars. The ending for Hnin Si, the local woman for Archie to fuck: one star.

[Linda Mcgurrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disappointing ending, very vivid descriptions

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't say that this was my favourite Caroline Harvey historical novel. It was tedious in parts but in the end, the author brought most things together though perhaps not in a particularly satisfactory way. To the end, Maria remained an unlikeable character. Just can't understand why a nice guy like Archie would want to marry her!

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating plot!

[Kldeighton]

RUBBISH