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MY REVIEW

Frances Barstow has been biding her time, increasing her social cachet with Mrs. Markham Dere by waiting upon the tyrannical lady’s every whim. And now, at the age of twenty, it is Frances’s time to shine. Mrs. Dere is determined to bring Frances “out” at the same time as her erstwhile rival’s daughter and make a match for Frances with one of the Oxford dons staying at the local house party in Iffley. Assured by her mother that she need not marry except for love, Frances realizes that she may need to do some skillful maneuvering if she is to escape marriage to someone incompatible with her own clever wit.

Adam Hearne, literature fellow extraordinaire, has a problem–he’s too handsome for his own good. Even though he’s sworn never to replicate his own parents’ unhappiness by entering into matrimony, his beautiful face turns the head of every member of the fairer sex. To lessen his own eligibility, Adam decides to play the vacuous buffoon at the house party to which he and two friends have been invited. But when he finds a kindred spirit in Frances Barstow, he begins to wish that he was not playing the role of a simpleton who could never attract her intellect.

As Frances tries to figure out just who Adam Hearne is, and why he acts in such a contradictory way, the staging of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night‘s Dream plays a large part in the house party revels. Just as in Austen’s Mansfield Park, the closeness of feigned love in a theatrical production draws characters closer than convention might allow. Frances delights as the most intelligent–and, in my opinion, most sympathetic–of the Barstow sisters. Adam Hearne has his own moments of grandeur, vacillating from humorous donkey to wolfish pursuit of his Titania. Dudley’s trademark wit and literary flair are on full display, making this a Regency to be remembered. Recommended.

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If Mr. Hearne only had a part written for him every day of his life–one in which he was not only amusing, but also wise and thoughtful . . . Impatiently, she shook her head. Because it was nonsense, wasn’t it? But nonsense or not, Frances Barstow could not help suspecting that if Providence had indeed written him such a role, she might fall head over ears in love with him.

-Frances Sets the Fashion by Christina Dudley

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