Review: Beguilement

Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

18-year-old farmgirl decides that she wants to learn about sex, so she initiates a bit of a roll in the hay with a local boy and gets herself pregnant. When confronted, the boy denies everything and acts like a total arsehat, and the girl decides to solve her problem herself by running away to the big city and making a new life for herself and her child, instead of turning into the weepy mess that stereotype demands. So far, I'm all on board with this firey independent character... but unfortunately all that happens before the book starts.

Said girl stumbles into a series of bad situations - through no fault of her own - and has to be rescued three times by the same heroic man in his mid-fifties, and they proceed to fall madly in love with one another. He's literally three times her age, but apart from the occasional comment - just enough to let us know that this kind of age disparity isn't common in their world either - the subject is basically passed over completely. From this point on, our spirited farmgirl becomes almost entirely a passive character, as the old man steps in to teach her the ways of love, sort out all of her old problems with her family and village for (not with) her, and finally ask her parents for her hand in marriage without ever even broaching the idea with her first.

Ick. Ick ick ick. It's actually a very accurate depiction (in my limited experience) of exactly the sort of lopsided power dynamic that such mixed-age relationships seem to be prone to in the real world. Not "are doomed to"; I'm sure some work out well for all concerned, but definitely they seem prone to. Maybe that sort of thing hits a little close to home to me, as a 50-year-old man who has worked much of his life at universities full of 18-year-olds, but there is _nothing_ romantic to me about the idea of a man my age so completely dominating a young girl even if he _does_ genuinely care about her. Their relationship, and particularly the way she goes so completely passive from the moment they become a couple, creeped me the hell out, despite quite liking both characters individually before that. It reminded me of some things I have read about the Twilight series (which I'll happily admit to not having read) and the romance archetype of the older experienced man who will sweep in and take care of everything. It's apparently particularly popular in books aimed at teenage girls, who despite their natural independence may be struggling with a lot of new responsibilities at once. Who doesn't occasionally dream of everything just being taken care of, even if they wouldn't actually put up with it if it happened? I know I still do, at times. And also, of course, teenage girls are suffering through a time in which romantic prospects their own age - teenage boys - are almost universally idiots (I know I was...) But having the occasional dream of freedom from responsibility is a far cry from wanting to watch a young person's agency so thoroughly negated, and I really couldn't get past that in this book.

That said, the characters are otherwise fun to read, and the world that Bujold paints feels unique, interesting, and deep. Maybe their relationship overcomes its' tragically lopsided beginnings in later books, and she regains her independent character arc? _That_ might redeem this story in my eyes, but at this point I'm struggling to overcome the "ick factor" of 55 dating 18...

View all my reviews