I've often said that I prefer realism over accuracy in much of my reading. I don't care if the duke drives a Porsche to Almack's, but I do care if the dialogue is wooden and the characters are unrealistic once he gets there. But I've been thinking about how much reality I want, especially after seeing fan reaction to the news that in the next installment in the Bridget Jones series, Jones is a widow with two sons, and Mark Darcy is dead.
The online reaction was the subject of some media coverage, and of course a wry Buzzfeed list, and if you're looking for advanced attention before a book release, that ought to satisfy even the most demanding of publicists.
Killing off the hero doesn't go over well if romance fans make up the bulk of a readership, I'm thinking. I totally understand how these readers feel. I won't read the next Jones book (I don't think I read the sequel, either) and I'll maintain a private fanfic in my brain wherein they are happy and everlasting. (In my private fanfic in my brain, Anita Blake is still a poorly-dressed religiously and morally conflicted necromancer, and Stephanie Plum picked a dude a long, long time ago.)
My own feelings of disappointment and outrage at the Jones books' direction, I think, is a bit more than unhappiness at the author deciding to pull a Karin Slaughter and kill off the hero. Certainly that's a good rule to follow if one is writing romance: don't kill off the hero or heroine. Obviously, that's part of the expectation romance readers have of the books they read and the authors who write them: there will be a courtship, and a happy ending.
The fan reaction to Jones' widowhood (and this is not to say that widows shouldn't get a chance at another romance – far from it) reminded me of my own feelings about Kate Noble's last book, Let It Be Me.
This is a bit of a spoiler, so if you haven't read the book, please note that I'm talking about the very beginning and the very end of the story in this section.
In my review, I mention that:
One final word that I will white out as it is a bit of a spoiler: the beginning and ending are framed with an elderly Bridget telling the story of her life after her husband has died. If you're like me, and you like to imagine the characters young, happy, and unchanged after the story ends, the final epilogue and the story of their lives after the ending might seem bittersweet and painful. It's realistic, and it was lovely to see how Oliver and Bridget's lives changed and grew, but knowing the full scope of their ending was also sad for me. I do realize how ridiculous it is for me to go on about how I prefer characters who are realistic, but the written evidence of them being like real humans and, you know, dying, gives me the sads. I own this ridiculousness, and still felt the need to warn you.
I don't like it when romance heroes and heroines die. Ever. Simple as that. And this is complete goofypants of me, because I also go on about how I like realism.In fact, I often demand realism… but not so much realism that the characters are mortal. It's like I bestow the mantle of paranormal powers on all the characters in a book: everyone is immortal. Historicals aren't really the past, because that means everyone's dead.
Maybe it's a parallel universe in continuous existence, maybe accessible through a door in my bathroom, but they surely are not ever dead in my imagination.
Like I said, I fully own how ridiculous this is. But it's true – I don't like to think about the characters aging or dying. I read a recent Laurens historical where all the Bar Cynster characters show up in the backdrop of one major scene, and holy shit, Devil had grey hair! I was not prepared for silver fox Devil (though I presume he was still totally smoking, of course) and while I was curious about how everyone was getting on – I do like my visiting historicals, after all, where there's little risk because everyone is a prior hero or heroine and they all make appearances – the huge jump in time bringing those characters closer to their own possible mortal ending made me nervous.
I don't mind if they grow up – especially when a talented author like Loretta Chase takes the children from an early book and they become the hero and heroine of a later historical. But then, the aging process stops in my brain.
Really, I truly get how goofy this is. I know many of you have rolled your eyes so hard, your optical muscles earned 3000 points on Fitocracy in 4 minutes flat.
I own my silliness. Nevertheless, in romance land for me, everyone's immortal. I feel really hypocritical saying, “I want real characters like real people…except they are IMMORTAL. In my MIND.” But I say it anyway.
I don't like to see them age. I don't like to know they're going to die, even if logically the historical figures are all long dead. For me, the happy ever after includes permanence: I imagine the characters as they are in the book and don't age them. Happily ever after for the hero and heroine in romance doesn't include saying goodbye.
Am I alone in this? The reaction of the Bridget Jones readers seems to indicate I'm not, but I'm curious. What are your expectations of character immortality? Do they age in your mind?
I also think we associate Colin Firth with Mark Darcy because of the movie—so hearing she killed off Darcy feels like she’s killed Colin Firth. Perish the thought!
Before Charlaine Harris became a famous writer she wrote two wonderful mystery series.
Spoiler
In one series she killed the husband after about 5 books. I had a hard time forgiving her
for that. She was quoted after the fact as saying sometime like, she writes her books
for the books not for the reader’s expectations.
Linda Howard was asked if she would ever write a book about Zane Mackenzie’s daughter. She said she couldn’t do that because that would mean Wolf and Mary would
be dead. Thank you Linda Howard.
Having skipped all the comments, here’s my two cents.
Characters can age in a series, think the Amelia Peabody books, and I’m mostly fine with that, but otherwise, the characters never age. (this same phenomenon happens where I work – at a university. The students are always ages 17-21. makes a person feel old after a few years.) The never aging character phenomenon is because each time I read that stand alone book or even the series of 3 or 6 books, the characters are the same age each time I read it. In most series, you’re introduced to the sequel characters in book 1. This makes the people contemporaries. Thus, in book 5 you learn of a baby being born to couple #2 or something like that but no one DIES!!!
Characters always live on in my brain too. Happily ever after forever. Heck even Frodo didn’t die nor the Pevensie kids (even though both kind of do).
I like the way the stories in the 1,001 Nights end: “And then they lived happily until Death the destroyer of delights came to part them and they died.” I am ok with characters in historical settings dying after they have a long happy life. I kind of like to imagine how historical characters would react to the various changes around them and how that would reflect what point they were at in their lives. (What would Leonie think of Louis Napoleon? How hard would all those spunky Regency heiresses be cheering when they were silver-haired dragons at the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act?) The important thing for me in happy books like romances is that the characters die after a long life, with people who care about them nearby, and with as little fear and pain as possible under the circumstances. I don’t need to see it happening, but the idea of it isn’t inherently repugnant to me.
It’s more problematic in contemporaries, because if they’re relatively young and it’s supposed to be the present day it means something tragic happened, but I don’t find it jarring to think of in historical terms.
As an author, I split the difference. When I ended a series with continuing characters the main couple were in their mid-thirties with a small child in the last novel (in the mid 1940s), but I wrote a short story for myself about how the main character would die (in the present day). I cried like a baby while I was writing it, though it’s a “good death” (painless, surrounded by family, at an advanced age). It was closure. (I eventually ended up posting it on smashwords so any die-hard fans could sniffle along with me. I hope I didn’t traumatize anyone.)
I’m with Rebecca. As long as the character’s lives are long and happy, mortality doesn’t mess up the happily-ever vibe for me. Fantasy is my first genre, and my in-brain fanfic tends to be an all-encompassing multiverse where any moment in the story or after it can sprout a parallel-world tangent. So death at the end doesn’t feel like shutting the whole production down to me. I do get a sense of disappointment when something I was sold as a happy ending explodes in early death or break ups shortly after. I’ll roll with that depending on the genre of the book, but I never like it.
I’m young-ish (34) and recently widowed. Right now, the idea of a widowed heroine who has lost her “true love” yet still manages to move forward with her life sounds comforting. I loved my husband since I was 16, more than half my life, yet I still lost my happily ever after. Having romance novels that have heroines finding love again are an inspiration (I’m not quite ready to read them yet, but I like to know they are there). I learned in my children’s lit classes that students like to feel represented in books, that it makes them identify with the characters if they have things in common. Why would this not be true for us romance readers? Yes, some of us read to “escape” real life, but the great thing about a book versus real life is you can put down the book until you are ready to confront the issue, whereas in life, it is frowned upon to “deal with it” on your own time. So I say go ahead and kill off the hero just because life sucks, but please give us hope to move on. We can’t all be content to be forever a single widow like Violet Bridgerton (and don’t I remember reading people disappointed that her epilogue didn’t include a new love?)
Oh, goodness, yes, I understand.
Vorkosigan spoiler:
When LMBujold killed off Aral, I was devastated and infuriated.
end VK spoiler
But I didn’t feel betrayed, as I had when Anne McCaffrey killed off Masterharper Robinton. THAT was betrayal and I stopped reading and buying her books then. I had/have different expectations of Bujold than I had/have of McCaffrey.
That being said, I think Fielding is suffering from the Game of Thrones-effect: Let’s kill a few characters people like and we’ll be celebrated for grotty realism.
bleargh. That’s what biography is for.
@Raine – yes, I think there’s a vocal group asking for Violet to find a new love. It would be rather wonderful for her, I think.
And I’m very sorry for your loss.
I think I don’t like any H/h dying or getting old. Does anyboday remember ‘Another Sawn’ by Sandra Brown? But who knows perhaps I could accept a new and widowed Bridget Jones, so I think I don’t feel very strong about this.
I completely agree. Characters get a happily ever after, meaning ever after. Forever and ever amen. Bridget Jones without Mark is just wrong. Wrong, I tell you.
I first encountered this in Karen Ranney’s Highland Lords series eons ago. The couple in book 1 were the parents of the heroes in the subsequent books. And they died at sea in one of the books!! NO! In my mind, I kept thinking they would magically appear at the end and Bobby Ewing would realize it was all a bad dream. But no. Realistic or not, they died! I wanted to see them doting on their grandchildren, him distinguished with salt & pepper hair, and her still looking lovely, with but a few lines around her eyes to betray her advancing years. But no. THEY DIED!
Like you, Sarah, I want realism, meaning I want characters who act like they should. But I don’t need that real!
As for Violet, I think we’d all like to see her with a new love, but I’m happy to see that because we never got her own story as its own entity. The Bridgerton father (whose name escapes me at the moment, GAH) was never a character we knew, except through the vivid recollections of others. We never saw them fall in love. So I’m not invested in Violet remaining true to him for always.
It depends on my expectations and also why I’m reading a book. I do have that “I want real but not THAT real” reaction to some books, although not alwats about death. In Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn series, I thought the death of his wife made sense. I remember reading about the series being made into a cable show and that they weren’t going to kill her off and that kind of outraged me, because I liked how Joe developed afterwards.
I was going to say that in non genre romance, at least, I don’t need to believe that everyone livrs, and then I remembered that in my head, both Wesley twins are alive and running their joke shop. So I guess it depends on the characters.
I’m about one hundred pages into “Mad About the Boy” and I have to get a few things off my chest. I think killing Mark is a total and complete cop-out. I loved the first book, tolerated the second and got quite excited about the third, even with the Darcy snuffing. My problem is, Bridget doesn’t seem any different. I swear to God, if I knew I’d have to read, like, three more lists of self-help books that Bridget is reading to help her get her shit together, I would have shoved it back through the library returns slot with a snarl. Darcy’s death accomplishes one thing, and one things only: Helen Fielding can write the same damn book over again. Bridget is untouched by his death, motherhood, marriage, everything that has happened to her and I hate it. I’m not in love with the idea of heroes/heroines dying, but if you’re going to do it, make it matter, for God’s sake.
I wish she’d put her considerable talents into writing a book that shows the happily-ever-after is still possible after marriage, kids, aging, etc. It would have been a lot harder than what she churned out.
Personally, I dislike it intensely if one half of a couple dies whether the genre is romance or not. McCrumb’s mystery series featuring Elizabeth McPherson and Maron’s Sigrid Haraldson series both featured a carefully developed relationship that ended abruptly when the husband/lover died. The former was probably the greater shock because the tone of books was kind of silly and light, but Maron’s denouement was sadder because the relationship seemed more vital and encapsulated the characters’ transition from gloom to light. There is also the loss a couple of books ago of a major character in the Vorkosigan saga. I wanted to don black for that one, but I also accepted it because Bujold has always incorporated change into her story arcs.
Though I don’t like seeing a beloved character die, I don’t consider it a fair criteria for judging the book. But god forbid I should hear about it before I read the book, cuz then I just don’t read it. I encountered Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series somewhere in the middle and I have steadfastly refused to read the one where the wife dies.
I do have to say that I don’t think of my favorite fictional couples as immortal and non-aging, but I expect my little window into their history to open onto a struggle that succeeds and leads to happiness. Frankly, I don’t believe in a literal HEA, and all those epilogues that imply that such is possible just irk the hell out of me. Lest I sound too cynical, I do believe in true and lasting love and I savor reading about two people discovering it together. Love is what sustains you when happiness is elusive. If I wanted to watch couples get old and nasty and then croak, I’d read Franzen.
I’m divorced. My ex isn’t a scumbag. If anyone’s the villain, it’s me. Also, my grandmother died a couple years ago, and I still miss her and cry about it sometimes, but she died well. I hope that not all books with catastrophes in them are depressing or betrayals, because my life doesn’t suck that much.
Second everything SisterSadie said, in other words. Death is part of life.
This is a new lesson I learned from my grandmother, really. I was scared to buy Sims 2 because my little people would grow old and die—and then eventually I got to be okay with even my central family members sometimes dying in a fire (although mostly they died of old age). It makes children more meaningful, that they carry a spark from their parents; it makes reading more meaningful, that you can hear a ghost’s voice. It makes sex mean something.
I’m only 30, but I feel damn old sometimes, and not in the broken-down way.
I save my naive optimism for work: I’m a union organizer and I need it there more than in my love life.
I’ve already said my views on the death thing, but never aging thing is more baffling to me. I assume all characters age. In life you have two choices, you age or you die. I prefer aging.
I also think aging is good idea in those books with the magic baby HEA. My family thinks I’m crazy since I don’t coo at every baby I see and I’m not a baby person the way they are. I can understand wanting to have/having a baby, but having a baby who never ever ages is kinda……
my idea of purgatory. Think about it an eternity spend changing diapers and spitting, etc.. I hope the kids ages. I have to say I sort understand the Twilight appeal of having her suddenly five.
I’m with SBSarah 100% on the main characters never dying. However, @Ros, is your fanfic available online? I feel a masochistic urge to read it. Anyway, we already knew Avon was dead in “An Infamous Army”. I think Mary is dead in that book too?
I haven’t gotten very far into the Vorkosigan series, so you guys have just given me a rude awakening, but it’s sci-fi not straight romance so I can handle it. I couldn’t care less about Bridget and Mark because I read romance, I don’t read chick lit. I can’t explain where the fine line is between romance and chick lit, but as Justice Potter Stewart said, “I know it when I see it”.
I’m with you, Sarah, at least as far as romance novels are concerned, and I think it has to do with the type of story I expect when I read one.
A romance novel is generally about how two characters fall in love, right? Well, time-wise, that actually makes up only a very small part of any romantic relationship. Falling in love, getting together, even getting married—all that’s basically just prologue to the real story, which is the years and years and years you put in loving one another.
That stuff is usually not covered in romance novels, especially in a happy relationship. After all, there’s no will-they-won’t-they conflict; the answer is always: “yes, they are, they have, and surely they will again.”
So when the hero or heroine in a happy relationship dies, it’s like you’ve skipped ahead from the prologue of the relationship to the epilogue, without any stuff in between.
It’s different when a book skips ahead, say, twenty years to show the heroes happy with kids or something—because that’s reassurance to the reader that all the stuff the characters just went through in the story paid off. But when you skip ahead twenty years and one of them is dead, well, then, what was the point of all my emotional investment in this character? Yes, I know people I love die, and all the time. But if I wanted to experience that, I could have just not read the book and stayed in my Real Life.
Anyway, I don’t think you’re being crazy. I think that every genre has its rules, and in romance, it’s that “happily ever after” means “happily EVER AFTER”. The hero never dies unless that’s the whole reason the story’s being told in the first place. And seeing as how the point of Bridget Jones was never that one of them would eventually die, I can see how it’d be jarring.
I’m with Sarah. When the HEA rolls around, that’s it. It’s over. After that, the characters live long, happy, healthy lives, with a dozen children if they choose to with absolutely no complications like medical conditions, downsizing or financial woes. Intellectually, I know they will age and die in the normal sense, but I don’t want to know about it. And as some have already mentioned – immortality sounds boring! Hanging out with the same people day in day out, same diet, same conversations – oh how dull!
No, when your characters reach their HEA, they deserve the rewards that come with it. The hard stuff is over! Let them have some damn fun!