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Genre: Historical: European, Literary Fiction
Some books defy reviews and Forever Amber, written by Kathleen Winsor in 1944, is one of them. Should you read it? Darned if I know. There’s a lot of toxic crap in it, and it features an amoral anti-heroine. There’s also great historical detail, and I cannot tell a lie, I tore through this book as though it was a bag of Cheetos, in that I knew it was bad for me but I couldn’t put it down until it was all gone.
I had to read Forever Amber because of another book, When Books Went To War by Molly Guphill Manning. Forever Amber was banned in several states at the time because of, as the Attorney General of Massachusetts so helpfully counted, “70 references to sexual intercourse, 39 illegitimate pregnancies, 7 abortions, and 10 descriptions of women undressing in front of men.”
Naturally this meant that soldiers longed to read it. One soldier wrote, “If you’ve ever seen books that were completely worn out by reading, it was the copies of Forever Amber.”
It was clear that I must investigate this matter. Herein I present my findings.
Basically what we have here is a Resoration-Era Gone With the Wind, with all the good (strong-willed and ambitious women, amazing clothes) the bad (harmful and hurtful tropes including pervasive racism, the portrayal of women as rivals, and rape-as-seduction) and the your-mileage-will-vary (an anti-heroine as protagonist). Unlike Gone With the Wind, which glamorizes the pre-Civil War era in the South, the Restoration Era is not glamorized and the historical detail is meticulous. History buffs will find a LOT to get excited about here.
This book is approximately 1000 pages long in print, covers ten years, and ends on a cliffhanger because the author meant to write a sequel but didn’t get around to it – so you’ve been warned! Also, despite the sexy sexy reputation, there is very little on-page sex. If you think I’m disappointed, imagine the disappointment of the poor soldier stationed in the Aleutian Islands during WWII who wrote “Fellas have a fever to read Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor.”
Amber St. Clare is a sixteen-year-old dazzlingly beautiful orphan who is brought up in a bucolic but boring village in England. When cavaliers come to town, she falls madly in love with one of them, Bruce Carleton, who informs her that he won’t marry her and rapes her in a “rape-as-seduction” scene. Amber convinces him to take her with him to London, where she lives as his mistress and becomes pregnant.
Bruce leaves Amber so that he can be a privateer and she gets married to a chump who jilts her just in time for Amber to end up (still pregnant) at Newgate for debt, where she becomes the lover of Black Jack Mallard, a highwayman. They escape prison together and he teaches her how to seduce and rob people but eventually he is caught and hanged. Amber escapes capture, has the baby, and sets to figuring out how to avoid ever going hungry again.
Since all Amber has for currency is her sex appeal, that is what Amber uses. There’s some slut-shaming in this book, but mostly a sense that Amber is justified in using the only tool that she has. In the process of sleeping with possibly the entire male aristocratic population of England, she lies, cheats, and hurts people, which does not bother her a whit. Amber is portrayed as a bad person primarily because of all the collateral damage she causes and for her utter indifference with regard to the welfare of most people.
Amber’s unending goals are:
- to establish financial security
- to convince Bruce to marry her
- to achieve maximum status and comfort by buying the maximum number of shiny and expensive things.
For Amber, all men are stepping stones on the road to success and all women are obstacles. Fidelity is for losers, the truth is not worth wasting time on when a lie serves one better, time is the worst enemy, and all men pale in comparison to Bruce despite his consistent refusal to marry her or to take her with him on his adventures abroad.
So many things happen in this story that before I even finished the book I ducked back over to Wikipedia to check out the plot outline and realized that I had already forgotten at least half of the events that had already transpired. These events include but are not very much not limited to:
- Multiple babies
- Several abortions
- A duel
- The Plague
- The Great Fire of London
- Various murders
- Four marriages, including the inevitable and considerable in-law troubles
- Many, many, many lovers
- The art of bathing in a tub of milk while entertaining a room full of people
- The most AMAZING clothes
That’s a lot to pack into ten years, and the story’s pace is incredibly fast. I never felt as though I was reading a long book. Amber’s plot is interwoven with other chapters about what is happening at court, so that’s a whole thing. A lot of historical characters show up including King Charles II. Court life is one big soap opera and the atmosphere is hedonistic, amoral, ambitious, desperate, and venomous.
This book comes with a BIG TW for racism. Historians have spent a lot of time lately explaining to people that England of Yore was not an all-White place, and the rich people in the Restoration LOVED having Black servants and slaves in highly visible positions. It was, I regret to say, trendy. Because these characters are voiceless, I definitely think it could be very painful to read. It doesn’t present racism as justified, nor does it condemn it other than to suggest that the use of human beings for decor is yet another sign of an amoral, hedonistic age. It’s pretty matter of fact: “this is how London looked during the Restoration period, this is how people behaved at the theater, these are the people they used to elevate their own status, this is how they wore their hair.”
If you’re thinking this sounds like an Old Skool romance, some of the hallmarks are there. These include the problematic elements around consent and a plot which features many twists and turns and the heroine’s undying love for an emotionally unavailable man. Old Skool romances rejoiced in heroines who had raven hair or fiery tresses or some other startling and improbable beautiful features. In this case, I give you Amber’s eyes, which are, of course, amber.
If you miss these kinds of books, please look no further than Forever Amber. It’s not actually a romance novel in the sense that:
- the heroine is an amoral, cruel, deceitful and destructive dirtbag
- the closest thing we have to a hero is an even bigger dirtbag
- there’s no HEA
However, the story does have that sweeping dizzy sense that anything might happen at any moment. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six Amber packs in a truly astonishing number of experiences. She is so shallow, narcissistic, and dishonest that one wants her to fail, and so determined and single-minded that one wants her to succeed. The plot is compelling and the writing is vivid. There are some amazing chapters that jump genre entirely, most notably the horrific chapters involving the plague during which Amber turns out to be an amazing nurse and gets surprisingly good at dragging corpses out of her house for carts to pick up. These plague chapters leave the glamorous world of romantic literature behind and plunge headlong into pure horror. They are also the most gripping chapters in the book.
If the measure of a good book is that it keeps one’s attention, well, I can’t lie, I spent the three days it took me to read this either reading the book or thinking about it. I can’t tell you whether or not you might find Forever Amber worth reading. I can tell you that if you do read it, you will be in turns amused, delighted, horrified, and appalled – but you certainly won’t be bored.
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I saw the movie on midday television when I was around 14 and was fascinated. Needless to say it was 1947 and was pretty cleaned up. On the grounds of this fascination I started to read book one (they did a two book paperback version at some point). I couldn’t read it. Not because it wasn’t well written but I really hated the heroine.
I read this one eons ago and I still remember it in the broad scope. Quite an incredible book. Always wondered if someone would pick up the sequel opportunity. Alas!
Kathleen Windsor later wrote, among other books, a novel called STAR MONEY which many think is at least semi-autobiographical because the heroine is a young woman in the 1940s who writes a bestselling historical novel. Windsor also wrote a kinda-sorta paranormal bodice-ripper called JACINTHA, about a woman who is poisoned by her husband and (apparently) goes to hell, which is a beautiful place, and falls in love with the Devil who—surprise!—is beautiful and epically good in bed (the book was published in the 1980s, so all the sex stuff Windsor couldn’t write in FOREVER AMBER gets some okay here), but, alas, is completely incapable of being faithful—and even has a relationship with Jacintha’s mother (who is also in hell, having been poisoned by her own husband when Jacintha was a girl). Just reading that synopsis makes me realize JACINTHA is the type of book the words “bonkers crazy-sauce” were made for—and it undoubtedly hasn’t aged well.
Interesting. I’ve rediscovered romance novels this past year (thank you quarantine) and been revisiting some old faves and discovering newer authors (thank you SBTB).
Reading this review reminds me of the plot of Skye O’Malley by Bertrice Small, which I bought with my babysitting money back in the 80s. When you think about the multiple marriages/partners/babies/adventures along with some remarkable clothes, Skye O’Malley had, it’s likely that Ms Small was influenced by Forever Amber. She took the premise of an adventure story with a female protagonist and was able to add in more sex than was permissible during the 1940s.
I must know, how many women contribute to the 39 pregnancies?!? How many times does poor Amber get pregnant in 10 years?
I’ve heard of this book but had never read it. My library has a copy so I’m curious enough to put it on hold.
Just for funsies–Elizabeth Peters wrote a couple books about Jacqueline Kirby, one of which takes place at a romance convention, and FOREVER AMBER is mentioned more than once. And because of that book, I read FORVER AMBER. 🙂
This review = pretty much exactly how I feel about ‘Forever Amber.’ It’s a book I think every romance writer should read, like ‘Cotillion’ by Georgette Heyer – a foundational text. Kind of says OH YEAH? to the endless-abuse-of-virtuous-heroine novels of, e.g. Richardson. As you say: if this is the only tool you have, use it.
The LONG,LONG historical novel. For those who know about Forever Amber, I can top that with a french series about the adventures of Angelique which was published in French from 1957-85, all thirteen (!) of them with 10 translated into English. It has all the tropes–beautiful heroine, lost husbands, French Revolution, pirates, evil kidnappers, lovers, children, exotic settings including Quebec!! I guess 150 million copies later Anne Golon knew what would sell.
Read this as a sophomore in high school. Around the same time, I read those interminable books about someone named Angelique who has quite improbable adventures involving Puritan New England, the French Revolution, and I forget what all else.
@Joy, I remember reading at least five of the Angelique books (the ones that were translated into English in the ’70s). Which I didn’t mention to my mother. I also read Forever Amber around that time, which my mother knew about, and told me, “Don’t tell your grandmother.” (Apparently she’d sneaked a copy into the house while a teenager and lived in fear her mother would find it, or, worse, her sister would find it. Aunt Lu would then either snitch or hold it over her as a bargaining tool.)
@Joy, I’m still bitter that the final couple of books of the Angelique saga were never translated into English. I absolutely devoured them as a teen in the 1970’s and once the internet became a thing, I even checked to see if I could track those final books down, but alas, they are still not translated. I never read Forever Amber, but from the description, it sounds like Angelique was much more romance adjacent.
@Ho, just when you think you’re the only ine. The bff and I consumed the Angelique books like popcorn.
@Joy! JOY!!! Geez autocorrect, way to make friends.
I’m sure I read Forever Amber in high school so this brought back memories of a college paper I did back, well, let’s just say long ago. I compared Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe with Pamela, one of the aforementioned virtuous heroine novels by Richardson. As this was before the internet, my mother went into Dallas to SMU to find a copy of Pamela. Moll must have been available where I was.
I don’t remember my grade on the paper, but I did pass the course, so it couldn’t have been too bad. I believe my conclusion was a decided preference for Moll. I got very tired of Pamela.
I actually ended up reading Forever Amber because it was the longest book on the list of summer reading books in high school. I definitely was surprised to find that it was as soapy as it was for HS English. I don’t think I was scarred by early exposure to any of it,* but I think that was the first time I encountered a morally grey heroine in literature, and I definitely remember subconsciously waiting for her to Get Her Comeuppance because that is usually what happens to women who break the rules in literature, especially those who use sex as a weapon. And I remember the cliffhanger ending, but also felt it was somewhat fitting, because I was so conflicted about what I actually wanted to happen to Amber.
*I just had a flashback to a mortifying experience later in high school when my mom found the Meredith Gentry books by Anita Blake in my room, read a portion, and was so shocked by the fairy bdsm orgy erotica she sat me down to talk about it. This talk included her worries that this would warp my outlook about sex, and the recommendation that if I felt the need to read romance, I could always read Outlander, which at least had some literary value as opposed to being mostly porn.
Moll Flanders is one of my favorite books, but I doubt I’d like Forever Amber. Moll actually had morals (in her way). She would deceive and manipulate men in order to get them to be her protector or husband, but once in a relationship she had a strict principle of being faithful and treating the man as well as she knew how. (By the way, Defoe had a much more expansive view of the expiration date of women’s attractiveness than Harrington did: it’s not until she’s nearly 50 that Moll decides that she’s too old to easily get men and turns to thievery instead, and even after that she winds up marrying a man who loves her and living happily ever after.)
@Everyone who mentioned MOLL FLANDERS and Daniel Defoe: My guess is that Windsor used MOLL FLANDERS as a template of sorts for FOREVER AMBER. (@Vasha: Its been decades since I read it, but I seem to recall Moll Flanders was still having children well into her mid-forties.) I’m fairly certain Windsor used Defoe’s JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR as a source for the scenes in FOREVER AMBER where Amber nurses her lover through the plague—many of the references and descriptions are similar.
I was just thinking of this book (the Linda Darnell adaption of the book, which changes a lot of the actions of the characters to make Amber and Bruce more sympathetic, with Bruce in particular being sanitized by the Hayes code plays on FX Movies a lot) and I’m totally delighted by the appearance of this review!
The book itself is soapy and messy and so incredibly heavily plotwise.
The utter crazysauce of the Romeo and Juliet situation that results in Amber having been of semi-royal blood before she was fostered by her more conservative adoptive parents alone is something else.
I read this when I was 12, and even then I recognize just how profoundly stupid the heroine was, given her stated goals. (I grew up in a household where I had already learned my place in the food chain and why it was a bad idea to do things just because I felt like it). There were so many things she could have done to forward her *stated* goals, which led me to believe that her real goals were quite different. Just sayin’.
Thank you for reminding me of my Mom! She read this when it came out (I mean, it was banned!!) and she still had her dog-eared copy when she passed away at 90. Besides the fact that EVERYONE had to read it, I know she loved the clothes, historical references and just the fact that Amber is not a nice person. (Mom was also a big fan of Austen’s Lady Susan.) I remember little from reading it years ago – lent to me by Mom, of course – so thanks for the review and making me smile. 🙂
My mother says that this was the only book her parents wouldn’t let her read when she was growing up. (Her mother never objected to anything she read; her father put his foot down, however, and said “my little girl is not reading notorious smut!”)
So of course she borrowed a copy from one of her friends.