The Keys of Heaven

Gaston Murphy, 32, half-French, half-Irish, "half artist, half poet, half wandering minstrel" finds himself in a predicament. He's been invalided out of the army and saddled with three beautiful, penniless charges, left him as the only wealthy man of their scholar-father's acquaintance. Unfortunately, Gaston's warm and whimsical generosity has already blown through his inheritance. All he has left is 3000 pounds, the principal that provides his modest yearly income. And the girls, he finds, gently reared in a French convent, have romantic notions and no job training. What's a "beloved vagabond" to do? If you're Gaston, it's hit up your mom's old friend to chaperone, rent a ridiculously expensive fairy cottage, and sink your last penny into providing them six months of luxury, splendor, and social entrée. Will the girls make brilliant matches? Or will Gaston lose his heart as well as his bank balance?

Christine Jope-Slade is hard to place. She's kind of got the twee, whimsy thing of, say, an Eleanor Hallowell Abbott going -- Gaston is "Guardian", the chaperone, "Lady of the Shining Heart", and Tommy's head is "such a funny, fluffy little nest of red brown hair, like a red squirrel in the sun". You get the drift. But Jope-Slade tends to take this "little snorting taxi" on a darker, stranger route. Her three male leads -- the beautiful boy "with the clean lines of a Grecian runner", the big, impassive Dane with the "rare queer smile almost maternal in its sweetness", and our Gaston Quixote -- are all drawn with idealized affection, but she's much more jaundiced about her young women. Tommy of the squirrel hair is wonderful, but her sisters' interiors come under pretty cold-blooded appraisal. It kind of jars with the narrative style -- you see some of this in Love in a Muddle, too -- and I'm puzzled why I actually liked both these books. Maybe the odd fusion vibe? The relationship between Gaston and his 60-year-old American friend/mother figure is one of Keys highlights. I love close platonic friendships across age/gender and you don't see them much in romance-oriented reads. And Tanagra (no Darmok, no Jalad) was mentioned so often (in reference to the beautiful young man) that I looked it up and had to order my own reproduction. Huge flag, unfortunately, in a character that's given the openly antisemitic treatment. Also, some Orientalism in the description of one of the girls. And the n-word is used several times in reference to the color of a dress. Does the engagingness of the story outweigh this stuff? I go back and forth.