I’ve just read two romances back to back which, in their own way, broke the rules. Not in extreme ways - the eight narrative elements being present and correct - but just enough that it got me wondering what the unofficial rules of the genre novel are, and how much importance we place on them.

The two books I read were The Slightest Provocation, by Pam Rosenthal and A Personal Matter by Karyn Langhorne. Neither author did anything genre shattering, but their little subversions were amusing and interesting, because they are quite rare in my experience.

Heroes don’t smell (bad)

Take Alayna and Ice from A Personal Matter. I think there was something gleeful in the way Langhorne chose to emphasize the physical defects of her protagonists, often elaborating on their less than appealing traits the way other authors might describe the physical appeal of their protagonists:

It took a couple of seconds to shut up and realize she hadn’t met the boogeyman and that the surface she was up against wasn’t anything more dangerous than a normal man’s chest. Torso, really, He was pretty tall… and the said chest was hard as rock. But he didn’t have a knife. The most dangerous thing about him was a medium-bad case of B.O., but when you had run face-first into a man’s armpit, it had to be expected.

and

Ice dripped his glasses-less self into the War Room just before lunch wearing a dark blue suit that didn’t do a thing for him and a pair of bleary slate eyes above a puffy set of matching gray bags.

Romances have to walk a fine balance between the mundane and the glamorous in order to truly work, and in this instance I found Ice (hairy, sometimes stinky, often tired and worn out), a brilliant creation. At once believable and utterly heroic, but with the heroic qualities expressed mainly through his actions. Nonetheless, it felt strange reading a novel in which the hero’s physical beauty wasn’t extolled in every other page.

Heroines Aren’t Bitchy

Alayna is. She has a great big chip on a shoulder, a short fuse and attitude to spare.

Take this perfect encapsulation of her character:

He was already striding out of the room when Alayna’s fist found her hipbone and nestled itself in its favorite spot.

And this response to an office worker making a friendly overture:

“So why don’t you do me a favour and drop the let’s be girlfriends routine, Trixie. The day you and I are friends is the day there’s a Sister in the White House and you’re playing my Mammy on TV”.

(Meriam: Whoa!) This heroine finds it difficult to apologize and say thank you. She is quick to react, suspicious and proud. There’s character growth, but the essence of Alayna - the take no prisoners attitude - remains fixed.

HEA Forever and Ever

Similarly, when confronting her happy ever after with the man she loves, Alayna isn’t completely thrilled. A part of her recognizes that in loving Ice and choosing to be with him, she will lose a part of herself (the independent, carefree part) she has only just discovered. Intriguingly, the prospect of the happy ever after - her life mapped out and foreseeable - doesn’t thrill Alayna, but initially gives her the feeling of a jail door slamming on her. This is almost anti-romance, where it is usually the practice employed in epilogues everywhere to reassure the reader that the Heroine and Hero are living in a patented domestic bliss forever more.

I confess, I very much enjoyed A Personal Matter, with its subversive elements and knowing pokes at convention.

In a different way, Rosenthal’s The Slightest Provocation also felt like a rule breaker. In a stylistic sense because it read as a more literary stab at the genre, and in its probing character study of the H&H. In an earlier post on the Wallpaper Historical, RfP wrote:

Perhaps a “wallpaper” historical is simply a romance that emphasizes character or plot over setting; more pages of relationship-building isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a romance.

My feeling then was that it would be great if romances did concentrate on character and plot, instead of relying on archetypes and cliches (the ‘romantic shorthand’). After reading Rosenthal, I thought - yes, more of this, please.

Interestingly, Rosenthal talks about her desire to explore the realm between romance and erotica, and wonders what role ‘ultimate monogamy and the marriage ending plays in all of this.’ (Which is rule-breaking in a more controversial sense, and a matter for another post.)

In what small ways do you enjoy breaks from convention; what works and what doesn’t? When was the last time you read a romance that made you think - hey, you’re not playing by the rules!?