Book Review: Midsummer Magic

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Midsummer Magic

Author: Catherine Coulter

Author's web site: https://www.catherinecoulter.com/

Date: 1987

Publisher: Penguin

ISBN: 0-451-40870-5

Length: 412 pages

Quote: “You are a randy goat, my lord!”

In the early 1980s, during the last major mass-media flap about the “pornographic” quality of some bestselling novels of the period, the late Art Buchwald observed that some of the same women screaming about the sex scenes in men's novels being “pornographic” were buying even more explicit novels—at the supermarket, from racks in between the housekeeping magazines and the Christian devotional books—as long as those books were (alleged to be) written by and about women.

He was absolutely right.

In the 1970s, some writers of fiction cutely insinuated that the relatively detached descriptions of How Babies Are Made in high school textbooks weren't satisfying teenagers' curiosity about how it felt. The answer is of course that each experience is unique, too personal to be explained in a textbook, but most couples enjoy the act of marriage.

Except, of course, when we're tired, and we have fifty other things on our minds, and we can't imagine how it's possible for our mates to find time to think about sex, but they do. So traditionally suburban housewives would buy these cheap “romance” novels that insanely, grotesquely exaggerated the thrills of sex and romance. Publishers had separate labels for different styles of novels; readers could recognize by the front cover whether to expect a chaste little story about teenagers learning how to make conversation and working up to asking for an official date, or a torrid tale of California divorcees flopping into bed first and deciding whether they liked each other enough to make a lunch date later.

A tiny bit less predictable were the bulky “historical” romances, often more anachronisms than history, where the level of societal oppression of women was one of the factors played against the fictional couple's passion to generate something in the way of a plot, but the story could still be summarized as: “Woman has sex, several times, different moods and methods, and likes it.”

And of course, if a woman picked up one of these books when she was not trying to nudge herself into a sexier mood than nature seemed to have intended, she recognized that it was stupid, melodramatic, hammy stuff. Sex is not a survival “need,” nor is it an addiction-like “thralldom.” Nobody has ever died from a lack of sexual pleasure. In fact people who make a firm decision not to do what might “feel so right” are likely to feel sexual pleasure after walking away. But weary wives wanted to read about fictional characters for whom desires felt like survival needs.

So here is an historical novel about Britain in the 1810s, when young people technically had some right to decide whether to marry each other or not, but their parents traditionally had the right to bully and manipulate them into marriages that suited the parents. Here's Frances Kilbracken, daughter of the Earl of Ruthven, who doesn't want to leave Ruthven to marry anybody, and Philip Hawksbury (Hawk to friends), son of the Earl of Rothermere, who doesn't want to give up his illicit relationship with Amalie the despised foreigner to marry anybody. Frances has two sisters who'd like to marry the next Earl of Rothermere. Both of them are pretty, but Frances decides to be on the safe side by making herself as unattractive as possible, even putting on thick spectacles that force her to squint around the glass. For Hawk's purposes, however, the least unwelcome choice is the unattractive, unfriendly wife who can be left to manage his country estate while he's in the city with Amalie...so he proposes to Frances, and if she says no because she wants to stay home with her father, her father makes clear, she'll have no home.

Amalie, a nicer girl than anybody in 1810 wanted to believe could exist, advises Hawk to drop her and try to seduce the wife his father has ordered him to “choose.” Gradually, while they settle a few family and business problems (the process includes a detailed close-up scene of “helping” horses breed), Hawk and Frances learn that it's possible to enjoy sex with each other.

And that's it. That's the story—if you call that a story. It's written for women, by a woman, with the intention of helping women fulfill a commitment they have voluntarily made, so it's not on the list of books the feminist neo-prudes have in mind when they rail against “pornography.” But it's nothing but pornography; Midsummer Magic serves no purpose other than to encourage readers to think about sex.

There are many levels of pornography that I'd rate “below” Midsummer Magic. Fifty Shades of Grey has more explicit bedroom scenes, and kinkier ones. Then there's the early twentieth century's “great, literary” porn, like Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, where the author is saying something more than “Man had sex and liked it,” but the other things he's saying are morally worse than that. Then there's the sort of cheap male-oriented pornographic “novels” I've seen for sale but never actually read except as parodied in the novels and memoirs of Florence King, who used to write them and reminisced hilariously about bored writers writing lots of very short sentences and very short paragraphs to fill up more pages faster...

Well...I didn't buy this piece of porn; it does nothing whatsoever for me. Porn collections are very private things. Midsummer Magic came from another woman's stash, and may once have served some purpose for her. I don't mind reselling it to responsible adults who think it might serve some purpose for them. I don't believe in censorship. I know firsthand that a pornographic book or picture can be used to facilitate abstinence as well as indulgence, if it works for the individual reader, and I know that no real person has been physically injured by the printing of words on paper.

But I still say it's porn, and I'm not going to display it to the general public. If responsible adults want it, they can ask. I'm not going to insist that online readers verify their age to buy this book here; I am going to say that if adults choose not to allow their teenaged children to keep books that are all about what fun it is to do things teenagers don't have a legal right to do, the adults are right in banning this one from the house. So if you buy Midsummer Magic here, $5 per book, $5 per package (four books of this size to a package would leave room for four thinner paperbacks, all for the one $5 shipping charge) plus $1 per online payment...this web site will send $1 to Catherine Coulter or the charity of her choice, but if your mother throws the book away and won't let you drive for a month, this web site says she's right.