Dear Readers,
Do you believe in conicidences? Do you believe in ‘everything has a place and a time’? Have you had magically weird realisations that everything seems to be happening one thing after another, connected and interdependant?
Well, I just finished The Gilded Cage by Camilla Lackberg and wrote a review on it. Yes, Faye did feel a bit 80s to me, a bit Barbara Taylor Bradford and her Woman of Substance… but still.
Little did I know that Camilla Lackberg wrote an article for CrimeReards ‘Finding Inspiration in the Heroines of 80s romance novels’… She had me at the title image for this article.
‘Return to Eden’ TV series were our mantra and our religion back in the USSR. We would gather at my grandparents house to watch just one episode of colourful fairytale of all things Australian. I was learing Australia and Australian through Stephanie Harper and Co, watching the settings behind the action, listening to their voices, copying their style, hair and make up. Oh, Return to Eden…
I was learing about Australia with Return to Eden. I was learning English in Australia with Sidney Sheldon. I watched all the movies back home. Thus, I know the story and characters. Thus, I reasoned, I can read the books learing new words and phrases along the way. I tried to read with dictionary. But it proved to be tiresome and boring. So I stopped. I read the books. No, I swallowed all Sheldon’s books I could find at the place we were staying at…
And ‘Lace’… who can forget the ‘Lace’… Once again, I watched heavily dubbed (with the most obnoxious nasal voice over) copy that survived being smuggled into the USSR. But I loved it. It scared me, it fascinated me, it made me wonder… and just a little bit older.
All in all, I can identify with Camilla Lackberg’s fascination with the 80s romance novels and heroines. I am grateful to her for bringing all these memories back up.
Svetlana Tishchenko 