Sunday, September 28, 2003		Books

Woman of substance resurrected
Prerana Trehan

Emma’s Secret
by Barbara Taylor Bradford. HarperCollins Publishers. Pages 506. £ 5.99

EMMA’S Secret reminds me of a nursery rhyme I heard as a child. It went something like this: There was once a little girl who had a little curl right down the middle of her forehead. When she was good she was very, very good, when she was bad she was horrid. The world of Emma’s Secret is very much like the little girl’s behaviour. The characters are either very, very good or they are horrid. There is no middle ground. The good ones cherish and idolise their grandparents, love and respect their parents, are kind, generous, intelligent, just, upright, wise and good at everything they do. Amazingly, they are also beautiful, well-dressed, good businesspersons, fall in love with handsome, meritorious people that their parents and grandparents approve of, and go on to raise children, at least one of whom, and generally the favourite one at that, is as virtuous as they are and is the spitting image of their own selves or of a favourite grandparent. On the contrary, the bad ones are, well, contrary. They are mean, vicious, bossy, jealous, unjust, unscrupulous and as if that is not enough they also make bad marriages and stupid managers. Certainly, no room for grey here.

With characters so wooden, it is not surprising that the story doesn’t seem to move on its own, and whenever it stalls altogether, Bradford Taylor generously steps in to shove it forward, or in this case, backward, with some laboured and entirely superfluous developments. Surprisingly, the only characters that show any growth are the negative ones, but then that may be because the positive ones are already so fault-free that there is no room for further improvement.

A word of advice: take a photostat copy of the family tree given at the beginning of the book and hang it up on the wall in front of you. It will come in very handy in making sense of who is related to whom by which marriage. In a world of all manners of cousins and sibling, real, half, step and illegitimate, it comes as somewhat of a relief to discover that there are still some characters unrelated by blood or matrimony to the principle characters that they can possibly take on as lovers`85or are they? But, hold on, I won’t let the cat out of the bag and spoil the only modicum of surprise you are likely to encounter in the entire length of the book.

If you have read A Woman of Substance, Hold the Dream or To Be the Best, Emma’s Secret will be easier to follow, but even if you haven’t you can still enjoy the book, since every past incident that has a bearing on the present turn of events is explained for the benefit of first-time readers. And, of course, the family tree helps tremendously. Once you get the hang of the intricate relationships between the Hartes, the O’Neills and the Kallinskis — the three clans that dominate the Emma Harte series — the rest is easy.

Like other works in the series series, Emma’s Secret follows the fortunes of the various generations of the three clans. Parents, siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts dominate the proceedings and deal with the jealousies, insecurities, suspicions, betrayals, loves, and loyalties that are often the lot of the rich and the famous. In this by and larger female-dominated world, the men have, at best, a periphal role and are, if possible, even more uni-dimensional than the women.

At the heart of the story is Linnet O’Neill, Emma’s great-graddaughter, Emma’s favourite daughter Daisy’s graddaughter and Daisy’s favourite daughter Paula’s daughter (and if you think this is complicated, get the photo copy in 70 point size). Linnet’s rivalry with her arrogant half-sister Tessa for the succession of the Harte empire forms the pivot around which the story revolves. Her no-hiccups (but, of course) affair that has parental and even grandparental sanction (but, of course) with Julian, the handsome, loving, intelligent and loyal (but, of course) scion of the Kallinski clan (but, of course), forms the obligatory love angle, while the question mark hanging over the lineage of a beautiful young woman Evan Hughes who is linked both professionally and amorously with the Hartes, provides the necessary element of suspense.

Emma’s dairy, written during the days of World War II that falls into Paula’s hands, takes the story back to Emma’s life during the war, and in the process resurrects the much-loved heroine of a Woman of Substance. Even though Emma’s character is the only one in the book that seems somewhat life-like, one can’t help thinking that the dead are best left to rest in peace. Sequels often take away the immortality that a top-of-the charts rating bestows on a character. This, sadly, is what Emma’s Secret does to Emma. And as the story zooms back from 2001 to 1940, one can see Emma’s Secret for what it is: an attempt at milking the cash-cow of Emma Harte for all she is worth.