Are you guys ready for this? I loved this book.

 

Moonlight Masquerade by Michelle Kasey, 1989

Grade: B

 

But this is a romance novel from the eighties! Yeah, it totally is. And I still loved it. I know that I rant on and on about how many terrible romance novel versions of the Phantom story I've seen so far, and some of them have been truly horrendous, but this is not one of those versions. It's not the most faithful adaptation by a long shot, nor is it the most in-depth in terms of themes and allegory, but man is it a great and emotionally-charged read.

 

Chapter 1:

 

Our leading lady is Christine Denham, whose last name has been changed because she's now British rather than Swedish. The setting has likewise been moved to Britain, and there is no hint of opera anywhere about the story, something that usually makes me pretty pissy about the direction this book might be taking; however, Kasey does such a great job of making the characters her own and giving them believable and interesting motives for their behavior that I can't get my panties into too much of a twist over it. So non-musical Britain it is.

 

The basic idea is that Christine, along with her maiden aunt Nellis (a mothering and endearingly flighty old bat who seems to have more in common character-wise with Madame Giry than with Mama Valerius), is traveling to London in order to make her debut and, hopefully, become a social success and secure a husband. Unfortunately, their carriage gets caught in a blizzard and the ladies are forced to take refuge at the nearby country estate of the Earl of Hawkhurst, a brooding recluse who refuses to allow his face to be seen. Like the Ashe romance novel, the earl (our Phantom stand-in) actually meets Christine before the Raoul character does, which means that Raoul has no pre-existing relationship with her to cause readers to think that the Phantom is the interloper. This can be (and has been) done with varying degrees of skill, but the story is set up nicely and flows naturally, so again I couldn't whine too much.

 

Chapter 2:

 

The Earl, whose name is Vincent in this version rather than Erik, is a bit silly here at the beginning, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to put up with him for too long. His plan to go stand on the edge of a cliff in the midst of a howling blizzard and "feel the power of nature assaulting his body" was not exactly low on the cheese-o-meter. But about as soon as I was writing this down, he huffed at himself for his own childishness and generally remained at a level of sanity that I could cope with thereafter.

 

Interestingly, Vincent does not wear the traditional Phantom's mask, instead hiding his face with a large hood and cloak as in the 1937 Weibang/Sheng film and its successors. I think this probably has more to do with the setting of the book and the desire to keep something as out of place as a mask out of things than it does with influence from the Chinese films, but it's still nice to see function taken over form. He is also tall and fairly thin (unlike the muscle-bound heroes of many romance novels), which may be a nod toward the original source material's skeletal villain.

 

Chapter 3:

 

Christine gets a fuller description in this chapter, and the fact that she's tiny and brunette suggests that there may be some influence here from the Webber musical and its diminutive brunette star, Sarah Brightman.

 

This first chapter has most of the silliness inherent in the book, with a few very contrived situations such as Vincent telling the unconscious Christine all about his childhood because he feels such a connection with her (even though he's never met her when she was, you know, awake). But it went by quickly and I even managed to forget all about it, which is a testament to how engaging Kasey keeps the narrative and characters.

 

I was concerned that Vincent was going to turn out to be one of those Phantom characters that doesn't have a deformity at all and is just plunked into the role by virtue of being solitary and angsty, but it became apparent, when Christine woke up and had a screaming fit at the sight of his face, that this was not so. In fact, her terrified, continual screams as he flees suggest a very nasty deformity, which I'm usually on board with. This is a very early unmasking as most version of the story go--their very first meeting, in fact--but Christine, recently awoken from delirious fever, turns out not to remember it later, so it really only functions to clue us in on Vincent's Secret Uglyface.

 

Chapter 5:

 

I've read better prose, but I liked this nevertheless. It has a good pace, flows well, is nicely descriptive without being overdone and generally does everything that decent prose is supposed to do.

 

Vincent has a tres tragique backstory, which proceeded to tease and tantalize me for the entire novel, right up until the penultimate chapter when the actual truth of the situation was explained. The general gist of it is that he was previously involved with a woman named Arabella, did something undefined, and then she died; her death is apparently his fault, and causes her brother to disfigure him by attacking him with a horsewhip and Vincent himself to wallow in guilt for the next decade. This is, obviously, totally removed from all of the source material (unless we try to extrapolate a tenuous connection to the 1983 Markowitz/Schell production based on theme, but even I don't think it can stretch that far), but it's intriguing in its own right, and I found myself having to stop several times to pay attention when I realized that I had gotten caught up in the story and was totally forgetting to write things down. Vincent, in particular, is a nice treat; he's brooding and angsty, yes, but tolerably so, with an actual motivation (or so I hope) and an attitude that never dips into the truly painful depths of emoness.

 

Chapter 6:

 

Kasey's Christine does drive me up the wall a little bit now and then with her nonsensical habit of narrating all her thoughts aloud when no one is there. Every stream of consciousness moment turns into an extended soliloquy, and it's a little bit awkward as a mode of exposition; on the one hand, I like that she's trying to keep things from descending into pages and pages of internal monologue, but on the other hand, this woman talks to herself constantly. It seems a little bit inane, though I did get more used to it as the book went on.

 

Christine manages to spy on Vincent coming in from the garden with his hood down; she sees him in profile, and is baffled by his insistence on hiding his face because she's bowled over by how handsome he is, confirming that this is definitely a half-face deformity, as in the Webber musical. Her confusion is a nice way to ramp up her eventual shock when she does see the other half of his face.

 

Chapter 7:

 

It's an unwritten (or possibly even written) rule somewhere that all romance novel heroines should be spunky in some way, because they're strong women in their own right, damn it. I sometimes have a personal disagreement with this rule, because it's so often done very poorly; heroines that are touted as independent and strong but turn out to be spineless wishy-washies (the heroine of the upcoming 1991 Stuart novel comes to mind, in fact) are more annoying, for me, than they would be if they had just owned up to their wussiness from the get-go. But, amazingly enough, Christine is believably spunky; it's endearing and precious, and I like it in her character! Huzzah! Sadly, she is sometimes still prone to anachronistic silliness, such as when she laughs at Vincent's manservants and remarks that they "acted as if they have never seen a female in her dressing-gown before" (well, I should hope NOT, you little hussy. This is the early nineteenth-century!), but I forgive her because it's infrequent.

 

Christine takes a bath in Vincent's chambers in this chapter (it's the only place with a tub). This is a very emotionally charged scene, because Vincent, who is totally spying on her in the nude in a way that he definitely should not be doing, gets downright ungentlemanly when she realizes he's in the room somewhere she can't see and begins to have a justifiable, lady-like, nineteenth-century fit. By modern standards, things are comparatively tame; the worst he does is come up behind her and stroke her naked shoulders and throat, but by early 1800s standards? SO WRONG. SO VERY WRONG. As one would expect from an innocent girl in this time period, poor Christine is extremely traumatized by what amounts to blatant sexual harassment, and her weeping and shivering after the scene was very realistic and very pitiable. Vincent has been a very bad man and I expect he will need to work hard to get back into her (and my) good graces.

 

Chapter 8:

 

Among other things I love about the fact that this is set in the nineteenth century is the fact that Christine's aunt Nellis is reasonably chaperonely. She seldom lets the girl out of her sight, worries constantly, and is scandalized by the slightest whiff of interaction with the dreaded Man, Bringer of the Penis. All too often, in period stories, I see rampant modern sensibilities running amok all over the conventions of the time, so it's refreshing to see people behaving with some decorum. Christine, though sometimes quite forward and inappropriate for the time period, manages to pull her behavior off by being innocent and even somewhat childish.

 

We get a little bit of description of Vincent's ex, Arabella, in this chapter; she is described as tall and blonde, with an extremely gentle and innocent temperament. I was intrigued by what sounds like a similar character to Leroux's original Christine, who was quite Nordic and innocent; if we entertain that idea, we could even theorize that, in this version of the story, "Christine" is already deceased, and the current story is a sort of sequel. I saw a similar possibility in the 1987 Argento/Barberini film, though that film and this book are about as similar as apples and napalm. In the end, there doesn't seem to be much to support this idea, but the inclusion of a previous relationship ending in tragedy seems to be a forerunner to a lot of the later sequels that will be written for the Phantom story.

 

Chapter 9:

 

Despite her earlier trauma, Christine is determined to figure out just what, exactly, Vincent's damage is, and she sets up a midnight meeting with him to play chess and talk out from under the watchful eyes of her chaperone. While this isn't the best plan with the guy who was watching her bathe, she retains a certain amount of innocent self-possession which makes contemplation of rape preposterous for her, and it's very believable that it doesn't occur to her to be too frightened of him. Entertainingly, while Nellis doesn't know about this, Vincent's servant Lazarus does, and he is not particularly subtle about communicating that he thinks this is beyond improper.

 

The only other thing I note here is that Vincent mentions that he's going to go put some cucumber slices on his eyes because they've gotten swollen from fatigue. That seems so... modern. Does anybody know when that convention started? I was suddenly jerked out of the nineteenth-century narrative I was enjoying to have a visual of Vincent wearing a little towel and relaxing in a spa mud bath. It was disorienting.

 

Chapter 10:

 

Christine's breathless musing that she's going out to "seek danger like some penny-press heroine" made me giggle, because, of course, that's exactly what the original Christine was. Very cute. Her determined invasion of Vincent's quiet time whenever she can get away with it is much less annoying that one might think, and their interaction is characterized by Christine's pointed insights--"You would never hurt me. You are much too busy hurting yourself."--and Vincent's gradual realizations when she offers them.

 

Vincent, as is not really all the surprising, spends a lot of time comparing Christine to the mysteriously deceased Arabella; his most dominant thought always seems to be some variation on the idea that Christine is strong, whereas Arabella was weak (and there is implied subtext that that weakness may have contributed to her death). I stopped to ponder whether or not this might reflect the popular perception of Leroux's Christine (and Webber's as well) as being a somewhat weak character; while I thought that she was actually one of the strongest of the novel, it's not too much of a stretch to see that her innocence and fragility may come across to some readers as weakness or ineffectuality (particularly modern readers who are used to a more liberated female figure). Kasey has made it a point to let us know that her Christine is, while certainly naive as any gently-bred girl of the time period, not really all that delicate or gentle and certainly not weak and retiring. I suspect that, as in many cases where an author splits a character for purposes of emphasis, Arabella has been endowed with those characteristics of the original Christine, allowing the two women to contrast with one another as two different types of desirable females.

 

There's some more explication of Vincent's deformity here, too--he has no use of the arm on the side of his body that, presumably, is fugly. I was excited to see that it seemed Kasey wasn't going to skimp on the deformity, since so many authors (particularly in romances) do.

 

An interesting facet of Vincent's personality is a certain obsession with perfection; he is prone to subjecting items to careful scrutiny in order to suss out their imperfections, and invariably destroys them when he finds one. The idea seems to be borrowed from the original character of Erik; while Vincent doesn't have any musical talent to speak of, Erik's obsession with musical perfection and his constant driving of Christine to achieve it are a nice parallel to Vincent's mindset.

 

Chapter 11:

 

This chapter dashed my hopes a little bit. Vincent's face is finally revealed, though this "unmasking" scene is gentler than most and he allows her to do it, as in the 1990 Richardson/Dance miniseries. Unfortunately, after all that discussion of how Vincent had been disfigured with a horsewhip and how hideous he was now, I was more than a little bit let down by the description, which tells us that he has three thin, faded, parallel scars that are "almost attractive". Seriously? That's what supposedly made Christine scream like a fucking banshee the first time she saw him? That's what apparently translates to a terribly damaged arm that can't be used? Three vaguely attractive scars? What the fuck, Kasey! The lack of credible ugliness is depressing since it devalues those reactions and Vincent's own level of moping. However, Vincent does clue us in later that he hasn't actually looked at himself in years (he's had all mirrors removed from the house), since the wounds were fresh, and thus doesn't actually know that they look better now (really? You haven't seen yourself in YEARS?), and Christine's initial reaction can be written off as lingering confusion and trauma from her carriage crash and the stress of waking up with some unknown dude bending over her.

 

I'm still not entirely satisfied with Kasey's explanations, to be honest, but I am aware that this is a romance novel and that romance novels have certain rules about how mad hot the hero has to be (though, I should point out, the Allen book was a romance novel, too, and he was damn ugly in that one). The fact that all allusions to the disfigurement from other characters or Vincent's own flashbacks seem to indicate a much worse injury lead me to wonder if the book was originally written with nastier imagery and changed during the editing process. I still don't like it, but I understand it. Romance industry, come on! We are capable of thinking that a guy deserves a girl even if he isn't Fabio. I promise we are.

 

Chapter 12:

 

After that letdown, I am absolutely petrified of finding out what happened to Arabella. I'm deeply concerned that it will also turn out to be something ridiculous that Vincent is moping over out of all proportion, like her catching the sniffles and expiring of pneumonia after they had taken a walk in the spring rain or something. I don't know, at this point, if I can handle another event that doesn't actually require this much angst. But it's still a mystery to all the readers, including me, and damn if I'm not infernally curious as well.

 

There's more detail on The Whipping of Vincent (sounds like a bondage porno) here, including the fact that his face was "flayed to the bone". Yet it only has three "rakish", almost-attractive scars? I don't know a lot about the general healing of whip-inflicted wounds in the nineteenth century, but I stand by my earlier theories.

 

Vincent, in his internal monologue, also discusses here how his obsession with perfection extends to seeking out the flaws in people as well as in objects; his primary example is Arabella, whose flaw was, apparently, weakness (oh my god tell me what happened to herrrrr!). However, he can't see any flaw in Christine, which leads us to the natural conclusion that Christine is the only woman he can love. It doesn't cast Vincent overly flatteringly, but it is, again, rather parallel to the original Erik, who set his sights on perfection and only perfection in choosing his mate.

 

Chapter 13:

 

I particularly enjoyed the scene in which Christine managed to find and open the secret passage that Vincent uses to get from his room to hers. Her exploration and confrontation of Vincent at the other end is a reversal of roles, making her the one invading the Phantom's domain rather than him the one invading the normal world's, and emphasizing his helplessness and role of victim in this version of the story (starting with his disfigurement at the hands of another).

 

While there is quite a bit of social inappropriateness between these two, particularly when they're alone and Christine's chaperone can't stop her in a flurry of scandalized horror, Vincent redeems his gentlemanliness by realizing that he's going to end up taking advantage of the poor girl and doing his damnedest to send her away. And unlike many romance novel heroes, he does not half-ass his attempts to piss her off into leaving; in particular, the part where he sneeringly tells her that if she wants to accommodate him so badly she can go over there and lie on her back would have flummoxed and infuriated me, and I'm definitely not an innocent, sheltered Regency-era lady. She does eventually manage to flee in distress, causing me to applaud both characters; while Christine's affections for Vincent have grown too quickly for me to quite take them seriously, she's a naive enough character that I have no trouble believing in her sincerity, and I'm interested to see whether the dynamic develops into real emotion.

 

Chapter 14:

 

Damn it, Christine, stop talking out loud to yourself! You sound like a crazy person!

 

There is a fantastic passage on page 120 that shows us that Kasey is totally paying attention to the dynamics of the original Christine's choice between Raoul and Erik: "Love, to Christine, had always meant holding hands, and kissing, and thinking sweet thoughts. This feeling, this sudden warmth mixed with mounting frustration, she knew without being told, was another side of love... this was wanting." The scene is handled beautifully, as Vincent tries to control himself for her sake and she realizes that her version of love is very different from his and that she will have to deal with that eventually. Christine has, up until this point, been attempting to love Vincent in the same fond, childhood manner that the original Christine and Raoul conduct their love affair; unfortunately, just as in the original novel, her relationship with the Phantom is characterized by a more passionate, less safe kind of love. Even though we have no Raoul character, Kasey's managed to work the same conflict in all on its own, and I did a little dance of reader glee in my chair.

 

By this point, after yet more discussion of the deceased Arabella's weaknesses and what sounds like possibly dumbness, I'm no longer really inclined to think of her as the Christine character. She doesn't demonstrate the growth toward adulthood or the strength of the original character.

 

Chapter 15:

 

While all this sneaking back and forth to Vincent's room in the dead of night is definitely scandalously inappropriate, it also preserves the idea of Christine being the only one with any contact with the Phantom (since Vincent refuses to ever show himself around Nellis or the majority of the servants), and is analogous to the original Erik's periodic visits in which he brought Christine briefly down to his home.

 

Nellis, who is gossipy enough for an entire flight of ballet rats, finds out about her niece's illicit midnight visits and, well... I expected more shock out of her, really. She has to assume there's been hanky-panky (even though there hasn't), but she's just sort of like, well, I guess we'll leave now.

 

Chapter 16:

 

Vincent, having realized that moping about in his castle doesn't exactly make him the most admirable of possible mates, decides to try to regain the use of his arm in this chapter. While I really enjoy Kasey's descriptive powers--it sounds very painful and difficult, and like I would give up were I doing it--I still wonder about all these advanced physical therapy techniques that Vincent is using. I mean, physical therapy as a concept was just barely beginning to be thought about in the late nineteenth century, and ideas like using a ball to exercise a hand seem excessively modern. Vincent appears to be quite the precocious one. But I don't know that this isn't possible, and it's done well and for development of the character, so... eh, it gets a pass this time.

 

Much to Christine's distress, Nellis and Vincent collude in order to pack her off to London for her season, despite her hysterical protests that she wants to stay here with Vincent. For our Phantom character, his decision to sen her to London is analogous to Erik's decision to send Christine back to the surface world after her first underground visits with him; they are both hoping that she'll come back of her own free will, thus validating the relationship. Additionally, since the situation is a little bit different, Vincent's dismissal of Christine allows her to remain the initiator of the relationship (i.e., she will have to come back) despite his up-to-now dominant position as owner of the estate. Vincent is more emotionally mature than the original Erik in his reasoning (Erik wanted confirmation of his control over Christine and affirmation that he could be loved without forcing it, whereas Vincent is just being mature enough to say that Christine needs a shot at seeing if she likes normal life before she decides to hide away with him forever), but the effect is the same, and I find him a much richer character than I did back when he was assaulting young women in bathtubs.

 

Chapter 17:

 

Vincent gives Christine a necklace as a parting gift, which functions to take the place of the ring that the Erik gave to his Christine; the difference, of course, is that because Vincent is not insane he doesn't threaten that the world will end if she ever takes it off, but even so it's a physical token to carry the idea over.

 

By this point, I have a suspicion. I tiny, wee suspicion that I know who the Raoul character is going to be...

 

Chapter 19:

 

I was so right. Our Raoul character is none other than Fletcher, Arabella's brother--the very same man, in fact, who took a horsewhip to Vincent's face after his sister's death. He doesn't actually appear yet in this chapter, but his reputation precedes him; like the original Raoul, he is a soldier, and has a reputation for decency and kindness. I wonder if the whipping incident is analogous to the fight between Raoul and the Phantom in Webber's musical, though it would be substantially altered and changed in chronological placement if that were the case.

 

Christine's misery at her separation from Vincent is genuine, but even better, her pouty brattiness is, too. She is a childish and imperfect character, which really makes her more relatable and believable (not the original Christine's paragon of virtue role, though she's still leaps and bounds ahead of most other characters in this novel), and her comeuppance when her aunt finally won't have any more of her sulking is satisfying, especially since she realizes her errors and begins behaving better, showing that she's maturing as a character as well. Her contrition was a bit speedy for my taste--even when I'm wrong, it takes a while to get me to admit it, but then again I'm not any kind of paragon of virtue--but it all panned out well nevertheless.

 

Chapter 20:

 

There's a typo on page 173, but it looks like it probably wasn't Kasey's fault. And anyway, the text has been so gloriously free of errors (at least compared to my other romances to date) that I don't even care all that much.

 

Fletcher makes his arrival, and, naturally, he's a study in contrasts with Vincent; gorgeous, blond, tanned, and courteous. He is immediately smitten with Christine and makes a half-in-jest proposal upon their first meeting, but when she tells him sweetly that she's already in love with someone, he gallantly decides to be her dedicated friend instead. Aww. Despite the fact that there are no declarations of dramatic love going on, the fact that Fletcher and Christine then spend most of the rest of the season together and become very fond of one another indeed is obviously intended to mirror the gentle, undemanding relationship between Raoul and the original Christine.

 

Vincent, still moping about at home but now with most of the use of his arm back after a few months of grueling work, suddenly has an epiphany about how many hot guys will be in London and decides to race off after Christine in a fit of insecurity. While this made me giggle a bit at him, it's entirely in keeping with the original Phantom's possessive mood swings.

 

Chapter 21:

 

The innocent "engagement" game of the original novel is played out again here, as the entire upper echelon of London society assumes that Fletcher and Christine are betrothed. Fletcher, interestingly enough, gets some of the entitlement factor that I so often see applied to the character of Erik; because of his tragic past and the death of his sister, he gets some spillover sympathy to make him more attractive and relatable as a character, though he never quite makes it up to the level of real contender for Christine's heart (or does he? Kasey is good at this suspense thing!). Since Kasey isn't demonizing Raoul as many modern versions do, she is still confronted with the problem of making a very Victorian hero more attractive to a modern reader, and she does so handily, neatly preventing us from disliking him because he might impede Vincent's happy ending and allowing us to like him as a sympathetic character in his own right. See, other writers? Do it like this! It can be done!

 

Naturally, there's going to be a masked ball. Vincent, newly arrived in London, can't resist the chance to go spy on Christine without her knowing he's there, though he swears he just wants to see her and dance with her once and then he'll leave, honest.

 

Chapter 22:

 

I know Kasey's read Leroux, now, from her description of the death's-head mask that Vincent wears (though he doesn't go the full Red Death hog).

 

After dancing with Vincent, blissfully innocent of his identity, Christine goes off with Fletcher and he proposes again, this time sincerely and adorably. The switch in dynamics is in full effect--since Vincent was here first in Kasey's story, Fletcher is the interloper--but it's all done beautifully, with real emotion on the part of each character. Vincent's pain at Christine's apparent betrayal when she kisses Fletcher is believable, and I found it in my heart to forgive him his stalkery ways.

 

Chapter 23:

 

By far the funniest thing going on here is when Fletcher starts laughing after Christine kisses him.

 

"Good lord, I do believe I've just been insulted," Fletcher remarked wryly once the short kiss was over. "Father would be so disappointed in his son."

"Insulted?" Christine repeated in confusion...

Fletcher smiled, though his expression remained crestfallen. "That kiss, Christine, was the sort you would give your brother, or a kind elderly uncle. I've been kissed a time or two before, you see, and I've learned to recognize the difference. You really do love that other man, don't you? Even worse, you were totally unaware that I've been falling more madly, passionately in love with you each day over these last two weeks. It's enough to make a man doubt his own importance."

 

See? I love Fletcher. I don't dislike Vincent by any means, but I like Fletcher and I wish he didn't have to be sad. Can I vote a menage a trois for the ending of this novel?

 

And in case there was anyone who wasn't sold on Fletcher yet, when Christine confesses the identity of her secret love, he thinks the whole thing is cosmic justice, and not in a bitter way, either. The following scene, wherein Fletcher visits Vincent (to whom he has not spoken since his sister's death) and the two men reconcile, is amazing. Both men achieve redemption and freedom from the pain of their oppressive paths (Fletcher abandons his plan for suicide; Vincent lets go of his guilt over Arabella's death), and I can't express how emotionally well-done the scene is. I got all choked up, and that almost never happens to me, even when I'm reading books I picked up for my own enjoyment. It's fantastic. Me! Black-souled and prone to ranting about grammar, and this book is making me say "aww!" with distressing frequency!

 

And, at long last, the truth about What Happened to Arabella OMG is finally out. I mentioned before that I was terrified that this would turn out to be too minor to justify all the angst over it, but Kasey delivered. After Vincent had pressed his suit a little bit too zealously on his fiancee (though of course he didn't hurt her or anything, just got a little gropy and then left), Arabella slit her own wrists and left a note saying that she couldn't bear the idea of having sex with Vincent, so she was taking the easy way out. I narrated this to John, just to get the male perspective, and, after he closed his mouth and stopped looking horrified, he confirmed that that would very definitely fuck a guy up, pretty much forever. Fletcher's murderous rage is pretty understandable, too, since he though that his best friend had raped his sister and caused her suicide. However, Fletcher has since discovered that Arabella was in love with and pregnant by another man, and that was the actual reason for her despair. So Vincent is absolved and the man-love is apparent as they renew their friendship.

 

Chapter 25:

 

Argh! The very last chapter, and there's a comma splice and a problem with the tense! But you were doing so well! Still, I can't lose my feeling of happiness from the rest of the book.

 

This isn't great literature. It's not ground-breaking, and it doesn't surprise me all that much or make me head off on a flurry of mad analysis. But it's a fabulous read, and an example of a writer doing a great job of using the Phantom story to tell her own story without cheapening the original. Hats off to Kasey!