Victoria Holt: The India Fan

Drusilla Delaney, the daughter of an impoverished minister, becomes fascinated with the wealthy Framling family—especially with the son and daughter, the mysterious Fabian, and the beautiful, impetuous Lavinia. Through them, she finds herself the unlikely heir to an extraordinary bejeweled fan made of peacock feathers. But though priceless and dazzling to behold, the fan bears a curse that promises ill fortune—and even death—to whoever possesses it….

This is a weird book. Billed as a Victorian gothic romance, it is definitely nails the mood and meanderings of a Jane Eyre. The romance part…meh. Drusilla has lots of potential “suitors” but her co-dependent relationships with the Framling family make them seem less than desirable. It’s a young girl’s vision of romance…needing the excitement and mystery and disregarding comfort, stability and even compatibility.

Part of the weirdness comes from it being in first person. As a reader, that is usually a turn off for me. It’s also told in sort over reminiscent/memoir style with some passages that have the high level of detail of a diary. There are lots of musings, meanderings, and mood. Which makes for a great gothic, if you have the stomach for it.

Drusilla gets the creeps a lot, about a lot of things, that as the reader you think oooh, this is about to get good, but actually never go anywhere. Good gothics do need that sense of foreboding, but as this is told over several decades it gets a little old after a while. Like, why is this chick perpetually creeped out by some pretty innocuous or at least ordinary situations. Yes, there are less than savoury people hiding under every corner, and as a young girl understandable that she is learning to trust her instinct, but by the end of the book when she has seen some stuff, you would expect her to be a bit more cynical. Or at least a bit less wide eyed.

Most of the book is Drusilla being paired with Lavinia Framling, the beautiful, vain and vacuous foil, to essentially keep an eye on her and steer her clear of danger. Drusilla is sensible, sharp tongued and often referred to as “philosophical.” In other words, she is a pragmatist. I can relate to that, and like that she seems to know the score on a lot of levels. Well, all except for one. Fabian. Alpha, spoiled, self-righteous and I suppose kind of Byronesque?

One of the love interests, Fabian, is a total jackal pony. I get this book was written in the 80s, but towards the end of the book he is straight up a condescending piece of human garbage to Drusilla. Yet we read breathy recount after recount try to make it romantic. Although, lots of gothics have these “tragic” sort of heroes that you are supposed to be swoony over…so I guess maybe the evolution of romance and romantic readers can be unkind to the Byron Bad Boy.

I am bagging on this book, but it was definitely hard to put down. I am not sure why. In part because I wanted to figure out if the MacGuffin really was going to amount to anything. I will let those adventurous readers discover that for themselves. It also had a hypnotic, episodic, melodramatic feel, combined with gothic elements that were interesting to me.

So this was good for what it was. If anything I said seemed like a red flag for you, stay away. There was a lot of adult subject matter, in terms of affairs, children out of wedlock, and criminal activity. Some violence, including a few deaths, but they aren’t graphic. Otherwise, kisses only.

5 Stars 3.75 out of 6 Victorian gothic romance with exotic locations and limited romance