This pretty much summed up the entire book for me. Liked Christian, loathed Maddy.

Fabulous review…so in-depth and you addressed a lot of the book’s central problems! I think it’s a real tragedy that Kinsale chose to stick the hero with such a dour, joyless heroine with a limited capacity for understanding anything non-Quaker.

I’ve heard that many Kinsale fans who don’t like FFtS often like The Shadow and the Star—which does have humor.

I think one of the things that astounded me with FFtS is the I have never felt the hero in a romance novel to be in such danger.

Cool review site, btw.

Maddy’s Quakerness grew tired, but I understood her. But I was upset at Kinsale making it seem as though there were no “grey” areas in religion. I found it unbelievable that Maddy would give up her beliefs, something that has shaped and molded her personality whether for the good or the bad, at the drop of a hat. I would have found the ending much more satisfying had Maddy been able to reconcile her belief in God with being able to live her life instead of Quakerism being seen as a noose. (And I do agree that perhaps Kinsale mistook Puritanism for Quakerism.)

As for me, hile Kinsale can write like a goddess, I did not buy the relationship between Maddy and Christian, making the romance a failure for me.

I hate religious fanatic-types anyway, but guh! How irritating!

Umm, assuming that this is in the early 19th century I’m not sure it was *legal* for anyone who was not Church of England to hold a math chair at a University, any more than it was for a Quaker to stand for parliament. University Test Acts and such.

That’s why all the famous Quakers in Britain before about 1832 are Industrialists, Merchants, Bankers and the like.

The are also a few people in fields like politics who seem have flown under a flag of convenience by being officially C. of E. but actually attend Quaker meetings instead of going to church.

So it wouldn’t be that Quakers shunned the world, it’s that Quakers and other Nonconformists, being mostly a bunch of radical reform liberals at the progressive end of the Whig party — variously agitating against slavery, the corn laws, and for women’s rights, and prison (cf Elizabeth Fry), electoral and other reforms — with a lot of money and influence outside parliament, and the wrong religion, would be ‘not at all respectable’ to mainstream opinion.

Trying to think how to put this in contempary US terms (difficult because I’m an Englishman living Scotland). Okay, a large number of mini-Bill Gates’s, and their families, friends and associates, who employ lots of people across the nation, but are also prominent and outspoken atheists — therefore both scarily religiously different, and completely unelectable to any public office — with political views somewhere to the left of Michael Moore.

Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book, and am not Quaker, but did attend society of friends meetings with my mother for about a year when I was 10. However, mostly I remember feeding the tortoise that lived in the grounds of the meeting house with dandelions

Flowers was a superbly executed book but with a heroine who made it an unpleassant read. Had Maddy’s quakerism been toned down a bit or even just allowed her to compromise, it would have been a more enjoyable romance. As it was you feel pity for the hero that he gets stuck with such a horrible sour woman, who looks on him as a duty and isn’t too pleased that she loved him or that he reciprocates her love.

Wendy, I thought a lot about putting it down, but I persevered. I don’t like not finishing something once I start it. I’m almost OCD about it.

Especially when it came to Maddy — or, should I say, Maddy’s Quakerism. I went to a Quaker-run school during my teenage years, complete with daily Meetings for Worship, and a more accepting, open-minded, peaceful religion I don’t think EXISTS today. (Though I admit to knowing bupkis about Buddhism.) Now, for all I know, there have been a lot of changes in doctrine over past centuries, but… damn. Kinsdale is a master scribbler, but I have to wonder if she didn’t fudge around with her religious sects when writing this. FFtS seems to think “Puritain” and “Quaker” are somewhat interchangable, which so wrong in so many ways, I don’t even know where to begin.