CarolAnn and I took a road trip this past weekend and, as usual, we relaxed on the four hour drive to Smithville, Texas and the four hour drive back by listening to an audio book from her collection.
This particular novel is called Tears of the Moon. It’s a Nora Roberts romance, the second in her Irish Trilogy.
This is not at all the type of literary fare I would normally choose to read for my own pleasure but keeping company with the lovely-and-feisty CarolAnn Conley-Williams is all the pleasure I need for a long Sunday, so Nora Roberts it was.
It’s actually a pretty compelling story of an Irish family of sisters, another family of siblings that owns a pub and one of those siblings who is also a terrific cook, a fair to middlin’ songwriter and a spectacularly hot hunk of a man.
That’s right, he’s a just-the-perfect-age young, yet wisely experienced man who can cook, compose and sing a love song before sweeping a fiery Irish woman off her feet and turning her into a downy soft lump of glistening satisfaction.
Talk about blarney.
But, the narrator delivers a wonderful Irish accent in her characterizations and the lilting song of Gaelic heritage is music to me ears.
Ye can practically hear the pipes, the pipes a-callin’.
Still, we’ve got the physical romance problem to deal with. Okay, I’ll spell it out:
S-E-X.
Though it takes awhile to develop, when Brenna O’Toole, our heroine lass, finally hooks up with hunky sibling cook/musician, Shawn Gallagher, they’ll have no foolin’ about it. They get down to a bit o’ rough and tumble in excruciating detail.
Look, I’m a 62 year old man. I’ve been married twice and did a wee bit o’ skirt chasin’ in my younger days. I understand that romance — the physical aspect of it — is an important part of life and, therefore, of modern literature. But, faith and begorrah! ‘Tis no spectator sport and I’d just as soon not hear vivid descriptions of two fine specimens of entwined humanity heaving, sweating, writhing, quivering and panting!
I admit that the writer in me took some detached fascination with Nora Roberts’ profound command of carnal verbs and adjectives but a very small smattering of that goes a very long way with me. Just tell me that they kissed and then begin the next paragraph, “When they awoke the next morning…”
If that’s all you say I promise, I’ll get the drift.
CarolAnn and I have been married for nearly 26 years and we’re both a little prudish, I guess. She admitted as much to me after we got home and sat down in our family room, in separate recliners, to continue listening to the story anyway.
I could just turn my back on Nora Roberts’ rollicking tale of lust in the clover I suppose, but honestly, I’d kind of like to know how the story ends. I guess I’ll just hope the rest of the book and its sequel are a bit less spicy.
But I won’t wager a farthing on it.