The Honey Is Bitter

• Author: Violet Winspear
• Publisher: Harlequin Presents #6
• Year: 1973
• Setting:
• Amazon Listing: The Honey Is Bitter - out of print

Reader Comments

This book is a stunning revelation to any aspiring writer or romance reader. The young girl Domini is a beautiful waif whose family is torn asunder by tragedy. Her fragile family patriarch "guardy" brings a swarthy Greek foreigner to the family home to talk business, and Domini plays the English rose with thorns. She waits for the old man's son Rhodri to return from foreign service and make her whole again.

But the intimidating man Paul Stephanos has other plans. His tough shipowner persona hides many scars. He corners Domini and givers her a brutal choice. She must marry him and go away to his Greek island, or let him bring charges against Rhodri for forged checks. The book opens with the curious marriage and her Guardian kissing her goodbye. Domini is brittle and unsettled at marrying this intimidating man.

Before they leave for the honeymoon, Domini sneaks away to meet Rhodri newly returned from abroad. Rhodri is shocked but vows to find some way they can be together. Domino is bitterly disillusioned, she now knows Rhodri is a child whose love has cost her her freedom. Rhodri has forged several checks against Paul's company. Paul threatens to expose Rhodri unless she comes away. It's her guardian's pride in Rhodri Domini is really marrying to save.

Paul Stephanos is fleshed out as a hard man whose family depends on him. They eye Domini with rueful awareness of attraction of this wealthy man for the impossible English flower. Despite the frigid temperature, Domini relaxes just enough. A new beginning is possible. Stephanos dutifully burns the checks when they arrive in Greece, but Rhodri's telegram about their having met on the wedding day inflames him with anger.

Domini is paraded as the new bride to family and society friends, whose worldliness is a breath of unwelcome air to homebody Domini. Domini taunts Paul with reminescences about her idyllic romance with Rhodri. Stephanos clan society tests Domini's acting ability. Paul taunts her with an inner knowledge of what kind of man Rhodri is, hiding behind old men and girls to get clear of his deeds. Stephanos family problems interfere when the tension becomes to thick to take.

Paul's niece Kara has a crush on Mikos, an older boy. There is also an itinerant painter who lives on the island shore. Domini is quick to realize this is Barry Sothern, a man she knew in Wales. Barry wanted Domini but his career as a painter came first. Domini becomes the object of a competition between Paul and Barry, because Barry has known Domini and a genuinely happy woman and knows Paul's pride will not allow her to parad her sorrows to his family. But a married Domini is a match for the established painter Barry has become.

Barry incites a confrontation when he gives Paul a painting. The painting is a Trojan Horse, because the men have discussed the painting before Domino was a presence in the Greek island world. Here is another man standing between them. Paul awakens to the fact that despite his pride and wealth Domini can never feel the way a wife should and will become demoralised and tainted if he makes her stay in the marriage.

Paul is proud but has another battle to face. His metal fragment from his guerrilla war days has shifted due to a diving accident and he faces a critical surgical operation. Domini is not happy and he grimly faces a mortal procedure conscious that Domini doesn't really want him to make it. Between them is the late knowledge that Domini finds out; her Guardian Uncle and Rhodri talked the day after she flew to Greece and he knew everything and wanted her to return home. Paul ripped up the telegram and didn't tell her.

Paul Stephanos is a great romantic hero because he grabs hold of Domini and never lets go. He knows deep down any stratagem would have been utilized to bring Domini home as his wife. Stephanos comes through the surgery as the family watches gingerly what will happen. They haven't been fooled, Paul is not blissfully married by any standard. Will Domini choose a life of wealth, life with Barry, or return home to her ivory tower?

Paul is blind in one eye or worse, and gives Domini permission to go back to the U.K. But Domini by now has fallen under the spell of this tough man, or maybe she just has decided that out of the boy and the dreamer, the cynical soldier is the one she wants. Paul is a realist, and has been fighting for them and a chance to be together the whole story through. The book ends with a pregnant Domini reveling in the security of a happy marriage.

This novel is unsettling because it has Freudian asterisks all over it. Domini's romanticism serves her poorly, first infantilizing her with Paul and holding her "prisoner" to nonexistent bonds with both Rhodri and Barry. Both those men stand on the outside of Domini's orbit, only Paul breaks the glass. Domini trades a secure family home and network where she is the princess for the...same thing abroad.

Winspear employs the lost love scenario which often blocks the path of married love in her more sensual novels. Paul Stephanos isn't the man of most of our dreams, but he is the man of Domini's eventual dreams and that is what matters. There is also a severe class consciousness debated about whether Domini would have eventually gone to the highest bidder anyway.

The Barry Sothern character is one of Winspear's best because his romance never becomes resolved in any of the books. He is the window into the action of the books while not participating in the key pairing that makes the book work. The Honey is Bitter is one of Winspear's best because the hero doesn't dissolve into a namby pamby at the end, he's kind of a John Wayne type who gets the girl after a big fight. Ah, romance.

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