Anatomy of a Romance: Questioning genre conventions in the novels of Nora Roberts

Publication year
2006
Journal
Modern Mask
Volume
1.2
Comment

Sadly, this journal is no longer online and the Internet Archive did not preserve this article. The link in the Wayback Machine (the second link I've given) only goes to an archived front page.

Fortunately I had downloaded the files to my own computer in 2007, so to preserve and share them I have uploaded them to the Internet Archive (see the first link I've given). Unfortunately they do not display there in the same way as a file in the Wayback Machine would. So I also uploaded a jpg image of a screenshot of how the page displayed. A thumbnail version of that image is at the top of the page (at the first link), and it should enlarge enough for the text to be visible if you click on it a couple of times. This will not be readable by screenreaders.

I have also uploaded a zip file which can be downloaded (from the page at the first link) which will then let you see the page as html. To get to that you'll have to scroll down past the thumbnail of the screenshot of the article until you reach a part of the page which shows a box including an option to download the zip file.

I hope that makes sense!

The article is about "Roberts’ Circle Trilogy." Here are a couple of excerpts from my own saved copy.

Roberts’s unique ability to repeatedly manipulate, five times a year, the “boy meets girl” storyline and explore the inevitable question of “what happens after?” begins to address--on the level of narrative--that repeated question of interviewers, critics, and fans: “How does she do it?”  If Dance of the Gods is to be believed, Roberts does it by crafting relatable psychological dilemmas for her characters, dilemmas that allow the continual reformulation of the genre trappings surrounding them because at their core, they maintain an essential, optimistic reality.  Viewed through the lens of the Circle Trilogy, Roberts’s success as a romance novelist is attributable to a very specific methodology: an idealism tempered by strategic realism underpins her narratives and tweaks expected plot devices in a manner that makes even a romance between a warrior and a shape shifter ring true.

 

Powered by this hopeful psychoanalytic dynamism, the trilogy’s core appeal lies in the reader’s involvement with the individual romantic plotline grounding each book despite the ostensive focus on the overarching story and mythology.  In a subtle inversion of marketing expectations, the latter are rendered comparatively tertiary.  The Circle Trilogy tempts with the promise of fantastical battles and paranormal loves. Yet, its final emphasis on character over plot guarantees that each story, particularly Dance of the Gods, operates as a fully-fledged novel despite their variable advancement of the master narrative.

and

In Roberts’s novels, readers are assured a particular kind of romantic satisfaction that—regardless of whether it plays out in the castles of another world or the streets of a modern American city—satisfies an optimistic desire for human connection.  Roberts’s unique contribution to romance lies in making everything about romance even as she makes romance about nothing; that is, she straddles a difficult line between de-romanticizing romance while maintaining the lust, humor, and emotional connections that draw characters together and provide readers with an opportunity for identification in even the most outlandish of settings.  Romance in the Circle Trilogy lies in minute details; it is human even when its frame is most decidedly not.