The way you said bella, it's made me think to change my name. I will be Isabel Bilton no more. 'Belle' seems a better one for me. Belle Bilton. Belle! What do you think?
Miss Isabel “Belle” Maude Penrice Bilton certainly seems to have led an interesting life – and author Nuala O'Connor did well to resurrect a woman whose name appears forgotten outside her final residence in Galway – but despite good authorial intentions and some truly remarkable biographical information, I don't think that O'Connor was completely successful in breathing life into Becoming Belle. This might have more appeal for another reader, but as romantic historical fiction isn't really my bailiwick, this was just okay for me. (Note: I read an ARC and quotes may not be in their final forms.)
Oh, Isabel is not for literary pursuits. She prefers to live her story.In a nutshell: Raised in a stifling garrison town by a doting military father and an abusive (erstwhile actress) mother, a young Isabel Bilton headed for London in 1887 in order to pursue a life on the stage. Finding immediate success, she sent for her younger sister, Flo, to join her, and together, they became the famed and feted Bilton Sisters act. Perhaps naive, or perhaps a true rebel, Isabel (soon known professionally as “Belle”) embraced the emergent Bohemian lifestyle in London's Theatre District – eating and drinking 'til the wee hours at extravagant clubs with enamoured suitors – and although she savoured the appearance of her name in the gossip columns, when Belle became embroiled in some personal scandals, those same tabloids turned against her. Eventually finding herself the defendant in a lawsuit, what justice could Belle expect from a jury of men with Victorian sensibilities who had been tainted by her own pursuit of notoriety?
Becoming Belle follows Isabel Bilton for the four years of her stage career (between her arrival in London in 1887 and her departure in 1891), and despite the story being told from her own point-of-view (and the addition of memories from her childhood), I never felt I had any idea who this character was (and by extension, I understood the other characters even less). Belle and Flo sometimes speak in rhyming Cockney slang, and sometimes they use jarringly multisyllabic words (which seemed extra odd coming from a woman like Isabel who notedly refuses to read books), and despite being two unchaperoned young women who have moved far away from their family, there's no mention of correspondence or visits between the daughters and their parents until late in the story. A second visit from their mother encapsulates what I ultimately found to be this book's biggest failing: After Ma Bilton shows up to Belle's trial and they have a brief and stiff conversation, the daughter is left thinking, “She's still a horrible old person, but I guess she did give me some good advice.” This book is stuffed full of self-contradictory passages – I think this, but maybe not; I want to do this, but I guess I won't – and overwritten in flowery prose, I found it all pretty wishy-washy:
The June air in London always hummed with heat and promise. Summer was already underway but, Belle thought, June was the month of highest possibility – anything might happen during the endless days when the song sparrow chimed his alleluia from every eave. The window-box roses of Oxford Street were shedding their puce gowns and they lay like a carpet under Belle's feet as she walked towards Piccadilly. She wanted to stoop, grab the petals and throw them like confetti to celebrate their triumph over smuts and everyday pestilence. But there were too many passersby and what would they make of her petal tossing? Instead, she toed the fallen flowers with light kicks and watched them flutter before her.I did think that the narrative picked up when it got to the trial – and especially since the author seems to have had the court transcripts to refer to – but again, the writing (and self-contradictions within passages) didn't much work for me:
Judge Hannen sat and waited for absolute silence before he embarked on his summing-up. He put Belle in mind of the brown bear at the zoological gardens. In truth, he had no ursine qualities, but the quizzical way he lifted his head to study people reminded her of Hector, the bun-scoffing bear. The animal watched patiently and swung its head from side to side, when he thought more goodies might come to his waiting mouth. Judge Hannen was watchful in a similar way, but his movements were subtler than Hector's. He was quietly fearsome like the bear, though not as contained, for his pit was the bench and his zoo the courtroom.If O'Connor's research is to be trusted, Belle Bilton was a woman of great passion, and this led to some weirdly graphic sex scenes and some scenes I just found weirdly unsexy (They kissed and it was the most natural thing, to feel William's tongue hot and swollen in her mouth. Tears slipped from her eyes and mingled with their spit; they laughed and cried.) And I note “if the research is to be trusted” because in the Author's Note at the end, O'Connor admits to taking some rather large liberties with the truth of some of her characters; which made me wonder, “Was Belle's mother really the harridan she's made out to be? Was Belle herself sometimes unfeeling in the ways depicted?” Again, I appreciate O'Connor's motives in bringing Belle back into the spotlight, but if I don't feel as though I really got to know her, and as I can't be certain that I can trust the biographical detail, this comes across as little more than a rather unremarkable work of fiction.
