Miss Cayley's Adventures
The story of an intelligent, independent young British woman who sets out around the world in search of adventure. She finds plenty as she trips-up con-men, outsmarts Arabs, kills a tiger and, of course, saves the man she loves. Allen is a great writer so it's not nearly as trite as it may sound. It has humor and a couple of stinging barbs at the condescending attitude that was no doubt prevalent in those heady days of Victoria's global empire.
ake faces over it. What's your name, young woman?"
"Lois Cayley."
"Lois! What a name! I never heard of any Lois in my life before, except Timothy's grandmother. You're not anybody's grandmother, are you?"
"Not to my knowledge," I answered, gravely.
She burst out laughing again.
"Well, you'll do, I think," she said, catching my arm. "That big mill down yonder hasn't ground the originality altogether out of you. I adore originality. It was clever of you to catch at the suggestion of this arrangement. Lois Cayley, you say; any relation of a madcap Captain Cayley whom I used once to know, in the Forty-second Highlanders?"
"His daughter," I answered, flushing, for I was proud of my father.
"Ha! I remember; he died, poor fellow; he was a good soldier--and his"--I felt she was going to say "his fool of a widow," but a glance from me quelled her--"his widow went and married that good-looking scapegrace, Jack Watts-Morgan. Never marry a man, my dear, w
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This book is a hoot. It is well-written, and its characters feel quite real, as do the situations they get themselves into -- and out of. And a lot of the latter goes on.
Allen has taken the form heroic epic and turned it around, twice. First by making it modern, second by making the hero a heroine, and a mighty feisty one at that. But he retains the geographic wandering, episodic structure, clearly-defined good and bad, and an invincible and nearly infallible protagonist.
The heroine is worthy of note, and respect. Rarely at a loss for what to do or say, Miss Cayley is perhaps at her best turning aside potential suitors and taming tough old ladies. Everything that happens is more or less realistic. That is, until she comes home to save her beloved from the clutches of evil-doers, making for a happily ever after.
I had to laugh at Allen's rendering of colloquial American speech, which he seems to concocted out of 50% Mark Twain (Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer) and 50% "How to Make Money." It's all good fun, though, in the end, just like this book.
How original! Stunning, actually, for the time. The heroine reminds me quite a bit of famed fictional Egyptologist Amelia Peabody (current series by Elizabeth Peters). Lois Cayley is proof against any number of dastardly villains (like Peabody, but whereas Peabody needs to be duly equipped with her ubiquitous umbrella, Lois has no weaponry at all besides her very sharp wits). Lois is such a strong role model that I wondered all of the time that I was reading the book if societally repressed young girls kept her adventures under their pillows to be read in secret? I wouldn't be the least bit suprised! An amazing bit of independent womanhood from a time when woman were considered as nothing more than bubble-headed children...and written by a man! Enjoy!
