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    Black Silk
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    Black Silk
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    Black Silk
    Ebook501 pages7 hours

    Black Silk

    By Judith Ivory

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    As befitting her name, lovely Submit Channing-Downes was the proper, obedient wife of an aging Marquess--until her husband′s death left her penniless and alone...with one final obligation to fulfill. Entrusted with delivering a small black box to its rightful owner, she calls upon Graham Wessit, the notorious Earl of Netham, whose life has been marred by rumor and scandal. But Graham wants nothing to do with her gift. Fate however, has entwined these two lives in astonishing ways neither Submit nor Graham could ever imagine.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 17, 2009
    ISBN9780061834202
    Unavailable
    Black Silk
    Author

    Judith Ivory

    Judith Ivory's work has won many honors, including the Romance Writers of America's RITA and Top Ten Favorite Books of the Year awards and Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award.

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    Reviews for Black Silk

    3.5/5

    98 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Writing is too dense and detailed for me. Slow going. DNF.
    • 2/5
      I don't think I made it even quarter way. Couldn't seem to get involved or interested. I ended up focusing more on the writer's extensive vocabulary but the way the book was written felt ... overdone and yet bland. I've read books before that have a certain blandness intertwined with something that keeps the pages turning but for me this book was not it.
    • 4/5
      My review is really 3.5. I agree with the review by theshadowknows_1. Well written review. I would just say this is less like a romance and reminds me of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd or Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. The romance was not satisfying but the story was well told and interesting. I found Submit to be selfish- justifiable in that society given the strictures and expectations for women at the time. When it came to love I feel like Graham was willing to give more but he wasn't really getting much back. All the same- interesting story.
    • 3/5
      The hero: an earl with a reputation so terrible that it obscures the real man and builds on itself independently of his actions. The heroine: the widow of the hero's ex-guardian, a man 43 years older than herself. The dead ex-guardian has disinherited his illegitimate son in favour of his young wife. The illegitimate son sues to overturn the will. The hero is madly attracted to the heroine, who resists. Will they end up together?Everyone is a mixture of good and bad. Motives are mixed, murky, and sometimes invisible to the characters. As the story proceeds the earl starts to distance himself from his reputation, while the widow begins to question the values of her dead husband.I quite liked this once I accepted the fogginess of it all. The hero behaves badly, so does the heroine and as for the guardian/dead husband!
    • 3/5
      Could not get into the book, it was a bit disjointed and just not exciting. I read one other of her books but this one was not a keeper.
    • 4/5
      An uncomfortable read, but the writing was excellent.
    • 3/5
      An interesting study in identity and reputation. However, I was irritated by the relationship between the hero and his married mistress. Moral considerations aside, I couldn't really see why they stayed together as long as they did.
    • 5/5
      Judith Ivory offers here what seem to me a pair of very original characters that allow her to deftly play with many of the conventions of genre and romance, unraveling fictions within fictions that are interesting to tease out. It is mostly for this reason that I liked the book. Such metatextual convolutions come about partly through the heroine, Submit's own foray into authorship, and the hero Graham's grappling with invented identities in his search for something genuinely himself - he's a celebrity in this Victorian society, a renowned "rake" plagued by the stereotype and his wild past. He's been brought into the public eye through, among other venues, the stage, the law courts, and the pages of magazine serials. Submit, though practically Graham's opposite in her absence from society, is also something of a creation herself, having been married at a young and malleable age to a much older man, an academian who was as much mentor as husband. She's widowed at the outset of the book, and her husband remains a shadowy, ambiguous figure forever a forceful, sometimes disturbing presence in the narrative, haunting both hero and heroine in their numerous, sparring encounters. Graham is also involved with his mistress at the outset - a colorful character who's so much more than "the other woman." I thought she was one of the most interesting, sympathetic aspects of the book, and really got the short end of the stick. I couldn't help thinking, a bit uncharitably, that Graham wasn't good enough for her anyway. As for the main characters themselves, they are human in the fullest sense of the word - flaws and all. I didn't necessarily *like* either of them, but for the purposes of enjoying the story, I don't think that really mattered, as strange as it sounds. They are both drawn with such depth that their developments and struggles are fascinating to follow (though Graham and his personal growth is more the focus than Submit's.) I was kind of angry at one plot contrivance at the end - it made me almost hate Submit and question whether either of them had really worked free of the forces shaping and manipulating them in their search for self-determination, with love as the reward. (But then again, maybe Ivory wanted to eschew such a pat ending?) Despite this qualm, I'd say Black Silk is a very well written romance. Judith Ivory has delivered another complex, compelling story that leaves me thinking long after I've read it. It's a different kind of romance, but don't let this deviation from formula deter you. This was a very rewarding read, and I only wish the ending had been a little different.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      It's hard to review this book. I know it's amazing, but I'm at a loss to explain why I know that.

      I guess it's because of the characters. The plot is kinda humdrum - Submit Channing-Downes's husband just died and his will tasks her with delivering a small black box to his wayward cousin, the notorious earl of Netham, Graham Wessit. Her husband's will is also being contested by a vindictive illegitimate son who resents how little he was left, leaving her penniless and homeless. Submit and Graham then run into each other, first to deliver the box, then at the inn she stays at and finally at a house party at Graham's country estate.

      The two form a tenuous friendship and romance eventually follows, completely unbidden. After all, Submit is recently widowed from a husband she loved dearly and Graham is currently involved with a married American woman.

      But it's getting to know the characters that makes the book worthwhile. Both are rich, flawed, seemingly real people. I enjoyed seeing how Graham both was and wasn't the degenerate rake everyone assumes he is. Yes, he's done all manner of risque things - posed for x-rated illustrations, kept an upstairs maid as a mistress, is involved with a married woman - but we spend the entire book seeing more and more of the whole picture, until his decisions begin to look entirely rational. He wasn't just a stock Earl of Slut, indiscriminately screwing his way through society, nor was he at all a good boy. He was just a lonely, unhappy man trying to do what was fun.

      As for Submit, she initially comes off as a bit of a stuffy bluestocking. And, well, she is. But she's also irreverent, honest and passionate. She's a worthy adversary and companion for the undisciplined Graham. Where he indulges too much, she reins him in, and vice versa. While nearly opposite, they seem to realize they crave what it is that the other has in abundance. Watching them dance around each other, and grow as people while doing it, was just fascinating.

      This is my first Judith Ivory book, and it's definitely not going to be my last.