Opening a new shop is always hopeful and adventurous in real life, as in fiction -- I am thinking, for example, of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, where Miss Matty has to open a shop late in life, for survival reasons. In A Woman of Substance, Emma Harte starts a lucrative business career from a small pastry shop in Leeds; in real life, Helena Rubinstein's story begins in a small shop in an obscure Australian town. Though Anastasia Steele only works at Clayton's, she's not the owner, she and Christian Grey have an amazing scene in the store!!!!!!!!!
Opening a store or restaurant is thus always a key event, even in those dreadful Maeve Binchy romances. Some of you may cry, "but Maeve Binchy is one of the best-known romance writers"! I know, yet I dislike her fiction, which most of the time is quite improbable -- think of The Glass Lake. We all have to be meek, plain and plainly dressed. The sexy blonde woman is always empty (Tara Road, Circle of Friends). You know how much this makes me angry. To say that blonde, glamorous and sexy women are empty is as misogynistic as to say that plain brunettes cannot be sexy. In my fiction, I always aim to break stereotypes -- one of the ways I do it is by making the protagonist always blonde, sexy, clever and feisty!
I think the one novel I like from Maeve Binchy is Evening Class, but again that book contains the motif of the beautiful blonde who makes mistakes and does not find happiness.
To get back to my hometown boutique. They have an official opening for the new store this weekend: I can't wait! I will check it out and write all about it in The Lipstick Papers! xxx
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