Customer Reviews

The Top of the World

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It's a topsy-turvy world when one can be at the top of the world in South Africa and that's the central theme of Ethel M. Dell's romance The Top of the World. The book appears to be a simple romance (girl pines over boy and finally gets boy) and goes as far as to have a giant heart on its cover. It is anything but a simple romance (at least of the sort that were popular at the turn of the last century). It could be described as a proto-bodice ripper. The bodice ripper is mostly an invention of the 1970s but this romance has all the trappings of one (minus the pink and suggestively illustrated cover).

The novel dances a fine line along a number of more conventional plot lines but whenever the heroine (Sylvia) should do the obvious thing, she does something completely unexpected. Does she stay at home to pine over her lost love? No! She goes after him. Does she go home when she can't find her lost love? No. She takes a marriage of convenience. Does she honor and obey her new husband? Decidedly no!

Curious to see how much an aberrationThe Top of the World is for this era of book (it was published in 1920) I did a search on the author, Ethel M. Dell. According to Wikipedia she had a hard time getting published because her first book (like all the others, I suspect) was so unconventional (especially for a female author). She did finally find a publisher and once it sold, she made quite a career from writing. She was eventually able to support herself and her husband on the money she made from writing (some £30,000 a year).

When I started this novel, I found it more enjoyable than the other two Ethel May Dell novels I had read (The way of an Eagle and The Lamp on the Desert). Sylvia, the heroin, has a refreshing take-charge attitude and will not submit to the will of her father, her step-mother or her husband.

However, the many racists comments of the author quickly turned me off. Unlike in The Lamp on the Desert, where some indian servants are described in a positive view, the Kaffir (as Mrs Dell calls them) are all written as lazy, monkey-like, rolling their eyes, their speech barely human etc. I found it really offensive and for that reason, would not recommend this novel.

This book ended very predictably. No surprises there. I enjoyed it mainly because it was about South Africa, and I am always interested in stories about Africa. The descriptions of the area were fairly well done, but the characters were very one-dimensional, not realistic at all as far as their behavior and reactions went. I would have enjoyed it more if the character of the villain (who must have been some kind of hypnotist, the way he was able to bend people to his will and get them hooked on drugs) would have been developed more. You really had to read between the lines as to what his power over people was. Evidently everyone was very weak-willed and weak-minded to allow him to drag them down the way he did. The heroine was very preachy, self-suffering and goody two-shoes. Not impressed with her at all. All in all, not a BAD book, but certainly not great in any way.