Columbella by Phyllis A. Whitney ~ 1966. This edition: Doubleday, 1966. Hardcover. 246 pages.
My rating: 3/10
Oh, why did I read this? It was so disappointing. And I have had prior experience with this author – see here – and went in fully cognizant of what I was about to experience. All I can say then is that hope springs eternal. And that my hope was dashed. Oh, woe!
But don’t you like the mysterious cover illustration, and doesn’t this flyleaf blurb sound promising, for a lightly diverting romantic-suspense thriller type thing?
That was a night of gold and red, with torches flaming on the hilltop and the lights of Charlotte Amalie fanning out around the harbor below. A night of water lily and sweet-smelling cereus. The night of the shell…
Jessica Abbott, fleeing her own past, finds herself the center of a whirlpool of conflict at Hampden House, high on its cliff in the Virgin Islands. She is confronted by Catherine Drew, a woman whose sole purpose is to torment and destroy. Catherine is the wife of a vital, driven man, Kingdon Drew-toward whom Jessica is irresistible drawn. Jessica must defy the beautiful, self-indulgent Catherine, who likes to affect the name of a shell – Columbella. She must fight for the very future of another woman’s child. Above all, she must find the strength to help the man she loves escape the trap Catherine has set for him. Yet each day Catherine seems to mock her in a new way – and win. Until the night of the shell…
Always, the brilliant island sun shines over Hampden House in St. Thomas and over Caprice, the plantation in St. Croix that is crumbling to eerie ruin, guarded by its unicorns. Always the threat of a hurricane looms over this exotic setting, where the past still affects the present.
So. Our lovely heroine Jessica has just lost her own sweet-faced, soft-voiced, utterly poisonous, insidiously controlling mother, and she is seeking to escape her own demons by taking on the role of companion-governess to yet another emotionally-abused girl, the teenage daughter of an architect and the aforementioned Catherine. Jessica falls in love with the hunky, broody Kingdon at first sight, and he himself is overcome with passion for her, which he manfully tamps down until it breaks free of its straining bonds. Lots of scenes of overt jealousy (on Catherine’s part) and apparent dislike (on Kingdon’s part only, for Jessica openly fawns on her employer from the get go) before the two lovers fall into each other’s arms. But there is still that pesky wife…
The final solution is of course a convenient demise – poor Catherine-Columbella! With Kingdon as main suspect, but of course he gets off the hook, thanks to a convenient confession by the true killer, who then is dealt with by the Hand of God (tree falling in a storm, crushing said murderer) and allowing everything to Work Out For The Best.
The best bits in the book were in the details. The setting, St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, is enthusiastically described, and there are nice touches of verisimilitude in the discussion of the shell-collecting business and the preparation of the specimens for sale.
But the scenarios and the characters – wow! Can something be described as both flat and melodramatic at the same time? If so, our writer has pulled it off. And the passion between Kingdon and Jessica was blush-inducing indeed, but not because of its explicit nature. No, because it was so agonizingly clichéd. I was embarrassed at myself for willingly reading such schlock.
I want to like Phyllis Whitney so very, very much. She has such a promising back story as a writer, and she very obviously goes about her stuff with the best will in the world. She was a bestselling writer in her time, and much beloved by her devoted readers. So I may continue in my occasional investigations of her oeuvre, hoping to find a semi-precious gem or two amidst the very prolific sparkly bits of her vast body of work.
Leaves & Pages 
That cover deserved a better book from the sound of it. I tried Sea Jade a while ago, quickly gave up on it, but I’m still inclined to give the author the benefit of the doubt as she was so popular. I have The Trembling Hills in mind, as it seems to have been the only one of her books in print in the UK in recent years.
She was incredibly popular, and very prolific. She lived to the venerable age of 104, and wrote well into her old age, producing something like 70 novels. (Columbella was her 38th.) All reports of her I’ve read speak about what a lovely person she was, and how carefully she crafted her books. I’m quite sad about finding the actual novels so very dreadful. 😦 Or maybe these two, Sea Jade and Columbella, were particularly bad? They were written one after the other, in 1965 and 1966. Perhaps the author was having an off year or two? I’m going to explore a bit more before I write her off completely.
That’s one overwrought blurb. For me, the warning might have been in the following keywords:
-fleeing her past
-torment and destroy
-whirlpool of conflict
-vital, driven man
-crumbling to eerie ruin
-guarded by unicorns
Especially guarded by unicorns.
Hey, they were STONE unicorns! You know, carved ones. On the gate posts of the abandoned mansion in the sultry, exotic jungle!
Oh, never mind. You’re right. I missed a few cues. 🙂
But I wanted this one to be good. I really did! Thousands love this writer, and she worked really hard at writing these things – it shows in the research around the settings, both in this one and in Sea Jade. Such a disappointment, all those Phyllis A. Whitney novels which should be so awesome.
It was pretty dire right from the blurb onwards.
Just found Seven Tears for Apollo, which I remember reading way back when. I’m going to give this one more try. (But not tonight!)
I suspect you’re secretly loving every torrid word of these books.
(Fans herself.) 🙂
A few chapters into Seven Tears for Apollo, and I have just made my predictions on how it will all pan out.
I think:
The supposedly dead abusive husband is still alive.
He is a drug dealer.
The new romantic interest (young Englishman assisting heroine’s friend/sponsor) and the heroine will be drawn together like magnet to steel, etc.
New love will assist in demise of nasty husband, leaving field clear for true love to flourish.
Oh, and the heroine’s young daughter will be kidnapped at some point, to add even more emotional tension.
Ha!
Whitney seems to be channelling Mary Stewart in this one. It’s actually fairly promising plot-wise, compared to Sea Jade and Columbella, and the quality of the writing is better, but I dunno… I suspect it may deteriorate soon. But perhaps not. Fingers crossed!
I’ve never been able to take overly-Gothic books. I always liked her kids’ mysteries, though, like Mystery of the Haunted Pool, Mystery of the Green Cat, and Secret of Goblin Glen. I haven’t re-read them in a long time, though.
I do believe I have the Green Cat one here somewhere. Must check it out. Reading Seven Tears for Apollo now, and it seems a little less over-the-top, though things are starting to develop… 😉
I think you should read more Phyllis Whitney so you can entertain us with your reviews! The book may be terrible, but I enjoyed reading this
🙂 Thank you! And I’m happy to report that I’m now halfway or so through another Whitney, Seven Tears for Apollo, and while it is still a bit dodgy, it is miles above these other two. So far. A report shall follow, once I’ve made it through.
[…] action scenes and poorly written dialogue. It was head and shoulders better than Sea Jade and Columbella, though, hence its relatively high rating on my personal scale. I’m giving it a pass, at 5, […]
[…] Sea Jade and Columbella […]
Has Phyllis Whitney written any books in a series? I enjoy Philippa Carr’s series The Daughters of England, and I was hoping that Phyllis Whitney has done the same.
I’m not sure if Phyllis Whitney has written any series. All of the books of hers I’ve come across seem to be stand-alones. I’ve accumulated a few more which I haven’t read, in my ongoing search for books for my elderly mother. She rather enjoys the occasional Whitney, but I’m a bit “off” that writer at the moment, concentrating mostly on books from the first part of the 20th Century recently, it seems.
Ok thanks for your reply.
[…] given you so three good chances, with Seven Tears For Apollo (1963), Sea Jade (1964) and Columbella (1966), and I must say I have found you lacking. One last chance was a just-abandoned attempt to […]