Rosie's Riveters: Zibilee & Amber St. Clair

Rosie's Riveters is a weekly posting written by Booklust readers about riveting females in literature. Many readers have strong reactions to the women in the books they read- either very positive or very negative. These are the characters we find riveting, for good reasons or bad ones, and they form the population of Rosie's Riveters. Through this weekly post, we can discuss females we love to hate, or love to love. And maybe, just maybe- we can determine why we react so strongly to them. If you are interested in participating, please comment on this post or e-mail me and I'll add you to the line-up! This week's (tardy- sorry!) posting is by Zibilee at Raging Bibliomania. Zibilee is a wonderfully industrious blog commenter and writer, and she always writes very thoughtful and lucid reviews on the books she reads. I really enjoy her blog and and you should check it out!


Who is your Riveter?
Amber St. Clare.

What book does she feature in?
Forever Amber, a historical romance novel by Kathleen Winsor.

Do you love her or hate her?
I absolutely loathed her!

Describe her personality- how would you describe her to a friend?
Amber is a schemer and manipulator, and never stops trying to get what she wants. And what she wants most is a man. Though she has many relationships, she never ceases in trying to become the wife of Bruce Carlton. He is of course ineligible, being engaged to another, but Amber thinks nothing of taking him into her bed and trying to make a more permanent connection with him. She goes to extreme lengths to snare her prey, and though he constantly lets her know that they will never be married, she will not relent in her pursuit.

Can you compare her to a celebrity?
Not really. I haven't yet come across a celebrity devious enough to outdo Amber.

What makes her riveting?
What makes her riveting to me is her stellar ability to plot while making it look like she is not plotting at all. Her determined nature is also pretty interesting. She doesn't seem to operate on the same wavelength as the people around her, and goes after what she wants with a determination that far overshadows her counterparts.

What do you most admire/despise about her?
I think I most despised her gall. She just kept maneuvering herself into situations that would suit her purposes, not bothering to hide the fact that she was intruding on a budding relationship, or that the man she was chasing had no desire to be in a relationship with her. In fact, at the very end of the book, just when you think she finally understands that she's been beaten, she turns the tables one last time and shamelessly sets off on another course of pursuit. Like a dog with a bone, she just never lets go. I also disliked the way she used her wiles to climb her way up the social ladder of England, both sleeping with and marrying successively richer and more successful men. While waiting for Bruce all those years, she carefully moved through society, mostly on her back.

Would you recommend reading the book in which the Riveter features?
Absolutely! I would recommend Forever Amber to anyone who wants to get into the mind of an infuriating and unforgettable character like Amber.

Do you have a quote by your Riveter that you'd like to share?
This quote is not from my riveter, rather, about her:

"When she blundered into Lord Buckhurst and he suggested that they find some private room she went with him, as much to get away where she could not be seen as for anything else. But she stayed away for more than two hours and got a morbid kind of satisfaction from thinking that Bruce would probably know what she was about. She had been lucklessly trying for nine years to arouse his jealousy, but still she was not convinced it would never be possible."