During and after WWI, Jane Austen’s novels were apparently prescribed to convalescing soldiers, on the grounds that “nothing really happens” in them and therefore they would be unlikely to excite shattered nerves. Georgette Heyer ascribed the success of her novels to the fact that they are About Nothing. Ideal for whiling away an air-raid or while recovering from the ‘flu, but emphatically Not Serious Literature.

I take issue with the idea that both Austen and Heyer wrote Novels About Nothing: after all, if relationships and/or the idea of finding love were Nothing, their novels would have ceased selling years ago. Austen may be assisted by relatively frequent screen adaptations and now being part of the Literary Canon, but Heyer has no such advertisements. Hers simply sell.

Not bad for Novels About Nothing.

And no, generally, Heyer probably isn’t Serious Literature. She’s far too funny for that. So, really, is Austen. As Mr Bennet of Longbourne said “What do we live for, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?”

Quite honestly, in these dark days, something to laugh at is welcome, even if it is Only Fiction.
At the moment I’m reading the ever-delightful False Colours, which has identical twins (Kit and Evelyn, with Evelyn currently missing), a proposed marriage for Evelyn, a formidable Dowager for said missing twin to impress regarding the marriage (but how can he, when he’s missing?), and a growing romance between the remaining twin and the prospective bride of his missing brother.
The cast of characters is completed by a wonderfully flighty mother to the twins, a gluttonous suitor, a tedious aunt, uncle and cousin, and various known-them-since-birth personal servants who give poor sober Kit a hard time about not wanting to “rescue” Evelyn by impersonating him. Kit is normally a discreet diplomat in Vienna; Evelyn, his elder, an Earl who wants to marry to break a Trust.

There’s a wonderful scene where Kit is ambushed by the mother of Evelyn’s most recent light o’ love, claiming her poor daughter to be devastated by the news of Evelyn’s approaching nuptials. Kit, not unnaturally, knows nothing of this. Not that he can say that, not while he’s still being Evelyn. I haven’t got there yet, in my reread, but I look forward to it.