Helen is one of the four early contemporary novels that Georgette Heyer later tried (unsuccessfully) to repress. Her biographers note that it has a strong autobiographical element, which, as I’ll note, both explains much about her later books and is slightly alarming. And if not for the name on the cover and the assurances of these biographers that yes, this is really a product of Heyer’s typewriter, it would be difficult to believe that this is a Heyer novel. Only one sentence in the entire book sounds anything like her.
Even more unusually, it begins with the story of a child, a far cry from her usual focus on adults, or at least almost-adult teenagers. And not just the story of a child, but a story told from a child’s viewpoint—something she would never attempt again.
[World War I, London parties and...incest?]