I've seen this more than once compared to Gone With the Wind as the epitome of historical romance. I'm afraid I didn't find this compared well, and given the nature of the heroine, aspects of the plot, and that this was written after Gone With the Wind, I couldn't help but feel Forever Amber was heavily influenced by it.
The style is decently written omniscient, and there's a wealth of well-rendered historical detail, giving you the sights and sounds and smells of Restoration England. That's its greatest virtue. It's not an era I know well, and I found the portrait of King Charles II and his times engrossing. The book takes you from low to high, from Newgate Prison to Whitehall Palace, and though there are no explicit sex scenes, there's depiction of prostitution, adultery, unmarried pregnancy, abortion, etc that explains why this novel was notoriously "banned in Boston" and 14 states. The scenes involving the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London alone made the book worth reading. I won't soon forget the cries of "Bring out your dead." There's such a wealth of fine detail, from cuisine, dress, manners to superstitions and slang, I can well credit the claim that Winsor read hundreds of scholarly books on the period before starting the novel. It's the kind of novel that makes me want to read more on the period, and that's about the highest compliment I can pay a historical novel.
The problem for me is the titular heroine, Amber. She's to me by no means as entrancing a figure as Scarlet O'Hara. Scarlet is not kind, she's no intellectual, she's greedy and vain. But she's smart, practical and a survivor--that's not fluff between her ears. Amber on the other hand... Well, when we meet her she's only 16 years old, a country miss of no education or sophistication. But she acts in impulsive, foolish ways you know when reading will lead to disaster. Like Scarlett she's greedy for pleasure and vain--but not a lick of the sense that redeems that other character for me. I thought at the end of Part I that maybe I could put it down to Amber still being a teenager, but she never learns--especially when it comes to pursuing the man she's obsessed with, Lord Bruce Carlton.
Still, I kept reading, because this reminded me somewhat of Anya Seton's Katherine, which I wound up loving. In that novel the heroine also starts out as a callow teen, and Winsor, like Seton, is good at conjuring up her era. But unlike Katherine Swynford, Amber St Clare never grew into a character I could root for. She has her moments, and rises to near-heroism when she nurses Bruce during the Plague. At times Amber would show some disinterested kindness or her (mostly self-inflicted) problems would cause me to feel sympathy for her. But those moments would be fleeting, because Amber would soon do something so appalling, I'd go back to being disgusted at her. The most appealing characters are her victims: her lover Rex Morgan, her second husband, Samuel Dangerfield, and his daughter, Jemima, the son of her third husband, Philip Mortimer, and his wife Jean, and Bruce's wife Corinna. I also felt disappointed at the abrupt open ending, which left me going "Huh?"
I'd give this a base of five stars for the wonderful portrait of a boisterous, bawdy era, then take off a point because I can't remember the last time I've despised a protagonist more, and another half point for an unsatisfying ending. If having a likable, sympathetic main character, or at least one of some depth doesn't matter to you, and you love to be truly immersed into another place and time, revel in a sprawling, trashy read, than this novel is for you.
