From Rose Tremain comes the Booker Prize short-listed novel that "restored the historical novel to its rightful place of honor" (New York Times).
Robert Merivel, son of a glove maker and an aspiring physician, finds his fortunes transformed when he is given a position at the court of King Charles II. Merivel slips easily into a life of luxury and idleness, enthusiastically enjoying the women and wine of the vibrant Restoration age. But when he's called on to serve the king in an unusual role, he transgresses the one law he is forbidden to break and is brutally cast out from his newfound paradise. Thus begins Merivel's journey to self-knowledge, which will take him down into the lowest depths of seventeenth-century society.
"Really enjoyable - I have read a number of works about the English civil war, but few about the restoration, so on the purely interesting era of history rating, this was right up there. The story captures its reader effortlessly from the start, with the witty, humorous and confessional reminiscences of Merivel, one time medical student, retainer and fop in the court of Charles II. When Merivel breaks his contract with the king, having the audacity to become enamoured of his own wife, the charade, and wealth to sustain it, ends, and Merivel turns to his Quaker friend Pearce, who together with his brethren is caring for a community of the insane with as much grace and love and kindness as they can. The contrast between the mesmerising debauchery of court life and the plain, simple and difficult life of the mental asylum is absolute. Once again Merival lets physical passion corrode his honour, and when he gets an inmate with child, they are obliged to leave. That doesn't end happily either, but there is hope for Merivel, and his resumption of the medical life that he once trained for returns him to a life engaging with real people and helping where he can to make their everyday lives comfortable within the scope of his era and abilities.
Merivel loses his stature when he surrenders to the temptations of court life, and to an extent finds it again when all is lost, firstly in arriving at the asylum, and later with the devastation of the Fire of London. He is a messy man, in his habits (the detail of eggs slopped on glamourous coats at crucial moments cracks me up, but speaks of authenticity in the detail)and in the way his life unfolds, but for all that he does want a better life, a life where his pursuits and habits do not leave him feeling empty and frivolous. At the asylum, there is great discussion about what causes madness, about how there must be a time before madness, and symptoms of its onset, and how if there can be a recognition of how the condition started, then perhaps it can be reversed. There is a humanity at the asylum, despite its uglinesses and unpleasantnesses, that court disguises and perverts.
I got so much out of this story, and it is so engagingly written. Such a contrast to The road home, but both equally engrossing."
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Bronwyn (4 out of 5 stars)