Book 14 – Post Captain

By Patrick O’Brian

Even though Redwing beat me to it, his review was rather paltry ;-), so here’s my attempt!

I was quite looking forward to reading this, as I enjoyed Master and Commander tremendously. The 2nd installment picks up where the first book left off, and begins rather like a Jane Austen novel with Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin ensconced in the English countryside. They soon become acquainted with their neighbours -- the “feminine household” of Mapes Court. O’Brian does a wonderful job of introducing each female character. I was immediately drawn to the cynical and brilliant widow, Diana Villiers, who becomes entangled in a romantic triangle with Jack and Stephen. She says things like “Thou looks’t like Antichrist in that lewd hat” to her younger cousin.

Even though Diana believes that “there is no friendship in men”, she and Stephen strike up an unusual yet platonic relationship. “You do know I am a woman, Maturin?” Yet the harmony does not last long, as things get complicated when Jack enters the scene!

As expected, there are many humourous and lighthearted moments, like when Stephen and Jack flee to Spain in a ridiculous disguise that I won’t give away, and how Preserved Killick becomes Jack’s steward. And there is O’Brian’s brilliant writing. Whether it’s describing Jack’s internal thoughts:

Yet the surface of his mind was taken up less with his coming interview than with getting the utmost possible service from a single handkerchief and with vague darting reflections upon poverty – an old acquaintance, almost a friend – a more natural state for sea-officers than wealth – wealth very charming – should love to be rich again; but there was the loss of all those little satisfactions of contriving – the triumph of a guinea found in an old waistcoat pocket – the breathless tension over the turn of a card.

Or about Jack and Stephen’s friendship:

They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack’s opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic’d bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea-cozy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.

I can understand why fans would read all 20 books in the series. If every book contained scatterings of little gems such as these, I too would be happy to read all 20 indeed!

However, nothing is ever perfect, not even a Patrick O’Brian book.

With Post Captain at almost 500 pages, it was frankly, quite a slog at times. Master & Commander was tighter in structure and plot, and thus more consistently engaging, while Post Captain suffered from too many storylines and lack of cohesion. At times the threads were too vague or subtle for the stop-start reading or perhaps it was that certain key points got buried amidst all the male-driven action and politics, cuz I didn’t realize until much later that Jack & Diana were actually having an illicit affair!

In the end, it took me much longer to read the second installment than the first. In order to recall all the events, I found a blog which provides an amusing condensed version of what goes down in Post Captain. Another review also sums up the more critical feelings I had for the 2nd installment quite nicely.

So yes, as many flaws as there are gems, but I'd read the next installment without hesitation, though I may take a long break before I do so, as there are many other books to read!

Book 3 – Master and Commander

By Patrick O’Brian

It’s too bad this wasn’t considered a book club pick since four 50-bookers have read it this year so far, and it’s an awesome book. Perhaps it should, mmm?

Despite the common complaint from readers of the constant looking up of nautical terms that filled up the book, I didn’t mind this so much. First, I didn’t bother looking up anything at all, and I still managed to enjoy and appreciate the adventures of Captain Aubrey and his merry 80-odd member crew. Besides I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what a cunt-splice was anyway. And yet the attentive description of ships, especially the lovingly imperfect Sophie, who is like a character in herself, didn’t seem fetishistic at all!

So anyway, since Olman has read it. And June23 has read it. And last but not least, Buzby has read it -- and since we all know M & C has the action, adventure, naval politics and male-bonding that has already won die-hard fans the world over -- I thought instead of writing a standard review, lemme tell you some of my favourite little moments from Master & Commander:

• When Captain Jack Aubrey was just promoted, given charge of the Sophie and made the realization that his new life as master & commander would be a lonely one:

he was no longer one of ‘us’: he was ‘they’. Indeed, he was the immediately-present incarnation of ‘them’. In his tour of the brig he had been surrounded with deference – a respect different in kind from that accorded to a lieutenant, different in kind from that accorded to a fellow human-being: it had surrounded him like a glass bell, quite shutting him off from the ship’s company…

• When Jack was having a bad day, experiencing a non-stop “series of disappointments”, which included

Ellis’ horrible parents had not yet left the island, and he and Stephen had been obliged to undergo their hospitality – the only occasion in his life he had ever seen a half bottle of small white wine divided between four. Disappointments.

• Stephen Maturin not able to lose his frugal habits due to his period of poverty:

With intense mortification he saw that the piece of meat he had hidden at yesterday’s dinner had oozed grease through his handkerchief and his pocket. ‘How wonderfully strange,’ he thought, ‘to be upset by this trifle; yet I am upset.’ He sat down and ate his piece of meat (the eye of mutton chop)…

• Dr Maturin’s various idiosyncratic thoughts and quips about…

…older men of authority:

James Dillon was a delightful being. Now he is closing in. It is odd – will I say heart-breaking? – how cheerfulness goes: gaiety of mind, natural free-springing joy. Authority is its great enemy – the assumption of authority. I know few men over fifty that seem to me entirely human: virtually none who has long exercised authority. The senior post-captains here; Admiral Warne. Shrivelled men (shriveled in essence: not, alas, in belly).

… whether the progeny of an annoying, upper class couple will take after them:

’And having seen the parents I am impatient to see this youth, the fruit of their strangely unattractive loins: will he be a wretched mammothrept? A little corporal?…’

… Captain Aubrey and Lieutenant James Dillon (JA and JD) not quite getting along:

’But I confess that much as I love them, I could wish them both to the Devil, with their high-flown, egocentrical points of honour and their purblind spurring one another to remarkable exploits that may very well end in unnecessary death… There is a systemic flocci-nauci-nihili-pilification of all other aspects of existence that angers me… I have no patience for them. They are strangely immature for men of their age and their position: though, indeed, it is supposed that if they were not, they would not be here – the mature, the ponderate mind does not embark itself upon a man-of-war – is not to be found wandering about the face of the ocean in quest of violence.’

Finally, the many small moments of humour are harder to quantify. But I did get a very good chuckle when JA had to deal with the “infernal bore” of the report of a lowly seaman who committed the unnatural crime of sodomy on a goat. And then Stephen politely declined the offer of goat’s milk for his tea.

Capital! Just capital! A truly excellent book. And to think there are at least 20 more of them in the entire series!