Book reviews: Hornblower and My Little Book of Stolen Time

[juliet]

(More 101 things stuff: reviewing various books that were recommended to me. damerell recommended Hornblower, and invisiblechoir recommended My Little Book of Stolen Time. Both of which I read whilst mid-Pacific.)


Hornblower I greatly enjoyed; and there's something to be said for reading this sort of thing whilst on board ship. (I watched 'Master and Commander' -- based on the Patrick O'Brien books -- while I was on board, as well. There was a while where I became convinced that we were actually under sail rather than diesel...). There are stacks of books: I read an omnibus which consisted of Mr Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower, and Hornblower and the Hotspur.

Executive summary: adventure story with ships, set in the early 19th c. Hornblower himself is a curious kind of hero: we first meet him[0] getting seasick the moment he steps aboard ship, while they're still at anchor in Spithead[1]. And, indeed, he carries on being intermittently troubled by seasickness throughout. He's convinced of his own cowardice and general Bad, and seeks to counter this by deliberately behaving terribly well and playing his contributions down (in a kind of "well, I know that I'm Bad really so I shouldn't say anything about the things I actually have done"). He's all about the honour and duty and so on, in a very puritan kind of way. But one
does become kind of fond of him, in a "you big freak" fashion. As, apparently, do many of his colleagues, which is nice.

In the third book he gets married kind of by accident (because he doesn't have the nerve to extricate himself from a hasty promise, roughly). He spends a significant portion of time trying to think of nice things to write to his wife -- who he doesn't really care all that much for, apart from in an abstract sort of way -- on the grounds that he knows that that's what she
wants to hear. Then putting the whole thing away with a sigh of relief in favour of zooming round the place chasing French ships / undertaking highly dangerous nautical endeavours in order to spy on French shipyards / etc etc. Which is much more fun to read, obviously.

There's lots and lots of nautical terminology and very little of it explained[2], so, hm, probably no fun at all to read if you don't know at least a little about sailing. But they're a top read if you like boats and ships chasing each other around the ocean and shooting at each other and so forth. With a certain amount of politicking (internal and more broadly) on the side. I may well go try the library for a few more.


My Little Book of Stolen Time reminded me very heavily of those books -- dammit, I have totally lost the name. Literary Time Police, there's about three of them, all terribly self-aware and smirky. Thursday something?
Anyway: can't stand those, wasn't keen on this either. It's all just a bit too smug about its own cleverness, and too heavily (explicitly) addressed to the reader (something I'm not very keen on in general).

I found the memoir-format irritating as well. It's written as if addressed to the reader in real-time (ish), but as it's in past tense[3], that struggles against the convention that the first-person narrator is telling the story from a point after the relevant events are over. So the "weep with my sorrow!" parts really grate a bit.

Having said that, I did make my way through it successfully, and by about halfway through I was interested enough in how everything was going to pan out that I could ignore the irritating style. Which is one up on the books mentioned above, none of which I've ever managed to finish. I doubt I'd bother with another of Liz Jensen's books, though.

Comments

[damned_colonial]

I think you're thinking of Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series. Would've made a great short story, I thought.

[flick]

I really liked the Thursday Next books (although they did get a bit samey after a while), but I wasn't impressed with My Little Book of Stolen Time, either.

[aquaeri]

They made a TV show of the Hornblower stuff, with quite a piece of eye candy playing Hornblower.

[nanaya]

My Little Book of Stolen Time reminded me very heavily of those books -- dammit, I have totally lost the name. Literary Time Police, there's about three of them, all terribly self-aware and smirky. Thursday something?
Anyway: can't stand those, wasn't keen on this either. It's all just a bit too smug about its own cleverness, and too heavily (explicitly) addressed to the reader (something I'm not very keen on in general).

That is *exactly* the impression I got from flicking through a copy in a charity shop not long ago! Hence my very firmly not having read it.

Wtvjbypz

[(Anonymous)]

bNCt4q

[abi]

Thursday Next! If I had realised you didn't like those I probably would have recommended something different - I love them and also noticed the resemblance.

If it helps, all of Liz Jensen's other books (that I've read) are very different from this one.

[juliet]

Oh, OK, maybe I will give her another go, then.

No problem - it's always good to read different things anyway :) (I preferred this to Thursday Next.)

[steer.livejournal.com]

I love Hornblower. I just let the nautical terminology wash over me and just imagine it as scene setting stuff. I'm reading Master and Commander right now which has much much more of that kind of stuff in excruciating detail. There are whole pages which I just kind of read as "Stuff happens, a cannon gets fired, a minor character dies."

[juliet]

Hmm, you may be right about M&C - I like the detail so probably don't notice so much.

[steer.livejournal.com]

For me it's a book I enjoy but which has 200 words which convey nothing to me other than sail and another 100 meaning nothing other than rope.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I didn't really like Master and Commander, although it's a mistake to compare it with Hornblower merely on the basis of setting - the whole point of Hornblower was to write The Man Alone (albeit that this is less obvious from the first omnibus with the oddities of Mr Midshipman and Lieutenant) and he's a naval captain circa 1800 mostly because that would be about as Alone as he could get. Obviously, M&C is quite different.

M&C is filled with pointless detail and terminology we don't understand. One reason I enjoy the Hornblower books is that by and large (especially if read in order of publication) CSF understands that the reader doesn't know this stuff and must be led by the hand not drowned in detail; I found, even as a teenager, I could follow the sense of the action in the Hornblower books without difficulty (mind you, the maps of the battles in _The Hornblower Companion_ are fascinating).

Of course all the imitators are writing for an audience that has been more exposed to sail-era naval fiction, but even as a member of that audience, I found M&C sent me to Wikipedia every now and then.

M&C is also shockingly verbose, and sometimes forgets who the viewpoint character is and lectures us - for example, there's an early scene where Aubrey spends a paragraph musing on the different haircuts and clothes of a group of seamen, but he's a naval officer and should no more consider this remarkable than I would remark on my colleagues having a fair selection of beards!

M&C _also_ not only doesn't have a plot but leads us to suppose that one is going to develop at some point, which is quite vexing when it turns out that it's just going to noodle about randomly for the entire book.

More generally, CSF is just a much better writer. O'Brien's not _bad_, but he's not in the same league, IMAO.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Hmm... but Hornblower always seems to get himself a companion figure of some type, whether it is a faithful lieutenant, a midshipman who is struggling or the Duchess in the later ones. I'm not sure what the Hornblower order of publication actually is... I would guess the "middle" ones chronologically were first.

I'm quite a fan of CSF really. I once heard Bernard Cornwell say that when he was writing Sharpe, he went through Hornblower and highlighted which sections were character, which were action, which were scene setting and so on and copied the formula. What he didn't mention was CSF's little known novel "Death to the French" about a down to earth rifleman (when riflemen were rare) in the peninsular war.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Hornblower normally has Bush around when he's at sea - but Bush isn't in any way a confidante, and he's not in _Atropos_ or _West Indies_, and he's a different character in _The Happy Return_ because it was written first, less familiar with Hornblower than the Bush of the other books. I think only in _Flying Colours_ (and _Lieutenant_, but it's an oddity anyway) do they come close to any sort of informal relationship.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem in my mind is that I now confuse the TV series with the books -- the TV series (wisely in my opinion) melded all the companion figures together so he had the same people with him all the time making it appear that he had a small number of loyal companions rather than a larger number of more peripheral ones.

Still, great books.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Well, Bush is very loyal, and is his usual self in _Hotspur_, _A Ship of the Line_, Flying Colours_, _The Commodore_, and _Lord Hornblower_. But the two men are in no sense equals or able to have significant discussion outside their formal relationship.

I think the TV series more plays fast and loose with the nature of their relationship than with who the two men are. Kennedy is made out of whole cloth, though.

[juliet]

I've only actually read later M&C books, & I didn't find the detail stuff overwhelming; maybe he laid off it a bit later on. Or my tolerance is higher.

I don't mind the lack of plot :)

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I suspect that subsequent books would be less annoying inasmuch as I would be less likely to expect a plot. :-)

[ceb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get the impression that Patrick O'Brien had to read a 600-page nautical dictionary so by george you'll have to too. I'm not sure whether it's out of a desire to show off or to share the pain, though ;-)

[steer.livejournal.com]

You do just want to say "OK, I get it, you did some research. I'm sure you were very thorough."

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Oh thank God, someone else who doesn't like Thursday Next!

[juliet]

I cannot understand why they're so damn popular! They make me want to stab someone.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

He's the kind of author who prospers by flattering his readers' intelligence, but he's not flattering mine quite enough.

(I was pleased in spite of myself to spot the reference to The Sword in the Stone, so I can see why it works.)

[lnr]

I read some of the hornblower as a teenager, really must try find them again at some point, because I enjoyed them too.

BTW you appear to have several missing footnotes.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I will have a complete set if I ever get them back from battlekitty.