At Large by E. W. Hornung
Oct. 12th, 2019 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeThe Hornung read-through has left the Victorian period, though nothing seems to have changed greatly about the writing!
At Large (1902) is another tale of Australia, adventure and crime. It opens in the bush with our hero, Dick Edmonstone, being held up by bushrangers and robbed of all the money he has... except it turns out that the chief bushranger, whose name is Ned Sundown, surreptitiously returned the money and let Dick keep it. Years later, Dick is back in England, having turned the money which Sundown spared him into a comfortable fortune—and he finds that his former sweetheart Alice Bristo has a new friend, a mysterious Australian who claims his name is Mr Miles...
I guessed the big twist fairly quickly, but most of the really interesting plot happens afterwards. Dick, grateful to Sundown for that act of mercy all those years ago, refuses to turn him in to the authorities, but to neither Dick nor the reader is it very clear at first just how far Sundown has really reformed like he claims to have done. As the plot continues, we find that Sundown is just as much of a rogue as we might have suspected at first... or is he? Hornung is clearly fascinated by this moral ambiguity, and by the layers of conflicting dishonesty, dishonourableness and genuine good in Ned Sundown—there were quite a few moments where he reminded me of the contradictions of Raffles as a character.
Unfortunately, this is all somewhat undercut by being played out largely through an irritating romance plot. (It managed to hit two of my least favourite het tropes: 'man goes off and does interesting plot things while woman waits at home, they get back together after they reunite with no more important relationships involving those interesting plot things being explored' and 'man takes the sort of offensive liberties that make it clear he sees woman as an object to possess rather than a person to have a relationship with, but his feelings are still inexplicably treated as noble and redeeming love'. Very annoying.) I find most of Hornung's (textual) romances OK—I like her, I like him, they like each other, cool, I'm not strongly shipping it but it's fine—but both the main relationships in this book were much less likeable.
At Large (1902) is another tale of Australia, adventure and crime. It opens in the bush with our hero, Dick Edmonstone, being held up by bushrangers and robbed of all the money he has... except it turns out that the chief bushranger, whose name is Ned Sundown, surreptitiously returned the money and let Dick keep it. Years later, Dick is back in England, having turned the money which Sundown spared him into a comfortable fortune—and he finds that his former sweetheart Alice Bristo has a new friend, a mysterious Australian who claims his name is Mr Miles...
I guessed the big twist fairly quickly, but most of the really interesting plot happens afterwards. Dick, grateful to Sundown for that act of mercy all those years ago, refuses to turn him in to the authorities, but to neither Dick nor the reader is it very clear at first just how far Sundown has really reformed like he claims to have done. As the plot continues, we find that Sundown is just as much of a rogue as we might have suspected at first... or is he? Hornung is clearly fascinated by this moral ambiguity, and by the layers of conflicting dishonesty, dishonourableness and genuine good in Ned Sundown—there were quite a few moments where he reminded me of the contradictions of Raffles as a character.
Unfortunately, this is all somewhat undercut by being played out largely through an irritating romance plot. (It managed to hit two of my least favourite het tropes: 'man goes off and does interesting plot things while woman waits at home, they get back together after they reunite with no more important relationships involving those interesting plot things being explored' and 'man takes the sort of offensive liberties that make it clear he sees woman as an object to possess rather than a person to have a relationship with, but his feelings are still inexplicably treated as noble and redeeming love'. Very annoying.) I find most of Hornung's (textual) romances OK—I like her, I like him, they like each other, cool, I'm not strongly shipping it but it's fine—but both the main relationships in this book were much less likeable.
