"Mr Rowl" by D. K. Broster
Jul. 27th, 2020 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeWe're no longer following D. K. Broster's chronological progression through post-Revolutionary French Royalist history: this book is set in 1813, slightly before The Wounded Name, it takes place entirely in England and, very unusually for Broster, the French hero is not a Royalist, but a loyal officer in the army of Napoleon.
"Mr Rowl" (1924) is Broster's fourth solo novel. The Napoleonic wars are still in progress, and Captain Raoul des Sablières, our hero, is a French prisoner of war on parole in England—the title is the clumsy Anglicisation by which he's known amongst his new neighbours, hence the inverted commas. The book opens with a lovely peaceful Regency drawing-room scene, in which Raoul sings for the company and talks literature with a most charming and independent-minded young lady named Juliana Forrest. But then, due to a set of circumstances not unconnected with the lovely Juliana, Raoul is accused of breaking his parole... from here, the plot is a succession of unfortunate coincidences and things happening at exactly the wrong time; Raoul goes through many trying adventures, and meets a variety of interesting characters along the way, while Juliana works tirelessly to try and save him from his fate.
What I really liked about this book was how much fun it is. It's not that the stakes aren't high—Raoul is plausibly threatened with execution at one point, and nearly dies several times later on—but the general mood feels light-hearted in a way that many of Broster's other stories don't. There's a good-natured humour to the narrative, and a feeling all along that most of the characters are good at heart and that things will work out for the best. The whimsical chapter titles, much like those in Sir Isumbras, certainly help. The structure of the plot, with Raoul passing through a series of different places and scenes and meeting new groups of characters in each one, contributes to this—he makes new friends and sees the good in lots of different people, albeit there's plenty of bad there sometimes. Despite the stakes, there are still opportunities in the plot for wacky hijinks—the bit where Broster tricks the reader about a disguised character's real identity twice in a row is especially memorable! I think Broster was really developing as a writer at this point—she's established the sort of tropes and plot beats that she likes, and her prose style is particularly good in this book, with so many of those perfectly constructed subtle turns of phrase that she's so great at. Honestly, as a writer, I am thoroughly jealous of her ability to put together a sentence.
The main characters make the centre of the book's happy mood. Raoul himself is just loveable—his goodness and sense of humour, combined with strength and persistence and the side of him that his enemies call a 'wildcat', make for a great protagonist. Juliana is definitely one of Broster's better love interest characters—she's determined and fearless, and I really enjoyed watching her try all the stratagems available to her to help Raoul in his plight, working against the restrictions placed on a respectable young lady. I like that she gets involved in Broster's inevitable tangles of honour and betrayal. And I like that she doubts herself, and doesn't always know her own mind—that combination of strength and vulnerability is something Broster does well, and both Juliana and Raoul have it, in different ways. And they bring out the good in each other! As canon romances go, their relationship is pretty tolerable. :)
Unlike Aymar and Ewen, Raoul doesn't have one big central relationship with another male character, although the same sort of relationship dynamics are there, in bits and pieces—there just seems to be something about Raoul that keeps making stern, duty-minded English officers come over all philanthropical! The most important of these, the disgraced naval officer Captain Hervey Barrington, who threatens to recapture Raoul and then does an about-turn and saves his life and cares for him while he's injured instead, is a sweetheart, unexpectedly. His transformation from unforgiving enemy to devoted friend is abrupt and dramatic, perhaps a bit too much so—certainly it's not explored in anything like the detail that Keith Windham's development is—but very lovely to see, and provides Broster with plenty of opportunity for all her favourite hurt/comfort tropes, which I enjoyed very much.
As ever, there are lots of good side characters as well. I particularly liked Miss Barrington, the Captain's sister, with her sharpness and alertness alongside her wicked sense of humour and her indulgent kind-heartedness. Then there's the eccentric geologist doctor who Barrington brings in to care for Raoul, Juliana's dad and the running joke about his resemblance to the Duke of Wellington, Raoul's marching companions on the way to Devonshire, Barrington's housekeeper Mrs Jeremy and her love for Raoul...
If I had a criticism of this book, I'd say that it has far too much unresolved potential—I felt there were a lot of potentially interesting and complicating things that were never explored. Raoul's political allegiances were one of these. He is a Bonapartist, but he comes from an old Royalist family, and he gets an opportunity early on in the book to argue his views with another French character, an émigré who still supports the Bourbons. It's interesting, and a definite development from the assumption of the earlier books that of course the Royalists are right—but it never really goes anywhere. I wondered if Broster was setting things up for what Raoul might end up doing after the Restoration, but the book ends and it's still 1813, so we never find out. The resolution of Raoul and Juliana's relationship felt similarly not quite complete in all its issues—we're reassured that they'll find a way to work things out despite Raoul having to go back to France and their countries still being at war, but we don't get to go through the details of this, and I thought it would have been really interesting to do so, even just in an epilogue set a few years later explaining how they managed it. (Or maybe I just have overly-high expectations for stories dealing with how characters from opposite sides of a war manage to overcome the difficulties in the way of their love after all that FotH fic... :P)
Anyway: another good one, I'm pleased to say! Highly recommended.
So, my read-through has now got up to the Jacobite trilogy... I don't think I'm going to do an actual re-read of Flight of the Heron at this point, but I may write up a post about how reading the books Broster wrote before FotH has influenced my thoughts and understanding of it, because I think there's some interesting stuff there.
"Mr Rowl" (1924) is Broster's fourth solo novel. The Napoleonic wars are still in progress, and Captain Raoul des Sablières, our hero, is a French prisoner of war on parole in England—the title is the clumsy Anglicisation by which he's known amongst his new neighbours, hence the inverted commas. The book opens with a lovely peaceful Regency drawing-room scene, in which Raoul sings for the company and talks literature with a most charming and independent-minded young lady named Juliana Forrest. But then, due to a set of circumstances not unconnected with the lovely Juliana, Raoul is accused of breaking his parole... from here, the plot is a succession of unfortunate coincidences and things happening at exactly the wrong time; Raoul goes through many trying adventures, and meets a variety of interesting characters along the way, while Juliana works tirelessly to try and save him from his fate.
What I really liked about this book was how much fun it is. It's not that the stakes aren't high—Raoul is plausibly threatened with execution at one point, and nearly dies several times later on—but the general mood feels light-hearted in a way that many of Broster's other stories don't. There's a good-natured humour to the narrative, and a feeling all along that most of the characters are good at heart and that things will work out for the best. The whimsical chapter titles, much like those in Sir Isumbras, certainly help. The structure of the plot, with Raoul passing through a series of different places and scenes and meeting new groups of characters in each one, contributes to this—he makes new friends and sees the good in lots of different people, albeit there's plenty of bad there sometimes. Despite the stakes, there are still opportunities in the plot for wacky hijinks—the bit where Broster tricks the reader about a disguised character's real identity twice in a row is especially memorable! I think Broster was really developing as a writer at this point—she's established the sort of tropes and plot beats that she likes, and her prose style is particularly good in this book, with so many of those perfectly constructed subtle turns of phrase that she's so great at. Honestly, as a writer, I am thoroughly jealous of her ability to put together a sentence.
The main characters make the centre of the book's happy mood. Raoul himself is just loveable—his goodness and sense of humour, combined with strength and persistence and the side of him that his enemies call a 'wildcat', make for a great protagonist. Juliana is definitely one of Broster's better love interest characters—she's determined and fearless, and I really enjoyed watching her try all the stratagems available to her to help Raoul in his plight, working against the restrictions placed on a respectable young lady. I like that she gets involved in Broster's inevitable tangles of honour and betrayal. And I like that she doubts herself, and doesn't always know her own mind—that combination of strength and vulnerability is something Broster does well, and both Juliana and Raoul have it, in different ways. And they bring out the good in each other! As canon romances go, their relationship is pretty tolerable. :)
Unlike Aymar and Ewen, Raoul doesn't have one big central relationship with another male character, although the same sort of relationship dynamics are there, in bits and pieces—there just seems to be something about Raoul that keeps making stern, duty-minded English officers come over all philanthropical! The most important of these, the disgraced naval officer Captain Hervey Barrington, who threatens to recapture Raoul and then does an about-turn and saves his life and cares for him while he's injured instead, is a sweetheart, unexpectedly. His transformation from unforgiving enemy to devoted friend is abrupt and dramatic, perhaps a bit too much so—certainly it's not explored in anything like the detail that Keith Windham's development is—but very lovely to see, and provides Broster with plenty of opportunity for all her favourite hurt/comfort tropes, which I enjoyed very much.
As ever, there are lots of good side characters as well. I particularly liked Miss Barrington, the Captain's sister, with her sharpness and alertness alongside her wicked sense of humour and her indulgent kind-heartedness. Then there's the eccentric geologist doctor who Barrington brings in to care for Raoul, Juliana's dad and the running joke about his resemblance to the Duke of Wellington, Raoul's marching companions on the way to Devonshire, Barrington's housekeeper Mrs Jeremy and her love for Raoul...
If I had a criticism of this book, I'd say that it has far too much unresolved potential—I felt there were a lot of potentially interesting and complicating things that were never explored. Raoul's political allegiances were one of these. He is a Bonapartist, but he comes from an old Royalist family, and he gets an opportunity early on in the book to argue his views with another French character, an émigré who still supports the Bourbons. It's interesting, and a definite development from the assumption of the earlier books that of course the Royalists are right—but it never really goes anywhere. I wondered if Broster was setting things up for what Raoul might end up doing after the Restoration, but the book ends and it's still 1813, so we never find out. The resolution of Raoul and Juliana's relationship felt similarly not quite complete in all its issues—we're reassured that they'll find a way to work things out despite Raoul having to go back to France and their countries still being at war, but we don't get to go through the details of this, and I thought it would have been really interesting to do so, even just in an epilogue set a few years later explaining how they managed it. (Or maybe I just have overly-high expectations for stories dealing with how characters from opposite sides of a war manage to overcome the difficulties in the way of their love after all that FotH fic... :P)
Anyway: another good one, I'm pleased to say! Highly recommended.
So, my read-through has now got up to the Jacobite trilogy... I don't think I'm going to do an actual re-read of Flight of the Heron at this point, but I may write up a post about how reading the books Broster wrote before FotH has influenced my thoughts and understanding of it, because I think there's some interesting stuff there.
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Date: Jul. 29th, 2020 04:22 pm (UTC)