Edition: Penguin, 1955
Review number: 247
Most crime novels are about the process of detection. Payment Deferred the novel which made Forester's name, is about the effect that a crime has on the unsuspected criminal.
The Marble family are sinking into debt; their miserable suburban lower middle class existence is about to reach the point when it will have to be exchanged for something even worse, as credit is no longer extended to them, and threats of legal action are being made. If those threats materialise, they will lead to Mr Marble's position in the local high street bank being lost, and the family will be ruined. Salvation suddenly appears in the guise of an Australian cousin, coming to England after the death of his parents. He has made his fortune, and he knows no one in England; suddenly, Mr Marble is tempted to murder (with the potassium cyanide kept for his hobby of photography), when he sees the vast amount of cash being carried by the young man.
Burying the young man in the back garden, Marble becomes gradually destroyed psychologically, like Macbeth, by paranoid fantasies that his crime will be discovered. Occasionally, these fears drive him to acts he would not normally be capable of: a brilliant coup on the foreign exchanges to provide the money to buy his rented house so he can prevent the garden falling into another's hands, for example. Generally, they fuel his drink habit and lead to depression, sleeplessness and so on.
There are no strong characters in Payment Deferred; it is a study in weakness. There is no one with whom the reader would want to identify. By this avoidance of the heroic, Forester creates more believable characters than he ever did in his later career. The novel is a tragedy in the sense of Greek drama: Marble's one act of hubris brings a punishment from within himself (it is a long time before even his family start to suspect what has happened), as though haunted by Orestes' Furies. Payment Deferred may well be Forester's best work, though it is certainly not pleasant reading.
Showing posts with label C.S. Forester. Show all posts
Showing posts with label C.S. Forester. Show all posts
Tuesday, 11 May 1999
Friday, 26 March 1999
C.S. Forester: The Ship (1943)
Edition: Penguin, 1970
Forester's wartime novel is fairly unashamedly a piece of propaganda, designed to make British readers proud of the efforts of the Navy. He spent some time sailing with the Navy in the Mediterranean, and this novel is based on what he saw.
What he has written is an account of a battle, each chapter heading being a phrase taken from the Captain's report sent to the Admiralty afterward. The novel is unusual among naval stories for the attention that it pays to the ordinary rank and file, including the commissary side (vitally important, of course, in a real war, but not very glamorous). Few stories make it out of the wardroom, let alone into the kitchen. Each person is allowed the chance to be a hero in his own way (the crew is men only at this date), from the captain to the most unreliable Ordinary Seaman.
The fact that each character (except, of course, the Italian officers on the ships that attack them) is allowed to be a hero is the reason that this book is propaganda not literature. It is intended to make those at home proud of the Navy, and to get them to work hard to further the war effort. This is why the action described is a crucial victory; this is why each man is a vital cog in a smoothly running machine. In 1943, it is necessary to have some realism in a description of a battle; Forester does not write about an action won by the heroism of one man, nor does he ignore the possibility of death, disfigurement and disability; he even allows feelings of cowardice (though these must be overcome). The book must have, for many readers, achieved its purpose, which was to encourage everyone who read it that their effort was important to the successful conclusion of the war.
Forester's wartime novel is fairly unashamedly a piece of propaganda, designed to make British readers proud of the efforts of the Navy. He spent some time sailing with the Navy in the Mediterranean, and this novel is based on what he saw.
What he has written is an account of a battle, each chapter heading being a phrase taken from the Captain's report sent to the Admiralty afterward. The novel is unusual among naval stories for the attention that it pays to the ordinary rank and file, including the commissary side (vitally important, of course, in a real war, but not very glamorous). Few stories make it out of the wardroom, let alone into the kitchen. Each person is allowed the chance to be a hero in his own way (the crew is men only at this date), from the captain to the most unreliable Ordinary Seaman.
The fact that each character (except, of course, the Italian officers on the ships that attack them) is allowed to be a hero is the reason that this book is propaganda not literature. It is intended to make those at home proud of the Navy, and to get them to work hard to further the war effort. This is why the action described is a crucial victory; this is why each man is a vital cog in a smoothly running machine. In 1943, it is necessary to have some realism in a description of a battle; Forester does not write about an action won by the heroism of one man, nor does he ignore the possibility of death, disfigurement and disability; he even allows feelings of cowardice (though these must be overcome). The book must have, for many readers, achieved its purpose, which was to encourage everyone who read it that their effort was important to the successful conclusion of the war.
Thursday, 25 February 1999
C.S. Forester: The General (1936)
Edition: Penguin
Review number: 217
Forester's early novel is a succinctly told story of a fiction First World War general, Sir Herbert Curzon, from his days as a young officer in the Boer War to an ageing, bathchair-bound figure on Bournemouth Promenade.
Forester does not allow himself a great deal of space to develop his story, under two hundred pages in fact, so we are left with a fairly sketchy view of Curzon's life and character. His story concentrates on the Great War, and what he is mainly concerned to portray are the background and motivation of the men whose actions led to the death of millions.
Curzon is in no way a monster; the worst that can be said of him is that he is not terribly bright, that he's stubborn, unimaginative and conservative. These are in fact attributes which make him do rather well in the British Army of the 1900s, but they lead straight to the dreadful events of the War.
Our understanding of how generals like Curzon managed to act in the way they did is the major fascination of this book, and the way that Forester has written it keeps this aspect in mind in a fairly subtle kind of way. He is not out to depict the brutal horrors experienced by the front-line soldiers but to catalogue why and how men who were not evil made these things happen to them.
Review number: 217
Forester's early novel is a succinctly told story of a fiction First World War general, Sir Herbert Curzon, from his days as a young officer in the Boer War to an ageing, bathchair-bound figure on Bournemouth Promenade.
Forester does not allow himself a great deal of space to develop his story, under two hundred pages in fact, so we are left with a fairly sketchy view of Curzon's life and character. His story concentrates on the Great War, and what he is mainly concerned to portray are the background and motivation of the men whose actions led to the death of millions.
Curzon is in no way a monster; the worst that can be said of him is that he is not terribly bright, that he's stubborn, unimaginative and conservative. These are in fact attributes which make him do rather well in the British Army of the 1900s, but they lead straight to the dreadful events of the War.
Our understanding of how generals like Curzon managed to act in the way they did is the major fascination of this book, and the way that Forester has written it keeps this aspect in mind in a fairly subtle kind of way. He is not out to depict the brutal horrors experienced by the front-line soldiers but to catalogue why and how men who were not evil made these things happen to them.
Monday, 15 February 1999
C.S. Forester: The Good Shepherd (1955)
Edition: Michael Joseph, 1955
Review number: 208
C.S. Forester's tale of the Battle of the Atlantic concentrates on the personality of one man, the captain of an American destroyer acting as a convoy escort towards the end of the war. Captain Krause - known as "the Kraut" by his men - has twenty years' naval experience but little combat experience compared to the other escorts because of the late entry of the U.S. into the war; his seniority means, though, that he is in overall command.
The pressure on the convoy is less than in the earlier years of the war (as detailed in Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea), but there is still plenty of drama. Forester concentrates on his central character, and his account has more heroism and less grinding unpleasantness than Monsarrat's. Reading it shortly after The Cruel Sea makes one acutely aware of the comparative shallowness of Forester's writing, though his aims are rather different from those of the later book. However, the lighter touch and the way Krause is presented makes The Good Shepherd read like wartime propaganda.
A comparison with Forester's Hornblower novels is perhaps rather fairer, but even so The Good Shepherd does not rank with the best of these, which are the novels on which Forester's future reputation will be based. Though Hornblower has some unusual quirks of character, these do not interfere with the reader's appreciation and belief in him; Krause is not so well conceived or realised and so jars rather more. (Hornblower's oddities, of course, tend to make him more twentieth century in his outlook than his real contemporaries; Krause is made less modern by his.) His devout Protestantism is of a type particularly old-fashioned today (and it is important enough to supply the metaphor from which the title is derived: as Jesus is for Krause, so Krause and his ship are good shepherds to the convoy). It is, however, the comparative triviality of this book which really makes it inferior to The Cruel Sea.
Review number: 208
C.S. Forester's tale of the Battle of the Atlantic concentrates on the personality of one man, the captain of an American destroyer acting as a convoy escort towards the end of the war. Captain Krause - known as "the Kraut" by his men - has twenty years' naval experience but little combat experience compared to the other escorts because of the late entry of the U.S. into the war; his seniority means, though, that he is in overall command.
The pressure on the convoy is less than in the earlier years of the war (as detailed in Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea), but there is still plenty of drama. Forester concentrates on his central character, and his account has more heroism and less grinding unpleasantness than Monsarrat's. Reading it shortly after The Cruel Sea makes one acutely aware of the comparative shallowness of Forester's writing, though his aims are rather different from those of the later book. However, the lighter touch and the way Krause is presented makes The Good Shepherd read like wartime propaganda.
A comparison with Forester's Hornblower novels is perhaps rather fairer, but even so The Good Shepherd does not rank with the best of these, which are the novels on which Forester's future reputation will be based. Though Hornblower has some unusual quirks of character, these do not interfere with the reader's appreciation and belief in him; Krause is not so well conceived or realised and so jars rather more. (Hornblower's oddities, of course, tend to make him more twentieth century in his outlook than his real contemporaries; Krause is made less modern by his.) His devout Protestantism is of a type particularly old-fashioned today (and it is important enough to supply the metaphor from which the title is derived: as Jesus is for Krause, so Krause and his ship are good shepherds to the convoy). It is, however, the comparative triviality of this book which really makes it inferior to The Cruel Sea.
Tuesday, 26 January 1999
C.S. Forester: Lord Hornblower (1946)
Edition: Michael Joseph, 1951
Review number: 195
As in the earlier climax of the Hornblower series, Ship of the Line, Lord Hornblower takes Forester's hero back to the French countryside. He is initially dispatched to deal with some mutineers from the British navy who have taken refuge under the protection of the French batteries guarding the mouth of the Seine. In taking possession of the mutineers' ship, Hornblower also manages to be the man who establishes the first bridgehead on the northern French coast, by capturing Le Havre. This is in the twilight of Napoleon's power, as Wellington invades the south of France, and Russian troops menace the Rhine. Hornblower has to reluctantly become the host for the Duc d'Angoulême, one of the uninspiring Bourbons who wish to return to France and power as Napoleon is defeated and exiled to Elba. But when Napoleon escapes, Hornblower once again becomes a fugitive in a hostile France.
This late Hornblower novel has a distinct air of being an anticlimax. I don't know whether Forester was as tired of his most famous hero as Doyle became of Sherlock Holmes, but he was certainly not as able to come up with good ideas as the series of books extended. This is partly because he had to fit Hornblower into a historical context, and partly because he clearly didn't have a plan of Hornblower's whole career mapped out in advance; doing so would have made it possible to spread out the excitement more evenly.
That boredom was involved seems to be indicated, though, by the sketchy attention paid to character development in some of the later books. Hornblower has been established early on in the series, and he does not really change or develop, reaching the point where he is almost a caricature of his earlier self. Forester also repeats incidents, and in Lord Hornblower actually draws attention to it (Hornblower has the men caper at their guns at one point to stop them freezing, and he actually thinks how this will cause a new Hornblower legend to grow up, to set alongside stories of the jig danced on the Lydia during the chase of the Natividad.)
Review number: 195
As in the earlier climax of the Hornblower series, Ship of the Line, Lord Hornblower takes Forester's hero back to the French countryside. He is initially dispatched to deal with some mutineers from the British navy who have taken refuge under the protection of the French batteries guarding the mouth of the Seine. In taking possession of the mutineers' ship, Hornblower also manages to be the man who establishes the first bridgehead on the northern French coast, by capturing Le Havre. This is in the twilight of Napoleon's power, as Wellington invades the south of France, and Russian troops menace the Rhine. Hornblower has to reluctantly become the host for the Duc d'Angoulême, one of the uninspiring Bourbons who wish to return to France and power as Napoleon is defeated and exiled to Elba. But when Napoleon escapes, Hornblower once again becomes a fugitive in a hostile France.
This late Hornblower novel has a distinct air of being an anticlimax. I don't know whether Forester was as tired of his most famous hero as Doyle became of Sherlock Holmes, but he was certainly not as able to come up with good ideas as the series of books extended. This is partly because he had to fit Hornblower into a historical context, and partly because he clearly didn't have a plan of Hornblower's whole career mapped out in advance; doing so would have made it possible to spread out the excitement more evenly.
That boredom was involved seems to be indicated, though, by the sketchy attention paid to character development in some of the later books. Hornblower has been established early on in the series, and he does not really change or develop, reaching the point where he is almost a caricature of his earlier self. Forester also repeats incidents, and in Lord Hornblower actually draws attention to it (Hornblower has the men caper at their guns at one point to stop them freezing, and he actually thinks how this will cause a new Hornblower legend to grow up, to set alongside stories of the jig danced on the Lydia during the chase of the Natividad.)
Friday, 27 November 1998
C.S. Forester: Hornblower in the West Indies (1958)
Edition: Pan, 1966Review number: 173
Hornblower in the West Indies consists of five episodes from towards the end of his career, when he was an admiral and during a four-year term as Commander-in-Chief in the West Indies. Other than this background, and the fact that they are arranged chronologically, the stories are virtually independent; each one could certainly be perfectly comprehensible if read on its own. In these stories, Hornblower deals with an attempt to rescue Napoleon from St Helena (they take place around 1820), captures pirates, gets involved in Simon Bolivar's rebellion in South America that led to the independence of the Spanish colonies there, is kidnapped and survives a hurricane.
Hornblower's personal heroism is still there; much of the plot of these stories is set up to justify him being in situations where such an important and senior officer could display this characteristic. The short format (each section amounts to about fifty pages, so they are longish short stories) makes Forester skate over many of the strengths of earlier Hornblower stories and his characterisation of the character almost perfunctorily - the eccentricities which made him both human and more acceptable to modern tastes (such as his opposition to hanging and flogging, his famous daily baths and his tone deafness) are really only there as gestures. It is the earlier novels, dealing with his time as a captain, which are the strengths of the Hornblower series.
Wednesday, 4 November 1998
C.S. Forester: Hornblower and the Crisis (1967)
Edition: Pan, 1974
Review number: 157
This posthumously published collection of Hornblower stories includes the last story Forester wrote, which is an incomplete first draft, and the last Hornblower story in their internal chronology. The incomplete story, which fills the bulk of the book and gives it its title, is Forester filling in a gap in Hornblower's past. A newly appointed captain, he captures a ship and takes possession of secret papers from Napoleon, bearing his new seal as Emperor of France. This, the Admiralty decides, is to be used as the model for a forged order to the French admiral Villeneuve, to entice him out of his refuge so that the British fleet could attack (the scenario of the battle of Trafalgar). Hornblower volunteers to travel into Napoleon's empire and take the fake dispatch to Villeneuve; then the draft ends, left uncompleted on Forester's death.
The problem with all of this lies in a kind of inconsistency with the rest of Hornblower's career, caused by the fact that the internal chronology of the stories does not match the order in which they were written. Such an important event, besides opening up the possibility of promotion in a completely different way, would surely have resonances to be picked up later, particularly in Flying Colours, in which he is again travelling secretly through French territory (this time as an escaped prisoner of war). But because these books were written earlier, neither Hornblower himself nor any of the other characters ever mentions the scenario of this story.
The book is filled out with two earlier short stories. One features Hornblower as a kind of detective, where the solution to the problem he has been set seems to me to be rather too contrived. The other is set right at the end of Hornblower's career, in the year of revolution 1848 when he entertains an unexpected guest whom he thinks is a madman because he is announced as claiming to be Napoleon; of course, he turns out to be Louis Napoleon (later Emperor Napoleon III) on his way to Paris to seize power. Forester was not a master of the short story, and these two stories are competent pieces of craftsmanship without really having even the ambition to be anything more.
Overall then, this book is for Hornblower fans and competists, not the casual reader.
Review number: 157
This posthumously published collection of Hornblower stories includes the last story Forester wrote, which is an incomplete first draft, and the last Hornblower story in their internal chronology. The incomplete story, which fills the bulk of the book and gives it its title, is Forester filling in a gap in Hornblower's past. A newly appointed captain, he captures a ship and takes possession of secret papers from Napoleon, bearing his new seal as Emperor of France. This, the Admiralty decides, is to be used as the model for a forged order to the French admiral Villeneuve, to entice him out of his refuge so that the British fleet could attack (the scenario of the battle of Trafalgar). Hornblower volunteers to travel into Napoleon's empire and take the fake dispatch to Villeneuve; then the draft ends, left uncompleted on Forester's death.
The problem with all of this lies in a kind of inconsistency with the rest of Hornblower's career, caused by the fact that the internal chronology of the stories does not match the order in which they were written. Such an important event, besides opening up the possibility of promotion in a completely different way, would surely have resonances to be picked up later, particularly in Flying Colours, in which he is again travelling secretly through French territory (this time as an escaped prisoner of war). But because these books were written earlier, neither Hornblower himself nor any of the other characters ever mentions the scenario of this story.
The book is filled out with two earlier short stories. One features Hornblower as a kind of detective, where the solution to the problem he has been set seems to me to be rather too contrived. The other is set right at the end of Hornblower's career, in the year of revolution 1848 when he entertains an unexpected guest whom he thinks is a madman because he is announced as claiming to be Napoleon; of course, he turns out to be Louis Napoleon (later Emperor Napoleon III) on his way to Paris to seize power. Forester was not a master of the short story, and these two stories are competent pieces of craftsmanship without really having even the ambition to be anything more.
Overall then, this book is for Hornblower fans and competists, not the casual reader.
Thursday, 15 October 1998
C.S. Forester: Flying Colours (1938)
Edition: Penguin, 1965
Review number: 138
This Hornblower novel follows on immediately from The Happy Return, at the end of which he had been forced to run down his colours and surrender following the death of three-quarters of his crew in an attempt to bring victory for his admiral, the husband of his beloved Barbara. Thus, Flying Colours opens with Hornblower imprisoned by the French, along with the remainder of his crew. Finally, the order arrives for his transfer to Paris, where he and Liuetenant Bush will face trial for piracy followed by death before the firing squad. During a difficult journey (for Bush is still recovering from a wound received in the battle as a result of which he has lost the lower half of one leg), the two officers and the coxwain Brown brought as a servant to them manage to escape.
The remainder of the novel tells of their journey as fugitives across France while Hornblower torments himself with the knowledge that even should they get back to England, he will still face a court martial because of his surrender.
While not the greatest Hornblower novel, and lacking the interest brought through the detailed description of shipboard life and the excitement of the war at sea, Flying Colours still exhibits the qualities which mark out the series as a whole - the attention to the authentic background, the well drawn characters of Bush and particularly Hornblower himself.
Review number: 138
This Hornblower novel follows on immediately from The Happy Return, at the end of which he had been forced to run down his colours and surrender following the death of three-quarters of his crew in an attempt to bring victory for his admiral, the husband of his beloved Barbara. Thus, Flying Colours opens with Hornblower imprisoned by the French, along with the remainder of his crew. Finally, the order arrives for his transfer to Paris, where he and Liuetenant Bush will face trial for piracy followed by death before the firing squad. During a difficult journey (for Bush is still recovering from a wound received in the battle as a result of which he has lost the lower half of one leg), the two officers and the coxwain Brown brought as a servant to them manage to escape.
The remainder of the novel tells of their journey as fugitives across France while Hornblower torments himself with the knowledge that even should they get back to England, he will still face a court martial because of his surrender.
While not the greatest Hornblower novel, and lacking the interest brought through the detailed description of shipboard life and the excitement of the war at sea, Flying Colours still exhibits the qualities which mark out the series as a whole - the attention to the authentic background, the well drawn characters of Bush and particularly Hornblower himself.
Tuesday, 11 August 1998
C.S. Forester: Lieutenant Hornblower (1952)
Edition: Michael Joseph, 1952
Review number: 101
As indicated by the rank in the title, this is one of the earlier Hornblower novels. Fairly unusually for this series, it is told from the point of view of William Bush, beginning from their first meeting. This occurs when Bush is posted to the ship on which Hornblower is serving as third lieutenant, to become fourth when Bush arrives as his commission is of an earlier date.
It soon becomes clear that something is very wrong about the ship, and that the mind of Captain Sawyer is not what it should be. He suffers from paranoid fantasies about his officers, particularly Hornblower and the first lieutenant. These reach the point where there are discussions about declaring the captain unfit for command, but at this point he falls down a hatchway and is confined to a sickbed. (Hornblower and one of the midshipmen also victimised by the captain are the only witnesses, causing private speculation among the other officers that the fall was not wholly accidental.)
The most important aspect of the book, for itself as well as for the remainder of the series, is the establishing of the relationship between Hornblower and Bush. Although there are moments of the thriller about the book, the early days of this relationship is the focus; this is what raises this book above the run-of-the-mill. There is excitement when the ship reaches the Caribbean, and tension created by the captain's illness.
Review number: 101
As indicated by the rank in the title, this is one of the earlier Hornblower novels. Fairly unusually for this series, it is told from the point of view of William Bush, beginning from their first meeting. This occurs when Bush is posted to the ship on which Hornblower is serving as third lieutenant, to become fourth when Bush arrives as his commission is of an earlier date.
It soon becomes clear that something is very wrong about the ship, and that the mind of Captain Sawyer is not what it should be. He suffers from paranoid fantasies about his officers, particularly Hornblower and the first lieutenant. These reach the point where there are discussions about declaring the captain unfit for command, but at this point he falls down a hatchway and is confined to a sickbed. (Hornblower and one of the midshipmen also victimised by the captain are the only witnesses, causing private speculation among the other officers that the fall was not wholly accidental.)
The most important aspect of the book, for itself as well as for the remainder of the series, is the establishing of the relationship between Hornblower and Bush. Although there are moments of the thriller about the book, the early days of this relationship is the focus; this is what raises this book above the run-of-the-mill. There is excitement when the ship reaches the Caribbean, and tension created by the captain's illness.
Tuesday, 7 July 1998
C.S. Forester: A Ship of the Line (1938)
Review number: 81
Re-reading A Ship of the Line is like encountering an old friend; it must be getting on for twenty years since I last read any of the Hornblower series. I was prepared for the book not to appeal, or not to match up to the other Napoleonic navy novels I've read in the meantime.
I was more impressed than ever, and it has become clear why Forester set the standard that every historical naval writer has had to live up to since. He does not ignore the more unpleasant aspects of the English navy of the 1800s, as more trivial writers have done. Hornblower's world is one of poverty, deprivation, violence, ignorance, severe cruelty, seasickness and sudden death. There may be heroism and compassion, but these are not the true reality of life at sea. Hornblower is not the all-perfect action hero of writers like Jeffrey Farnol and Dudley Pope; he has distinct flaws which are made clear to the reader throughout the novel. And the novel itself does not end with a triumph, but with the capture of Hornblower and his ship by the French.
All this raises Forester from the pack in this small genre, and means that he will continue to be read when many of the other authors are gone and forgotten.
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