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justfoxie's review
3.0
This book is a hard one to rate, because it is at turns fantastic and boorish. The characters are pretty one dimensional (especially the women) and a lot of the plot is brutish. However, there are moments of sparklingly beautiful description and some really insightful interactions (despite badly turned characters to start with) as well as multi-threaded narratives. I love books (and movies for that matter) that use multi-threaded narratives. I think it really allows the reader to more fully explore the story/universe. Still overall, I would say that the positives just barely compensate for the negatives, though I'm having a hard time saying who exactly would like this book. If you're looking for a book that isn't total fluff, like historical fiction, but don't want anything too over the top intellectually, then this would be a good one to pick up.
***WARNING: This book is NOT for you if you are squicked out by sodomy (particularly between men)**
***WARNING: This book is NOT for you if you are squicked out by sodomy (particularly between men)**
eddie's review against another edition
3.0
SPOILERS
I don’t want to write lengthy reviews but I feel this book is provoking one! On the plus side, Hensher’s always vivacious prose, wit, and soaring imagination carry one through this lengthy read and overall I did enjoy this. However, I questioned some of his narrative choices and some of the important characters are dreary and flat.
The Bella Garraway/ Alexander Burnes romance was entirely unconvincing and pedestrian - think sub sub sub Georgette Heyer (with no narrative surprises). Annoyingly, the totally flat Bella is trotted out again and again (the novel ends with an epilogue focussing on her - is the character perhaps a misguided attempt to appeal to a feminine readership?!), and like a vampire zombie she sucks the life out of Alexander, a historical character who could have been compelling. His scenes with Dost Mohammed, Mohan Lal, Charles Masson, Vitkevitch, and Charles Burnes are all far more alive.
The brief erotic interlude between Charles Masson and Hasan demonstrates what Hensher can achieve - conveyed in mere paragraphs, with Hasan himself a deliberate literary symbol rather than a realistic human, this connection casts a powerful spell over the second half of the novel. By contrast, Bella’s story trudges on over chapter upon chapter to no notable effect.
Barnes’s voyage to India is described at vast length, again with very little payoff I could detect. The brooding thematic references to Napoleon and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire did not require such an abundant frame. Hensher is also alarmingly vague as to what Burnes actually does day-to-day for the Raj - the result is he seems quite passive, whereas historically he was one of the main players in the drama.
While I did enjoy the Russian chapters and thought Vitkevitch’s story -particularly its ending - effective, it’s not well integrated into the novel as a whole. Episodes here recall War and Peace very strongly - and not flatteringly to Hensher, in my opinion.
I thoroughly enjoyed the meta-narrative elements and the observations on story-telling and literature (there’s a great scene with Queen Victoria reading a fragment of Sappho). The novel tends to flag when it returns to chronological nineteenth-century style realism: a lot could be cut.
The main problem with the characters is that they tend to lack agency. Instead, they are embedded like fragments of debris in a glacier slowly moving to its destination.
I don’t want to write lengthy reviews but I feel this book is provoking one! On the plus side, Hensher’s always vivacious prose, wit, and soaring imagination carry one through this lengthy read and overall I did enjoy this. However, I questioned some of his narrative choices and some of the important characters are dreary and flat.
The Bella Garraway/ Alexander Burnes romance was entirely unconvincing and pedestrian - think sub sub sub Georgette Heyer (with no narrative surprises). Annoyingly, the totally flat Bella is trotted out again and again (the novel ends with an epilogue focussing on her - is the character perhaps a misguided attempt to appeal to a feminine readership?!), and like a vampire zombie she sucks the life out of Alexander, a historical character who could have been compelling. His scenes with Dost Mohammed, Mohan Lal, Charles Masson, Vitkevitch, and Charles Burnes are all far more alive.
The brief erotic interlude between Charles Masson and Hasan demonstrates what Hensher can achieve - conveyed in mere paragraphs, with Hasan himself a deliberate literary symbol rather than a realistic human, this connection casts a powerful spell over the second half of the novel. By contrast, Bella’s story trudges on over chapter upon chapter to no notable effect.
Barnes’s voyage to India is described at vast length, again with very little payoff I could detect. The brooding thematic references to Napoleon and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire did not require such an abundant frame. Hensher is also alarmingly vague as to what Burnes actually does day-to-day for the Raj - the result is he seems quite passive, whereas historically he was one of the main players in the drama.
While I did enjoy the Russian chapters and thought Vitkevitch’s story -particularly its ending - effective, it’s not well integrated into the novel as a whole. Episodes here recall War and Peace very strongly - and not flatteringly to Hensher, in my opinion.
I thoroughly enjoyed the meta-narrative elements and the observations on story-telling and literature (there’s a great scene with Queen Victoria reading a fragment of Sappho). The novel tends to flag when it returns to chronological nineteenth-century style realism: a lot could be cut.
The main problem with the characters is that they tend to lack agency. Instead, they are embedded like fragments of debris in a glacier slowly moving to its destination.
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