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planty_booky's review against another edition
4.0
I didn't expect to like this book so much, but here we are. I loved this book with my whole soul. It touched me. I liked the love story, of course, but it was so much deeper than that. I liked Rupert, his doubts, his thoughts, his darkness, contrasted by the light and reason of dear Nellie. I didn't like Rupert for his behaviour: reckless, thinking he is better than everyone else, spoiled and quite unnerving. I loved Nell for her sensible behaviour, and the fact that she brings another point of view into the famous Rupert Brooke story. And I hated her also because of her "Miss Know-it-all" character, not accepting criticism. However, I would advise anyone reading this to re-read the prologue after finishing the book: so much things are enlightened, especially Nell's feminism and point of view of women's right, which mademe cringe all troughout the book tbh.
I'm actually studying this book in my English Lit class. This review will be updated.
What I can say at this point is that I love that the writer took all the great characters of the actual life of Brooke, and put them all in one character. By that I mean that lots of quotes said by Nell are actually said by Phyllis, Cathleen or even Noel.
I'm actually studying this book in my English Lit class. This review will be updated.
What I can say at this point is that I love that the writer took all the great characters of the actual life of Brooke, and put them all in one character. By that I mean that lots of quotes said by Nell are actually said by Phyllis, Cathleen or even Noel.
proffy's review against another edition
1.0
Rupert Brooke seems a fascinating man and a ripe topic for a book. His fluid sexuality and controversial beliefs beg to be explored. The Great Lover doesn't shy away from Brooke's non-traditional life, and through the combination of Brooke's own words and Dawson's imagination, a portrait of a rather eccentric man is formed.
The book is told through two characters, Rupert and Nell, with alternating passages. The use of dual perspective to tell a story can be elegant and revealing or it can be artificial and frustrating. In this case, I felt a mixture of the two. The voices were distinct, and allowing each to narrate part of the story offered telling glimpses into the characters. I did have some difficulty, however, with the separate perspectives as the two characters spend so much time apart. Using both voices, telling both lives, I felt added extraneous detail to the story. So much of what each has to say has so little to do with the other that I could see the two voices being different books.
This would be my main difficulty with the book. I felt that the story could have been told in half the time. Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for minutiae. The book seemed to be about creating a world instead of telling a story. And while I'm typically a character-driven reader, I could not relate to either Rupert or Nell, and hence needed something of a plot to maintain my interest. After about page 100, I started skipping, sometimes entire sections. So much time was spent on sitting around, on passive voice reflections, on telling instead of showing, that I couldn't focus. And honestly, even skimming large portions of the book, I don't feel like I missed much.
That is not to say that this is not a good book. Reviews of this novel seem to be rather mixed, so I urge you to read the links I've provided below. I've always wondered if mixed reviews aren't a positive because while I was not in love with this novel, I would still encourage reading it for yourself because of the differing opinions. After all, I'm giving only one opinion - and it's a personal, not a professional one.
The book is told through two characters, Rupert and Nell, with alternating passages. The use of dual perspective to tell a story can be elegant and revealing or it can be artificial and frustrating. In this case, I felt a mixture of the two. The voices were distinct, and allowing each to narrate part of the story offered telling glimpses into the characters. I did have some difficulty, however, with the separate perspectives as the two characters spend so much time apart. Using both voices, telling both lives, I felt added extraneous detail to the story. So much of what each has to say has so little to do with the other that I could see the two voices being different books.
This would be my main difficulty with the book. I felt that the story could have been told in half the time. Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for minutiae. The book seemed to be about creating a world instead of telling a story. And while I'm typically a character-driven reader, I could not relate to either Rupert or Nell, and hence needed something of a plot to maintain my interest. After about page 100, I started skipping, sometimes entire sections. So much time was spent on sitting around, on passive voice reflections, on telling instead of showing, that I couldn't focus. And honestly, even skimming large portions of the book, I don't feel like I missed much.
That is not to say that this is not a good book. Reviews of this novel seem to be rather mixed, so I urge you to read the links I've provided below. I've always wondered if mixed reviews aren't a positive because while I was not in love with this novel, I would still encourage reading it for yourself because of the differing opinions. After all, I'm giving only one opinion - and it's a personal, not a professional one.
charleslambert's review against another edition
4.0
An impressive and moving read. Dawson captures the essential nature of both the main characters in the book - Nell Golightly and Rupert Brooke - with hard-headed sympathy and great novelistic skill, finding exactly the right tone and lexis for two such different voices (and stretching Nell's just enough when necessary to accommodate the unexpected and, previously, unutterable). I had initial doubts about the way in which the framing device - Nell's account - was expanded to include Brooke's words and thoughts; but this didn't worry me for long. And I loved the detail of the beekeeping scenes, and not only, or primarily, as metaphor.
emmazucati's review against another edition
2.0
I have no idea who Rupert Brooke is. Maybe that was the issue. But pretty much everything about this book was boring and droned on. His thoughts on sexuality were interesting, and he had autonomy in his choices. But I really did not understand what Nell had to do with anything. She takes very little action for herself and seems unable to be happy because she’s so stuck on a man that she doesn’t even know anything about. The author clearly made an attempt to add color to her storyline with the suffragette coworker but it was not interesting enough to succeed.
balancinghistorybooks's review
3.0
The Great Lover is the first of Jill Dawson's novels which I have read. All of her stories interest me, but I plumped for The Great Lover is a starting point for two reasons; it is set close to where I grew up, and features poet Rupert Brooke, whose writing I admire, as a character. It also takes place in a time period which I love to read about.
The Great Lover begins in the summer of 1909 in Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, a place much famed as a hangout spot for a lot of famous Cambridge-educated writers and artists. Seventeen-year-old Nell Golightly, a fictional creation of Dawson's, has just been employed to waitress at the Orchard Tea Gardens. Soon after she begins her new job, Rupert Brooke arrives as a lodger, hoping that being away from his University halls at King's College will enable him to complete a lot of projects without distractions.
Brooke is something of a talking point immediately. He is 'famed for his good looks and flouting of convention', and 'captures the hearts of men and women alike, yet his own seems to stay intact.' Despite her 'good sense', Nell too begins to fall for Brooke, and he for her. Told from two perspectives, the novel 'gives voice to Rupert Brooke himself in a tale of mutual fascination and inner turmoil, set at a time of great social unrest.' Dawson weaves together extracts from Brooke's own letters with the imagined voice which she has created for him; she builds her narrative around his own. The other voice we hear within the novel is Nell's.
One gets a feel for Nell immediately. She has been recently orphaned, losing her mother in girlhood, and her father quite recently. She takes the job away from her Fenland home in order to support her younger siblings. She describes herself as a 'good, sensible girl', with 'many faults: I am feverishly curious, some would say nosy; I have no compunction about reading other people's letters; I'm proud and full of vanity; I've a quick tempter although I forgive just as easily; I am not fond of horses and I am wont to be impatient with bees; and, worse of all, I am a girl who is incapable of being romanced because I don't have a sentimental bone in my body. Moons and Junes mean nothing to be, unless it is to signify good conditions for bees.'
When Nell first meets Brooke, 'he appears at the door, tall and sunny, loose-limbed and lanky, with his high forehead and mane of hair... he grins a glorious grin at me and the sun blazes through the floor, warming my face to scarlet. He wears grey flannels and a soft collar with no tie, and his face is rather innocent and babyish and, at the same time, inspired with a fierce life.' The narrative using Brooke's voice, which uses flowery, poetic prose, provides much of the humour in the novel. In the first of his entries, when he has moved into the Orchard Tea Rooms, he writes: 'My bedroom looks as though it hasn't been cleaned since Thomas Hardy was first weaned and the beam above my head sheds little flakes of rotting wood like a shower of chocolate on the sheets in the morning.'
A high level of description, and the engaging, rich prose in which it is written, threads through the entire novel, and helps to create a vivid sense of place. The Great Lover has clearly been so well researched, and the atmosphere of the time really comes alive. The social and cultural climate of the time is always there; socialism, suffragism, and the like beat on in the background, sometimes being discussed by the protagonists too. Added to this is the way in which Dawson has introduced real-life figures, who interact mainly with Rupert. We meet, amongst others, Bohemians like Augustus John and 'peacock'-like Ottoline Morrell, and Virginia Woolf even makes a cameo.
In her acknowledgements-cum-afterword, Dawson notes: 'Of course I made Rupert [as well as Nell] up... and he is 'my' Rupert Brooke, a figure from my imagination, fused from his poetry, his letters, his travel writing and essays, photographs, guesswork, the things I know about his life blended with my own dreams of him, and impressions.' Brooke's character adds a tongue in cheek, playful element to the novel. I must say, however, that his voice did not always feel authentic to me, and I largely preferred Nell's section of the narrative.
The element of Brooke's inner turmoil has not been explored in as much detail here as I was expecting. His nervous breakdown, which offered so much room for investigation, has been almost glossed over. Whilst many of the reviews point to the depth which Dawson has given her characters in The Great Lover, I do not feel as though Brooke has quite been developed as well as he could have been. The narrative voices, which switch between one another throughout, are not always as distinctive as they could have been; on a couple of occasions, it did feel a little confusing to differentiate between the speakers. I was expecting a heady, sensual novel, and do not quite feel as though this element was realised. There are some very well executed parts to The Great Lover, but Brooke unfortunately felt little more than a caricature at times.
The Great Lover begins in the summer of 1909 in Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, a place much famed as a hangout spot for a lot of famous Cambridge-educated writers and artists. Seventeen-year-old Nell Golightly, a fictional creation of Dawson's, has just been employed to waitress at the Orchard Tea Gardens. Soon after she begins her new job, Rupert Brooke arrives as a lodger, hoping that being away from his University halls at King's College will enable him to complete a lot of projects without distractions.
Brooke is something of a talking point immediately. He is 'famed for his good looks and flouting of convention', and 'captures the hearts of men and women alike, yet his own seems to stay intact.' Despite her 'good sense', Nell too begins to fall for Brooke, and he for her. Told from two perspectives, the novel 'gives voice to Rupert Brooke himself in a tale of mutual fascination and inner turmoil, set at a time of great social unrest.' Dawson weaves together extracts from Brooke's own letters with the imagined voice which she has created for him; she builds her narrative around his own. The other voice we hear within the novel is Nell's.
One gets a feel for Nell immediately. She has been recently orphaned, losing her mother in girlhood, and her father quite recently. She takes the job away from her Fenland home in order to support her younger siblings. She describes herself as a 'good, sensible girl', with 'many faults: I am feverishly curious, some would say nosy; I have no compunction about reading other people's letters; I'm proud and full of vanity; I've a quick tempter although I forgive just as easily; I am not fond of horses and I am wont to be impatient with bees; and, worse of all, I am a girl who is incapable of being romanced because I don't have a sentimental bone in my body. Moons and Junes mean nothing to be, unless it is to signify good conditions for bees.'
When Nell first meets Brooke, 'he appears at the door, tall and sunny, loose-limbed and lanky, with his high forehead and mane of hair... he grins a glorious grin at me and the sun blazes through the floor, warming my face to scarlet. He wears grey flannels and a soft collar with no tie, and his face is rather innocent and babyish and, at the same time, inspired with a fierce life.' The narrative using Brooke's voice, which uses flowery, poetic prose, provides much of the humour in the novel. In the first of his entries, when he has moved into the Orchard Tea Rooms, he writes: 'My bedroom looks as though it hasn't been cleaned since Thomas Hardy was first weaned and the beam above my head sheds little flakes of rotting wood like a shower of chocolate on the sheets in the morning.'
A high level of description, and the engaging, rich prose in which it is written, threads through the entire novel, and helps to create a vivid sense of place. The Great Lover has clearly been so well researched, and the atmosphere of the time really comes alive. The social and cultural climate of the time is always there; socialism, suffragism, and the like beat on in the background, sometimes being discussed by the protagonists too. Added to this is the way in which Dawson has introduced real-life figures, who interact mainly with Rupert. We meet, amongst others, Bohemians like Augustus John and 'peacock'-like Ottoline Morrell, and Virginia Woolf even makes a cameo.
In her acknowledgements-cum-afterword, Dawson notes: 'Of course I made Rupert [as well as Nell] up... and he is 'my' Rupert Brooke, a figure from my imagination, fused from his poetry, his letters, his travel writing and essays, photographs, guesswork, the things I know about his life blended with my own dreams of him, and impressions.' Brooke's character adds a tongue in cheek, playful element to the novel. I must say, however, that his voice did not always feel authentic to me, and I largely preferred Nell's section of the narrative.
The element of Brooke's inner turmoil has not been explored in as much detail here as I was expecting. His nervous breakdown, which offered so much room for investigation, has been almost glossed over. Whilst many of the reviews point to the depth which Dawson has given her characters in The Great Lover, I do not feel as though Brooke has quite been developed as well as he could have been. The narrative voices, which switch between one another throughout, are not always as distinctive as they could have been; on a couple of occasions, it did feel a little confusing to differentiate between the speakers. I was expecting a heady, sensual novel, and do not quite feel as though this element was realised. There are some very well executed parts to The Great Lover, but Brooke unfortunately felt little more than a caricature at times.
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