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thenovelbook's review
4.0
I may have said this before, but William J. Locke is really good at creating individuals. His people are the farthest thing from stock characters you can imagine. So much so that a good part of the novel kept me guessing, who is going to end up with whom? Maybe nobody's going to end up with anybody? None of them are "fated" to be a match, it all just kind of works out. The storytelling is anything but cliché.
So, in this tale you have Zora, the larger-than-life young widow who's determined to find a mission in life; Septimus, the good-hearted, head-in-the-clouds inventor who's worried that he's spent too much time on machinery and not enough on being a human; Clem Sypher, the booming businessman who believes in his quack medicinal remedy above anything else in heaven or earth; and slightly less well-defined, Zora's sister Emmy, an actress who seems fine and happy until she's not...
Septimus is the real joy in this book, as he's so kind and simple, while also being very oblivious and unintentionally funny. He reconfigures the bell-pull in his house to fire pistol shots, as his butler can't hear anything else. Any spare moment unfailingly results in a new invention coming to mind--a wildly impractical invention, but always with the best intentions. His gravest fear is.... oh, I'll just let him explain it:
"Whatever one does or tries to do, one should insist on remaining human. It's good to be human, isn't it? I once knew a man who was just a complicated mechanism of brain encased in a body. His heart didn't beat; it clicked and whirred. It caused the death of the most perfect woman in the world."
He looked dreamily into the blue ether between sea and sky. Zora felt strangely drawn to him.
"Who was it?" she asked softly.
"My mother," said he.
They had paused in their stroll, and were leaning over the parapet above the railway line. After a few moments' silence he added, with a faint smile:—
"That's why I try hard to keep myself human—so that, if a woman should ever care for me, I shouldn't hurt her."
See? For a lot of the book he's the most impractical little guy you could imagine, but occasionally he comes out with something like that and you realize he's the most human person in the book. Lovely.
So, in this tale you have Zora, the larger-than-life young widow who's determined to find a mission in life; Septimus, the good-hearted, head-in-the-clouds inventor who's worried that he's spent too much time on machinery and not enough on being a human; Clem Sypher, the booming businessman who believes in his quack medicinal remedy above anything else in heaven or earth; and slightly less well-defined, Zora's sister Emmy, an actress who seems fine and happy until she's not...
Septimus is the real joy in this book, as he's so kind and simple, while also being very oblivious and unintentionally funny. He reconfigures the bell-pull in his house to fire pistol shots, as his butler can't hear anything else. Any spare moment unfailingly results in a new invention coming to mind--a wildly impractical invention, but always with the best intentions. His gravest fear is.... oh, I'll just let him explain it:
"Whatever one does or tries to do, one should insist on remaining human. It's good to be human, isn't it? I once knew a man who was just a complicated mechanism of brain encased in a body. His heart didn't beat; it clicked and whirred. It caused the death of the most perfect woman in the world."
He looked dreamily into the blue ether between sea and sky. Zora felt strangely drawn to him.
"Who was it?" she asked softly.
"My mother," said he.
They had paused in their stroll, and were leaning over the parapet above the railway line. After a few moments' silence he added, with a faint smile:—
"That's why I try hard to keep myself human—so that, if a woman should ever care for me, I shouldn't hurt her."
See? For a lot of the book he's the most impractical little guy you could imagine, but occasionally he comes out with something like that and you realize he's the most human person in the book. Lovely.
catmorg128's review
4.0
This was weird but alright. Even cute. As far as cliche goes, this was not. I must say it was everlastingly boring. Some parts, anyway. I’m not sure why. People go from being fools to realizing their stupidity, and then there’s a happy ending, even for the fallen and the down-trodden.
The Beloved Vagabond was better. But this was definitely interesting.
The Beloved Vagabond was better. But this was definitely interesting.
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