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Jan-Maat's Reviews > Restoration
Restoration
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Jan-Maat's review
bookshelves: 20th-century, british-and-irish-isles, novel, historical-fiction
Jun 16, 2011
bookshelves: 20th-century, british-and-irish-isles, novel, historical-fiction
I have the same problem and pleasures with this historical novel set during the reign of Charles II as I do with the author's Music and Silence.
At once pleasingly rich but with annoying inaccuracies like the Quaker studying at an English university (Anglicans only back then). These grated on me at one time. A less irritable reader however might be moved to accept that this is less a historical novel and more a fantastical novel, with a dreamlike atmosphere in places.
The hero lives in a world of illusion and delusion, at the apex of which is his love for Charles II. (I note how in German this novel is called The King's Fool which is appropriate). The hero is sent down through the world and has to remake himself. A process that involves seeing and experiencing the insanity of existence from a variety of points of view: departing a fantasy existence in a Norfolk manor house (as fake husband to one of Charles II's mistresses)(view spoiler), working in a Quaker asylum for the insane and practising as a professional writer (ie not a novelist but somebody writing letters and petitions for the illiterate) and quack doctor in London during the plague and the Great Fire, perhaps this could be seen as a journey through the underworld.
There is a kind of beauty to the ending which closes the cycle of the narrator's wanderings. The whole thing a fantasia on impossible loves closing with one that maybe has the potential of being real. A restoration is not quite a circle.
At once pleasingly rich but with annoying inaccuracies like the Quaker studying at an English university (Anglicans only back then). These grated on me at one time. A less irritable reader however might be moved to accept that this is less a historical novel and more a fantastical novel, with a dreamlike atmosphere in places.
The hero lives in a world of illusion and delusion, at the apex of which is his love for Charles II. (I note how in German this novel is called The King's Fool which is appropriate). The hero is sent down through the world and has to remake himself. A process that involves seeing and experiencing the insanity of existence from a variety of points of view: departing a fantasy existence in a Norfolk manor house (as fake husband to one of Charles II's mistresses)(view spoiler), working in a Quaker asylum for the insane and practising as a professional writer (ie not a novelist but somebody writing letters and petitions for the illiterate) and quack doctor in London during the plague and the Great Fire, perhaps this could be seen as a journey through the underworld.
There is a kind of beauty to the ending which closes the cycle of the narrator's wanderings. The whole thing a fantasia on impossible loves closing with one that maybe has the potential of being real. A restoration is not quite a circle.
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June 16, 2011
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Sketchbook
(last edited Apr 26, 2014 10:22AM)
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Apr 26, 2014 10:19AM
Not to be missed: "The Royal Whore" x Allen Andrews. It's not-a-novel....and far, far better...
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Jan-Maat, The Quaker movement began exactly in this turbulent time period. In fact, by 1660, there were about 60,000 Quakers in England. Charles II may well have allowed some of the Quakers attend university. The country did persecute the Quakers for about 29 years, but then stopped with the Act of Toleration. The King pardoned about 500 Quakers and offered William Penn the State of Pennsylvania to a Quaker if he wanted to move there.
Michelle wrote: "Jan-Maat, The Quaker movement began exactly in this turbulent time period. In fact, by 1660, there were about 60,000 Quakers in England. Charles II may well have allowed some of the Quakers attend ..."that is true. To attend university in England you had to sign up to the 29 articles of the Anglican church - which excluded Quakers unless they were prepared to lie (which excluded all Quakers).
