Review of Flashman, by George MacDonald Fraser
Flashman pulls no punches….
…and is not for the faint of heart! By his own admission, Harry Flashman, the main character in this first-person narration, is a liar, a cheat, a scoundrel, a bully, a coward, and a rapist, and if you don’t take him at his word, he certainly demonstrates this in his deeds throughout the story. You can add racist and imperialist to the list as well, which may also scare off many of the overly sensitive.
But Flashman is not a hero and is never presented as such. Even the character in his narration will tell you that. Rather, this is meant to be the memoir or perhaps confession of an octogenarian who no longer worries about the consequences of his deeds or the opinions of the people he’ll soon leave behind. What the reader gets is a riveting story of a deliciously scandalous cad that’ll have you snickering in delight, then hoping no one caught you laughing. Flashman is a parody, and all good parodies are a mirror to the society they reflect, and certainly Flashman bears all the bullheaded hypocrisy of the Victorian Age and the British Empire. Oh, what fun!
The concept of this novel is brilliant. Flashman first appeared in the 1857 novel Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes. In it, he is a bully at Rugby School who’s eventually expelled for drunkenness. Author George MacDonald Fraser then picked up the character and published this novel, Flashman, in 1969. Fraser went on to write eleven more in the series using the “found manuscript” trope in which he pretends to have found Flashman’s memoir, which he claims was written somewhere between 1900 and 1905.
“Hughes got it wrong” are the first words we hear from Flashman. He goes on to admit that he had been kicked out of Rugby for drunkenness, but he didn’t mix drinking gin with beer, which he knew better than to do, “even at seventeen.” The rest of the novel is what he does after his expulsion, which is joining the East India Company Army and fighting in the First Anglo-Afghan War.
Like all good historical Fiction, the novel has a cast of historical characters and stays true to real history, making Flashman a participant and a witness to events like the disastrous retreat from Kabul, the last stand at Gandamak, and the Siege of Jalalabad. The book also has a profound understanding of human nature, especially our dark side, which we can see in the words and actions of Flashman and perhaps in our own reflection in the mirror.
Flashman is a witty, swashbuckling adventure full of thrills, laughs, and historical accuracy. I’m definitely in for more!
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