Saving the Boxer, by Neil Plakcy

[Ulysses]

Saving the Boxer (Ormond Court 3)
By Neil Plakcy
Published by the author, 2023
Five stars

I’ve enjoyed Neil Plakcy’s foray into historical romance, but this book, the third installment in the Ormond Court series, resonated in particular for me. One of the two protagonists here is Silas Warner, a young man of working class roots from Sheffield, making his way in the legal world of London’s Inns of Court. The other is French-born Ezra Curiel, a Sephardic Jew who has become a celebrity in the world of professional boxing in Great Britain.

A lifelong fan of both Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope, I particularly thought of Trollope’s late novel, “The Way We Live Now,” set in 1875, the same year in which Plakcy sets “Saving the Boxer.” It is a story focused on social climbing and financial fraud at the height of the rising nouveau riche in English society. Both of these great Victorian novelists dipped into issues of class, poverty, and crime at a time when it was still a daring thing to do. Dickens himself was accused of antisemitism by London’s Jewish community for his portrayal of Fagan in “Oliver Twist,” and later sought to correct that with the kindly old Jewish merchant in The Old Curiosity Shop.”

Rare was the novelist in the 19th century who really dealt with the relationship between Jewish Britons and the rest of society. Of course, the very notion of same-sex love was such a powerful taboo that it was simply ignored. Plakcy tackles both of these themes, side by side.

Silas Warner is among the denizens of Ormond Court, and counts himself a friend of the two titled gentlemen who oversee a carefully vetted social circle of like-minded men. Silas is a very lucky boy, as we are reminded more than once, since public discovery of “sexual inversion” could still lead to life imprisonment in the period in which the book is set.

The action is triggered when Ezra Curiel is publicly arrested in the boxing ring and accused of a heinous crime. It is not a simple matter of guilt or innocence, but deeply tied up in his identity as a Jew, and his secret personal life with Silas. The little community of Ormond Court must step in to see what they can do.

The gift of Plakcy’s book for readers like me is in creating a world where people actually cared about gay people (who, technically, didn’t exist yet) and Jews. He has done his homework, and the result is to present us with a world that probably existed—surely existed—in some way, but which has been consistently erased from the literature of its time. I’m very grateful that he made the effort.