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John Constable

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Mrs. M

by Luke Slattery

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read in December 2017

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John Constable said: " In the first place I must say I really enjoyed this book. I will not reprise a synopsis, which has been done in this venue already, but I became totally immersed in the story and just past halfway found I had a page turner.

I was especially impressed In the first place I must say I really enjoyed this book. I will not reprise a synopsis, which has been done in this venue already, but I became totally immersed in the story and just past halfway found I had a page turner.

I was especially impressed by Mrs M’s voice. Of course we have no idea how an educated Georgian Scotswoman spoke and thought - although we might get a clue from Jane Austen - but it seems to me that the author has struck just the right balance of formality and familiarity and indeed there were passages where I felt she had me alone in a quiet corner and was talking to no one else.

There is a tendency with any fiction which has its genesis, however loosely, in real history to believe it a version of what actually happened. This is a novel pure and simple, not historical fiction, not even ‘faction’. It is no more the reality of the fifth Governorship than is I Claudius the true story of an unlikely Roman emperor or The Other Boleyn Girl that of Anne’s unremembered sister. The ‘real’ Mrs M bore two children and her supposed paramour came on a different ship at a different time, never returned to Britain and in all probability they never met. All these 'facts' the author knows and around them has imagined a fiction to suit his purpose. Which is, I believe, to tell a good story as vehicle; to highlight his contention that the fifth Governor brought an unprecedented and underappreciated humanity to his work in this colony and saw it as his duty, perhaps even raison d'etre, to disseminate the spirit of the Enlightenment - which had been particularly strong through the previous century in his native Scotland - to the tabula rasa of an outpost on the far side of the World. And was railroaded by imperious Powers for his trouble.

I have read criticism that this book ignores reprehensible acts committed during the watch of the fifth Governor, murders of indigenous inhabitants. Again, it is a novel, not a history, apologia or hagiography. But the whole story of humanity is a lamentable, two steps forward, one step back climb out of barbarity to an imagined high plain of benevolent perfection and we are not there yet. Not by a long shot. We are a violent tribal species with a unique - so we think - and perplexing ability to both comprehend and deplore our condition. Rationalised slaughter is the undoubtable reason for our evolutionary success and any real historical figure with the titular The Great appended was almost certainly, at the same time, a wholesale butcher. ...more "

May 10, 2018 06:43AM · see review