Customer Reviews

Bella Poldark (The Poldark Saga)

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I fell in love with the Poldark saga through the Masterpiece Theater series in the 70s and found that I preferred the books to the teleplay. I read paperback copies of the first seven books to pieces.

This 12th and, presumably, final Poldark novel is a must for any fan of the series. A caution: it lacks the narrative richness and detail of the preceding books. Promising plot lines and character developments bob to the surface briefly, only to plunge back into the depths without ever being fully explored, such as Clowance's dislike of Cuby, Cuby's future, Clowance's own courtships. It feels as if there were material enough here for more than one book, but perhaps Graham felt compelled to finish off the saga.

Some of the plot is creaky and out-of-joint. There is a subplot regarding a serial killer; Graham is an accomplished suspence writer, but the subplot feels dreadfully out of place here, and there is never any serious doubt as to the killer's true identity. Valentine's story develops in a way that felt, to me, forced and false. Clowance's choice of a second husband is resolved too quickly and too easily. And, finally, it's hard for me to believe that even parents as easy going as Ross and Demelza would have let their daughter embark on a stage career, or that Ross would have reacted with such control to the realization that his unmarried teenage daughter was having an affair with her French orchestra conductor.

For me, the best book in this series was The Four Swans: quiet, insightful, with surprising plot twists that nonetheless grew naturally out of what we knew of the characters. This book is closer to, say, The Twisted Sword, in that it covers a great deal of plot ground without showing us a great deal about the characters.

If you're not a fan of the Poldark saga, you may find this book confusing; too much of the past history has been left out for the book to be truly enjoyable for the new reader. If you are a fan of the Poldark saga, you may find the book not quite up to Graham's past standards, yet it will be irresistible and not totally unsatisfying.

It was as I was reading Bella Poldark, a novel I never expected to be written (The Twisted Sword seemed to end the series and it came out in 1991) that I learned of Mr. Graham's passing. The knowledge that this really, truly and for all time marked the ending of this voyage back to Cornwall of two centuries ago, made the book I had before me infinitely more meaningful.

I do not think Graham intended to continue the series, even had death not taken him so soon after Bella Poldark was done. He was in his nineties and this novel is filled with omens that the end had been reached. (Ross illustrating to Demelza his thoughts on the brevity of life and futility of ongoing rancor with his remark on how in fifty years they'd all be gone and yet without them the tide would still rise to spout through the hole worn in the sea-cliff was one such example.)

Graham left us with this gift of a book. It is probably the best in the section of the Poldark series since the titles "graduated" from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries. I read the other eleven Poldark volumes between 1995-1997 and in the years since they have frequently crossed my thoughts, along with certain unanswered questions. The lingering mystery of Valentine's paternity becomes an issue yet again and is resolved before the book's conclusion. The "curse" literal or fanciful that struck down both Stephen Carrington and Jeremy Poldark after their robbery of the Warleggan carriage emerges to inflict its harm on a participant in that long-ago event. Ross and George Warleggan verbally spar as they have done for forty years, and Bella, the beautiful, angelic-voiced final child of Demelza and Ross, takes to the stage, her spirit set on becoming an opera star.

I wish the Poldark saga could have lasted forever, but since it could not, at least we had this one last visit among old friends to console us before our departure.

In this novel, the lives of the Poldark Family come full circle. As the title suggests, the novel is centered on the youngest daughter, Bella, who has her heart set on becoming an operatic singer.

As in all the preceding 11 novels of the series, Graham brings to life here the feelings and sensibilities of early 19th century Cornwall, and by extension, England and Europe in the immediate post-Napoleonic era. The characters are well-drawn and you find yourself, as you read this novel, wanting to know how they'll fare at journey's end.

While I enjoyed this novel, and the other 3 novels of the series I have read (I'm now reading "ROSS POLDARK", the first of the series), I felt sad to know that this is the last of the series. (As some of you may already know, Winston Graham passed away at the age of 93 this past July.)

Next to James Clavell, Graham has been able to create characters in the Poldark Series - Ross & Demelza & their children, George Warleggan, Valentine Warleggan, Verity, Geoffrey-Charles, Cuby - who could take on the lives of REAL PEOPLE. Love or hate them, you could never be indifferent about these people while reading any of the Poldark novels.

In this novel, the lives of the Poldark Family come full circle. As the title suggests, the novel is centered on the youngest daughter, Bella, who has her heart set on becoming an operatic singer.

As in all the preceding 11 novels of the series, Graham brings to life here the feelings and sensibilities of early 19th century Cornwall, and by extension, England and Europe in the immediate post-Napoleonic era. The characters are well-drawn and you find yourself, as you read this novel, wanting to know how they'll fare at journey's end.

While I enjoyed this novel, and the other 3 novels of the series I have read (I'm now reading "ROSS POLDARK", the first of the series), I felt sad to know that this is the last of the series. (As some of you may already know, Winston Graham passed away at the age of 93 this past July.)

Next to James Clavell, Graham has been able to create characters in the Poldark Series - Ross & Demelza & their children, George Warleggan, Valentine Warleggan, Verity, Geoffrey-Charles, Cuby - who could take on the lives of REAL PEOPLE. Love or hate them, you could never be indifferent about these people while reading any of the Poldark novels.

No more Ross and worse, no more Demelza. No more feud with the Warleggans. Although Graham easily has material for a whole new generation of Poldarks, apparently this is the last one. Fortunately, there's a ton of Poldark books to go back and start reading again. I can't wait.

There's such a true sense of place in this series; Cornwall in the 17th/18th century is alive and so appealing. The characters are appealing, even as they appall, like Ross's enemy George Warleggan.

The PBS series was grand too, but the books are better. Such a diverting relief from too much war TV.

If you like the very different novels of Daphne du Maurier or, even more distinctly, the veterinary tales of James Herriot in Yorkshire, you'll find something to like here.

I was excited to hear that Winston Graham had written another Poldark novel. He had stated that "The Twisted Sword" was the last book in the series, but there were a few loose ends, mainly the fate of Valentine Warleggan.

The novel was satisfying in that we get to see these well known characters, but at times the plot and characters seemed disjointed. This was obvious in comparison with the well plotted and thought out previous novels by Graham. Characters such as Caroline Enys, Tom Guilford and Conan Whitworth, who were secondary but important characters are underused or never mentioned. There were also continuity problems, such as issues of Valentine's parentage and George & Ross' changing attitudes.

Overall, I was happy to read the conclusion to the Poldarks. Clowance's fate, that of her sister Isabella Rose and Valentine. I will remember this series always.

Five years ago I wrote the author, Winston Graham urging him continue the Poldark saga. Having read the books and watched the BBC Videos I fell in love with this series years ago. Mr. Graham responded to my letter that he was 80 years old and had always written his series three or four books at a time. this way he could have sub plots that revolved around the lives of his main characters Ross and Demelza. He further informed me that he doubted if he had enough remaining time to do another three books.

I was very pleased to see that he had enough energy and intellect to provide us with this final book. It is an excellent finish to a great saga. I highly recommend this book. Would anyone like to visit Cornwall? I would.

...I have almost always been disappointed in them.

Beginning with The Stranger from the Sea, Mr. Graham took the children of Ross and Demelza and Elizabeth and George Warleggan into the Regency era - and I admit I was as excited & thrilled as any fan of the Poldark novels to know that the story was being continued. Unfortunately I thought The Stranger from the Sea was a weak beginning in terms of its plot; I also formed a negative impression of several new characters, such as Stephen Carrington, and the Kellow family, for example, which affected my total enjoyment of the continued series, but I did think each succeeding book became stronger. I thought The Twisted Sword concluded the series, and the younger generations' stories, very well, if sadly.

BELLA POLDARK for me was a turn-back to the disappointment of The Stranger from the Sea: a clunky and cluttered plot peopled with somewhat familiar-but-remote older characters who didn't seem to bear any relation to the Ross, Demelza, George, Dwight and Caroline, et al. that I had known. Of course they WERE older so one expects change, but what these older characters lacked was the spark of life that Mr. Graham had so successfully given them, the spark that made them so real.

Then there are the odd-ball characters that populate this final story: Philip Prideaux; Christopher Harvegal, the Kellow family, most especially Paul Kellow who certainly made a 90 degree turn from the minor character he was in the previous novels... If The Twisted Sword was a sad book in some respects BELLA POLDARK is a somewhat gruesome one in terms of the Jack-the-Ripper-ish subplot, which to me sticks out like a sore thumb.

Each Poldark daughter has two suitors to choose from. I admit to some pleasure in the fact that Clowance finally chooses well, but Bella's romances were tedious. It was another disappointment to me that Bella was allowed to have a physical affair with her second suitor; a suitor who seemed to be created just to give her relationship with Christopher the edge and conflict it was lacking. (Mr. Graham never went much beyond the bedroom door before in the Poldark series so it was also jarring to read the brief description of Bella's seduction.) And Ross - behaving so gently when his daughter elopes, and after finding out about her affair?

The character of Valentine Warleggan was, for me, re-developed from previous books in a most unsatisfactory way - half almost-criminal; half lost soul. The quiet scene with Ross in The Twisted Sword when Valentine finally questions Ross about his parentage was vintage Winston Graham: sparingly emotional and resolute. In BELLA POLDARK, I didn't hate the fact that Valentine wanted to draw closer to his natural father, and that he'd been damaged by Warleggan's attitude to him in his childhood. But we are told this several times (another disappointment - it was both show AND tell). Finally, I just didn't like the highly emotional, melodramatic final twist that occurs in "resolving" the character and story of Valentine.

For the first time in reading a Poldark novel, I felt that briefly-encountered older supporting characters such as Sam Carne, Ben Carter, and Jud Paynter, and new subcharacters such as Esther the niece of Demelza, were now "quaint", or, little bits of undeveloped (or recycled) characters.

Is this a readable book? Well yes it is, I don't think a good novelist of 70+ years experience is going to produce something totally un-readable - it's mostly as a Poldark book that I find it so lost, and weakly plotted in most respects.

I still highly recommend the first eight novels of the series, "Ross Poldark" through "The Angry Tide". But after encountering the remaining books, and *especially* now BELLA POLDARK I am left feeling that what happened next was best left with The Twisted Sword, if not to readers' imaginations.