Customer Reviews

The Guest of Quesnay

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In reading early Booth Tarkington it was apparent that he had used and reused several themes changing only slightly the viewpoint in which it was told or a minor change to the circumstances in the stories. That is not the case with "The Guest of Quesnay" which was originally serialized in "Everybody's Magazine" between November of 1907 and April of 1908. Tarkington moves the story out of Indiana, and more importantly moves away from the good man up against the bad world theme which had become much too repetitive.

The scene of the action moves to Europe, where Tarkington had based a couple of his shorter novels ("Monsieur Beaucaire", and "His Own People") though this story isn't anything like those. The story is told by an American who is living in France and who dabbles at painting. The story is one which is cleverly crafted, dealing with the narrators, friends, acquaintances, and the famous and/or notorious figures which exist for purposes of the story. While Tarkington probably gives too many hints as to where his story is going and the surprises along the way, as he often did, it is not nearly as transparent a story as many of his others. That, along with it not having the same basic theme makes this one an interesting read and one of his books to read if you are interested in his best works.

Of the novels which he had written up to this point, I would rank this one second only to "The Two Vanrevels", and I would also consider his collection of short fiction based on his political career "In The Arena" to be slightly superior to this work. This would be the last novel for Booth Tarkington for several years, until "The Flirt" which was published in December through February of 1912-1913. In the interim, he published a shorter work titled "Beasley's Christmas Party" and a couple of plays titled "The Man from Home" and "Beauty and the Jacobin".