Customer Reviews

Jem (and Sam): A Revenger's Tale

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Full of engaging, amusing, and above all human characters, this novel also boasts a vividly presented narrative of a turbulent era. Mount manages to keep the reader intrigued as Jem careers from bawdy houses to Oliver Cromwell's inner circle, from Dutch Wars to Jamaica, from political intrigue to treasure hunting. The characters with whom he treats run the gamut of all levels of society and include Samuel Pepys, the pirate Henry Morgan, and even the "Emperor of China," as Jem's fortunes vacillate. The author manages to employ a light hand and fine wit as he he juggles the demands of sweeping narrative, historical research, and intriguing characters, and succeeds in keeping the reader both entertained and fascinated by the period and its depiction.

I've never read the diary of Samuel Pepys and now, having read this delightful work of historical fiction, I don't feel as if there is any necessity to do it. The author creates a believeable world, peopled with fully-drawn characters, and gives us a story that holds our interest from beginning to end. It's a people-oriented story, and even the Great Fire of London and the Great Plague become minor incidents in the life of Jeremiah Mount, the hard luck acquaintance and erstwhile friend of Mr. Pepys. Everything is well told, from life in the underbelly of London to the steamy landscape of colonial Jamaica. You follow the life of Jem Mount with great interest and, even though you know he's not a very nice person, you always hope against hope that he does well in the end. To make such an unlikely person a character in which you have such interest is a triumph for the author, and a sign of extremely good writing skills. This is definitely worth reading!

to appreciate this vivid evocation of Restoration England and the circle about its great chronicler, Samuel Pepys (pronounced Peeps, by the way), but it helps. Thirty years out of college, this book not only brought to life an important historical era, but took me back to my undergraduate days in the classroom of Dr. Joseph Flaherty, Anglophile extraordinaire, visiting the coffee-houses, taverns and other haunts of the literary greats of Enlish history. The writing in this novel is vigorous, witty, bawdy as well as eloquent, and the book is recommendable for its literary merits alone. While Pepys carves out a long and successful career, the novel concentrates on the group of youthful friends he leaves behind: losers, malcontents, alcoholics, paranoids, conspirators, led by the eponymous Jem Mount, who scratch and crawl their way through a teeming Restoration world to their ultimate and ineluctable defeat. This sounds depressing but Ferdinand Mount's book is a prose celebration of a fascinating society and the characters who inhabit it.