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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A twin study of Horatio Nelson and Nelson obsession,
By merritt moseley (usa) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Losing Nelson (Hardcover)
Losing Nelson is a brilliant book about a man trying to write a book about Horatio Nelson. The main character, Charles Cleasby, is a nebbish and a Nelson nerd, who, ever since beginning to specialize in Nelson on the recommendation of his psychiatrist, has no life beyond this obsession. He reenacts Nelson's battles, in real time and on their anniversaries, in a special room in his house; attends the Nelson Club, where he eventually gives a disastrous paper; and, most important, is trying to write a biography of Nelson. In it he hopes to prove his own firm conviction that Nelson was a perfect hero, a bright angel, who never did anything that was less than heroic, at least at sea. Cleasby is troubled by two things, one human and one historical. The human being is his typist, Miss Lily, who asks unsettling questions about Nelson's megalomania, his indifference to the sufferings of his men, his craving for celebrity; the other is a historical event, Nelson's apparent collusion in the betrayal of some Jacobin rebels in Naples, who left their fortresses under a promise of safe conduct but were arrested and executed. Cleasby hopes to "clear" Nelson of guilt in this case. His efforts to do this lead him further and further into the byways of his obsession, which, having started out looking like a hobby, becomes more and more a kind of derangement. Eventually he is drawn into the "poisonous flower-trap" of Naples himself, with surprising results. Unsworth is a fine historical novelist and one learns a lot about Nelson from reading this book; more interestingly one learns about the results on the fragile psyche of a Nelson fan (in his own mind, a double) of losing Nelson as a shining model of English perfection. Merritt Moseley
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
EchoDooLalia,
This review is from: Losing Nelson (Paperback)
Before I can explain to you why Barry Unsworth's Losing Nelson is such a peculiar book, I have to prepare you by giving you a little clue as to what to expect herein. First off, our narrator, Charles Cleasby, is something of a fanatic when it comes to the life and exploits of one Lord Horatio Nelson. He recreates battles in miniature upon his late father's now converted billiard table, as and when they took place. He buys virtually any Nelson memorabilia he can get his hands on and displays it (if display can be said to be the right word) in a locked cabinet in his basement, the door of which remains always locked. Charles is also in the process of writing a book about the great man, in which he hopes to clear up the black spot that has marked Nelson's otherwise blemish-free historical reputation: a period of roughly one year between 1798 and 1799 which Nelson spent in Naples. It goes like this: Nelson entered Naples as the conquering hero (having recently fought and won a battle on the Nile), met and began to conduct an affair with Emma Hamilton (with the apparent blessing of her husband, the ageing Lord Hamilton) and stuck his oar into the relationship that then existed between Naples and France to the degree that France and Naples began to wage both internecine and open warfare with each other. There was a certain amount of toing and froing (first Naples appeared to have the upper hand and then France) before we reach the crux of the blemish: there is a siege, with Jacobin rebels (fighting on the side of the French) holed up in a castle resisting the forces for good (in this case, Nelson, Naples et al). The Jacobin rebels refuse to emerge, believing they will be torn to shreds by the King's guards. Nelson appears to promise them free passage, only for their original belief (the tearing to shreds) to hold true. Did Nelson know? Did Nelson betray them? What exactly happened? Nobody really knows. It all comes down to interpretation, whether you regard Nelson as a hero (as Charles Cleasby indefatigably does) or a cold fraud (as Miss Lily, the secretarial help Charles employs to help him with his book, does). Parallel to Nelson's story, of course, is that of his "dark twin", or "land shadow", Charles. What story there is. Because Charles does not do very much. He dwells on Nelson a lot, dwells on his own and others' views of Nelson. He inhabits a fairly rigid routine, rarely straying beyond the confines of his house (rarely thinking about eating, rarely cleaning, rarely thinking about the world at large, all the time avoiding avoiding avoiding modern reality, choosing instead to inhabit this peculiar space pressed flat between the pages of so many history books). Charles is a kind of eccentric extremist, choosing to annotate the sections of his book that he has already written rather than engage with those problems that stop him proceeding (his is life as writer's block). He is a wrong man, a broken man, a being totally focussed on a single icon to the exception and detriment of everything else. Here is a man that fills notebooks with line upon line of tiny print. Here is R.Crumb's brother. And yet what is particularly curious about all of this is that - in choosing to tell us about the life of Charles Cleasby - Barry Unsworth behaves in much the same way that Charles Cleasby does. Charles focusses on (and finds himself beaten by) a short period of Nelson's life. We examine that short period in rather intense detail. Similarly, Barry Unsworth focusses on a short period in the life of Charles Cleasby. If Charles Cleasby is a kind of watermark, a kind of nowhere man, then Losing Nelson is the watermark of a watermark, the palimpsest of a palimpsest, a shadow's echo, echolalia. All of which leaves you feeling - well, a bit funny. To read this book to the end requires you to adopt that shadowy mantle, to exist concommitant with shadows and airy nothings (to the degree that - upon arriving at Losing Nelson's sudden violent conclusion - you just don't feel it: it's history, but history that has not been brought satisfactorily to life.) Losing Nelson is an odd, odd fish. Yes, it is erudite and well-written but - at the same time - there is a peculiar lack of substance here, a feeling that you can't get to grips with the book however hard you try.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Well Written Downer,
By Nikolai Vishnevsky (Takoma Park, MD) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Losing Nelson (Hardcover)
I just finished Losing Nelson. This is the first Barry Unsworth book I read, and now I can say that he is indeed a masterful writer and a subtle psychologist. Having said that, I have to admit that for me Losing Nelson is somewhat of a letdown. The historical part of the book, the one that deals with Admiral Nelson, is very interesting and now I know more about Nelson than I ever did before. However, the fictional part of the novel, which describes the main character's (Cleasby) descent into total madness, ends up being a very skillfully written but depressingly hopeless story -- a very dark tale, despite frequent flashes of ironic humor. Along the way, though, the reader encounters a couple of wonderfully sketched characters (for example, Miss Lily, a decent person with a backbone) as well as several beautifully written scenes.
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