Customer Reviews

Losing Nelson

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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

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.

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.

What a superb read "Losing Nelson" was. It is about time that more English "heroes" are exposed in fiction and Unsworth certainly does it with style. It reminds me of "Manly Puruits", an expose of Cecil Rhodes and his money-grubbing cronies and their misguided philanthropism. Quietly and ironically, Unsworth strips away the layers of infalibility in Nelson and leaves his main chartacter, Charles Cleasby, with a fist full of sawdust at the end. In the wake of English Football hooliganism, driven by a misplaced sense of nationalism and jingoism, this book's theme still has currency today. The characters of Miss Lily, the misfit members of the "Nelson Club" and the psuedo-antagonist, Badham, present a fine array of personalities who Unsworth masterfully manipulates to work painfully through the chinks in Cleasby's glorious armour. I particularly liked how Cleasby obtained succour from his apparently broad reading about Nelson, when in fact he had made a conscious decision to ignore some important works - he believes what he wants to believe and falls victim to his own propaganda. The ending was jarring and I had to read it twice before the finality of it sank in - I found it to be appropriate and not forced at all. The imagery of the whole event reflects other symbols throughout the novel. I recommend this to any nationalists who pompously place history and historical figures on a pedastal - truth is often stranger than fiction. For me, it just confirmed what I already knew to be true about heroes of the popular imagination.

I finished reading this book a month or so ago and it's been haunting me ever since. I had observed my husband's startlement when he finished the book, as well as read some of the reviews, so I knew the ending was surprising. Having read it, I believe that the violence at the end is not a concession to addicts of video games or Schwartzennegger movies. Rather, what Unsworth's protagonist does at the close of the novel is inevitable--not the specific act he commits, perhaps, but in terms of its violence.

Oddly--brilliantly--Miss Lily is the trigger for this violence. Until her entrance into his life Charles Cleasby has been timid, awkward, repressed, obsessed... However, he has never been utterly mad. His therapist fosters Charles' interest in Horatio Nelson in the hope that it will be a healthy outlet for his energy and intelligence; instead it consumes both, shaping Charles' days and his identity in the endless loop of Horatio's battles. If no one had interfered Charles could have probably ignored that nasty business in Naples, and maintained his tenuous grasp on reality, going to the Club, working on the book, and not firing his cleaning lady.

But the work on the book demands some help, and Miss Lily, whose common sense and good heart leave no room for hero worship, seems to represent salvation for Charles, a lifeline to save him from the interminable succession of Trafalgars. Miss Lily's sharp observations of Nelson's flaws would no doubt have gotten her promptly sacked if they weren't accompanied by such warmth; the affection with which she treats her employer allows him to respect her spunk and return her friendship as well as such a social misfit can, even while he dismisses her intelligence. But in this he cannot totally succeed, not when her criticisms of Nelson are so apt, when they exacerbate his own uneasiness over the events of June 26, 1799. Perhaps if Miss Lily had not gone away, not abandoned him as his mother had done before her, Charles could have separated himself from his hero and, with the help of Lilian and her son, forged an authentic self in which to center his formidable will and mind. But she does go, and Charles cannot believe that she will return. And in the face of this loss he must also confront the loss of Nelson, of his Bright Angel, with no one to substitute for him. He was just learning how to start to become a real person, but now he is left without anyone to guide him in the process. The mosaic of his previous identity, which he had pieced together so painfully over the years of repeated battles, is disintegrating in Naples. He has to do something. Something to sever himself from the identity that cannot be. Something to restore the identity that never was. Something violent.

Just reread my verbiage. Am I pompous or what? But it's a great book. I don't think many books are 5s, and _Losing Nelson_ may not be either, but it is more that 4.

This book is a wonderful compliment to Patrick O'Brian's sea chronicles. O'Brian's fans know that Jack Aubrey admires Nelson as his personal hero. This novel provides an excellent narrative of Nelson's life as seen through the eyes of a poor soul who cannot function in the 20th century. The book grabs your attention from the first page and is an excellent read; until the shocking ending. I found the ending to be contrived in a desperate attempt to make the book of interest to those who must have violence and mayhem in their video games, movies and books. I regret that Unsworth chose this path as the book was magnificient in its own right without the "mandatory" violent twist.

There have been a number of dramatic, descent-into-madness books in the past few years (McCabe's The Butcher Boy and Murr's The Boy, among them), but Losing Nelson is so much more sophisticated and so much broader in scope that I hope it will not be categorized with these other, more limited (though still fascinating!) books. It is a truly a remarkable novel, with a character so complete that one remembers him for much more than his obsession with Nelson and his descent into madness.

Charles Cleasby, highly intelligent and very reclusive, believes that he and Adm. Nelson are the same person-- that he is, in fact, the dark side of Nelson. At the outset of the novel, Cleasby is trying to reconcile his abiding belief in Nelson's heroism with Nelson's behavior in 1798, when he aided the Bourbon rulers in Naples against the French and directly contributed to the outbreak of a civil war in Naples. Strong evidence suggests that Nelson has betrayed a truce and that he bears responsibility for the hangings of hundreds of Neapolitans.

Unsworth so thoroughly incorporates the life of Nelson with the life of Cleasby that we feel Cleasby's confusion about his alter-ego Nelson and sympathize with his moral quandary about the Naples executions. The historical detail throughout is both fascinating and pertinent in showing parallels between the characters and in highlighting their differences. The movement of the narrative back and forth in time and location is seamless. Ultimately, Unsworth raises the larger questions of what constitutes a hero and why a nation even needs heroes, elevating this book to a significance of scope and universality that few novels ever achieve. This novel is utterly fascinating-- my favorite Unsworth novel to date. Mary Whipple

Unsworth remains true to form in this exceptional study of one man's descent into obsessive madness. The extents to which Charles Cleasby is prepared to go just to prove to his typist (not to mention himself) that Nelson was a true hero are nothing short of exasperating. Whilst this book is undoubtedly a dense read, it is also wickedly funny, terrifying and, ultimately, extremely satisfying. How this was not short listed for the Booker (not to detract from Coetzee's win, though) is completely beyond me.

In our celebrity-infatuated culture, this story is frighteningly appropriate. The reader is locked inside the mind of a man named Charles Cleasby who is obsessed with Horatio Nelson--believing him to be the greatest English hero--but who is slowly sinking into the realization that Nelson was far from the selfless, duty-bound public servant of popular mythology. As the obsessed do, Cleasby resists the knowledge that Nelson may have made some of his most important decisions based on political expediency or to aggrandize his own reputation.

As other reviewers have pointed out, the ending is a let-down to an otherwise riveting psychological tale. There is a chance for the redemption of his character here that author Unsworth does not take, and which may have been more enlightening. Nevertheless, for those who have a knowledge of Nelson and his time, this book should be absorbing and entertaining.

As has widely been observed, Barry Unsworth's intelligent novel succeeds at many levels. Let us specify a few: it is, first of all, a disturbing tale of obsession - Charles Cleasby's maniacal pursuit of evidence to exonerate Admiral Horatio Nelson of any malfeasance in what history has recorded as Nelson's distinctly unheroic behavior in Naples in 1798.

Unsworth has also written a subversive work of biographical art - the author notes in interviews that Losing Nelson in fact began its life as a commissioned biography of the supreme British hero. With vigorous economy Unsworth covers the main biographical bases and provides the reader, almost miraculously, with both sides of the interpretation with which Cleasby and all Nelsonographers must grapple. (Indeed, more plentiful source citations would have been helpful, although Unsworth does a nice job of working some of his documentation into the narrative - several times causing me to smile and shake my head in admiration at his cleverness in doing so.)

The book also works as a complexly interwoven meditation on the related themes of fame, heroism, nobility, patriotism, and virtuousness - again, from both sides, but adding another familiar dimension to Unsworth's "angel-of-light" and "angel-of-darkness" considerations, recalling the two sides of Henry V - the unabashedly jingoistic view of Prince Hal (Nelson) versus the play's pragmatic Falstaffian overtones that probe unsettlingly into "what IS honor?" This is a most timely aspect of the book: each era creates its own heroes - think of what we lionize as "heroic" and those whom we call "hero" - and Unsworth is as careful in presenting the building blocks of Nelson's fame as he is unsparing in dissecting the dynamic (for it IS a process) of heroism and its perpetuation.

Losing Nelson is also a modernist (not postmodern) psychological narrative of considerable virtuosity. Unsworth handles his twin-track materials with breathtaking seamlessness, sometimes moving incrementally through segues from Cleasby to Nelson (almost like the walking Henry Hull changing into the Werewolf of London as he passes behind successive pillars) and sometimes back and forth inside Cleasby-Nelson. One finishes some passages of this book simply to sit back in startled wonder: "how did he manage THAT?" Unsworth is a flawless craftsman, a master of pacing (the true narrative art) who knows when to divulge a tidbit of information and when to withhold. And he never cheats the reader.

Sprinkled throughout the novel are marvelous, beautifully realized characters. We have the astonishing Cleasby himself - what a creation! Brilliant and method-to-his-madness "on to something," edgy, obsessive-compulsive, scarred by a domineering father, of bizarrely diffuse sexuality. There are the cleverly written debunkers, including Miss Lily the Avon Services "Kelly Girl" temp who transcribes Cleasby's handwritten Nelson study, and her sparely but devastatingly drawn son, as well as the expatriate whom Cleasby hopes holds the key to the Naples episode, and the assorted oddballs, cranks, and losers who hang out at the London Nelson Society.

Much has been made of the Unsworth's "surprise" ending. I believe more than a few readers will anticipate some variation of the ending - I did, through no special perspicacity but simply as a hand-wringing reader, wholly enjoying his immersion in the Nelson-Cleasby universe and, riffling through as many unsatisfactory ways the book might end as I could imagine, hitting upon the one - one I had feared - playing it out, and thus feeling slightly let down at the end. As the dust jacket observes, "Something has to give way, and give it does - in the most astonishing and entertaining of ways." Having lived so intimately with Charles Cleasby, I wanted something better for him, and certainly something less - well, I'll say it, and I don't think it's a spoiler - hackneyed. For me, an unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise brilliant novel, my first of what will be many journeys with Barry Unsworth.