Customer Reviews

The Nutmeg of Consolation (Aubrey-Maturin)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Some critics have referred to the Aubrey/Maturin books as one long novel united not only by their historical setting but also by the central plot element of the Aubrey/Maturin friendship. Having read these fine books over a period of several years, I decided to evaluate their cumulative integrity by reading them consecutively in order of publication over a period of a few weeks. This turned out to be a rewarding enterprise. For readers unfamiliar with these books, they describe the experiences of a Royal Navy officer and his close friend and traveling companion, a naval surgeon. The experiences cover a broad swath of the Napoleonic Wars and virtually the whole globe.
Rereading all the books confirmed that O'Brian is a superb writer and that his ability to evoke the past is outstanding. O'Brian has numerous gifts as a writer. He is the master of the long, careful description, and the short, telling episode. His ability to construct ingenious but creditable plots is first-rate, probably because he based much of the action of his books on actual events. For example, some of the episodes of Jack Aubrey's career are based on the life of the famous frigate captain, Lord Cochrane. O'Brian excels also in his depiction of characters. His ability to develop psychologically creditable characters through a combination of dialogue, comments by other characters, and description is tremendous. O'Brien's interest in psychology went well beyond normal character development, some books contain excellent case studies of anxiety, depression, and mania.
Reading O'Brien gives vivid view of the early 19th century. The historian Bernard Bailyn, writing of colonial America, stated once that the 18th century world was not only pre-industrial but also pre-humanitarian (paraphrase). This is true as well for the early 19th century depicted by O'Brien. The casual and invariable presence of violence, brutality, and death is a theme running through all the books. The constant threats to life are the product not only of natural forces beyond human control, particularly the weather and disease, but also of relative human indifference to suffering. There is nothing particularly romantic about the world O'Brien describes but it also a certain grim grandeur. O'Brien also shows the somewhat transitional nature of the early 19th century. The British Navy and its vessals were the apogee of what could be achieved by pre-industrial technology. This is true both of the technology itself and the social organization needed to produce and use the massive sailing vessals. Aubrey's navy is an organization reflecting its society; an order based on deference, rigid hierarchy, primitive notions of honor, favoritism, and very, very corrupt. At the same time, it was one of the largest and most effective bureaucracies in human history to that time. The nature of service exacted great penalities for failure in a particularly environment, and great success was rewarded greatly. In some ways, it was a ruthless meritocracy whose structure and success anticipates the great expansion of government power and capacity seen in the rest of the 19th century.
O'Brian is also the great writer about male friendship. There are important female characters in these books but since most of the action takes place at sea, male characters predominate. The friendship between Aubrey and Maturin is the central armature of the books and is a brilliant creation. The position of women in these books is ambiguous. There are sympathetic characters, notably Aubrey's long suffering wife. Other women figures, notably Maturin's wife, leave a less positive impression. On board ship, women tend to have a disruptive, even malign influence.
How did O'Brian manage to sustain his achievement over 20 books? Beyond his technical abilities as a writer and the instrinsic interest of the subject, O'Brien made a series of very intelligent choices. He has not one but two major protagonists. The contrasting but equally interesting figures of Aubrey and Maturin allowed O'Brien to a particularly rich opportunity to expose different facets of character development and to vary plots carefully. This is quite difficult and I'm not aware of any other writer who has been able to accomplish such sustained development of two major protagonists for such a prolonged period. O'Brian's use of his historical setting is very creative. The scenes and events in the books literally span the whole globe as Aubrey and Maturin encounter numerous cultures and societies. The naval setting allowed him also to introduce numerous new and interesting characters. O'Brian was able to make his stories attractive to many audiences. Several of these stories can be enjoyed as psychological novels, as adventure stories, as suspense novels, and even one as a legal thriller. O'Brian was also a very funny writer, successful at both broad, low humor, and sophisticated wit. Finally, O'Brian made efforts to link some of the books together. While a number are complete in themselves, others form components of extended, multi-book narratives. Desolation Island, Fortune of War, and The Surgeon's Mate are one such grouping. Treason's Harbor, The Far Side of the World, and The Reverse of the Medal are another. The Letter of Marque and the ensuing 4 books, centered around a circumnavigation, are another.
Though the average quality of the books is remarkably high, some are better than others. I suspect that different readers will have different favorites. I personally prefer some of the books with greater psychological elements. The first book, Master and Commander, is one of my favorites. The last 2 or 3, while good, are not as strong as earlier books. I suspect O'Brian's stream of invention was beginning to diminish. All can be read profitably as stand alone works though there is definitely something to be gained by reading in consecutive order.

The Nutmeg of Consolation finds our friends about halfway through a circumnavigation that began 2 books ago. This is the story of their travails in extreme south east asia. The story deftly builds on earlier plot lines and concludes several angles in an almost shocking manner.

This is a book that must be read in the context of all the others that came before. I have read the series through book 19 and have read them in order. As many, many other commentators have mentioned, this series is really one book with twenty chapters (e.i. the individual books) and should be read in order. Not only does this help understand the chracters but allows the reader to move along with the protagonists and understand their reasoning.

The series is masterful and one easily begins to understand the somewhat obscure jargon and period expressions. However, I have benefited from the growing cottage industry in companion books to this series, especially Dean King's "A Sea of Words". This is a good guide to fully appreciating the scope and breadth of these beautifully written novels.

Although THE THIRTEEN GUN SALUTE was one of the least eventful books in the entire Aubrey-Maturin series, THE NUTMEG OF CONSOLATION is one of the most action filled. The books in the series are not, in the end, really about action, but it nonetheless can be a lot of fun when it takes place. The major incident in the previous novel had been the wrecking of the Diane on uncharted rocks near a remote island and the start of this one has the surviving crew members working hard to build a smaller vessel out of the remains of the Diane to sail to the nearest port. Instead, they find themselves under attack by pirates, led by a memorable female who briefly and seemingly befriends Maturin. Later, after being rescued by a Chinaman who comes to the island looking for the makings of birds nest soup, Jack and his crew take charge of the refitting of a Dutch vessel that had been sunk and salvaged that Jack renames The Nutmeg of Consolation. After a long chase of a French privateer and the reuniting with the Surprise, the rest of the novel focuses on a trip to Botany Bay, the novel ending suddenly after a near fatal encounter by Stephen with a male duckbilled platypus. All in all, it is an exceptionally satisfying novel, the only possible complaint that there is little time for the political or interpersonal interplay so fascinating in the other novels. Also, O'Brian, who delights in being not only a first-rate storyteller but a teacher and instructor, gets to do less of the latter here. Still, I can't imagine anyone failing to be thoroughly entertained by this fine novel.

Some reviewers complain that at this point in the series, it is beginning to get a little tired. I do not experience that, though I can acknowledge that the series here begins to struggle against the limitations that were set for it by O'Brian's having set it so late in the Napoleonic wars. O'Brian acknowledges in the preface to the series as a whole that he probably make an error by having Jack become a captain and commander at around the mid-point of the Napoleonic era. As a result, when the series was doing so well and the demand for additional books so great, he was sometimes hard pressed to come up with new twists. Also, the chronology ceases at some point to make much sense. Voyages that would actually take two years must, so that more stories can take place before the end of the Napoleonic wars, effectively take up no more than a few months. As a fan of the series, I am more than willing to suspend my disbelief in order to have a few more stories than ought to be possible squeezed it. It is, in the end, one of the few concessions that any reader has to make to the series, but it is a concession in a good cause.

"The Nutmeg of Consolation" is the fourteenth volume in the famed Aubrey-Maturin series. Even by Patrick O'Brian's standards, this is a particularly well crafted tale, wonderfully displaying the author's masterly narrative technique. I enjoyed it tremendously!

The story begins where "The Thirteen-Gun Salute" ended, on an uninhabited island in the South China Sea. Engaged in building a schooner after having suffered shipwreck during a typhoon, HMS Diane's survivors - including Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin - soon find themselves under attack by Malay pirates. Once this scare is over, a stroke of luck brings them to Batavia from where Jack puts to sea in command of a Dutch ship renamed "Nutmeg of Consolation". Once more it is a French frigate our friends are after, and the ensuing chase is yet another testimony to Patrick O'Brian's phenomenal skill of describing a sea action in the age of sail. Reunited with the "Surprise", the party finally reaches Sydney, site of the penal settlements of New South Wales. There, Stephen not only succeeds in finding Padeen, his former manservant who was deported to New South Wales, but he is also provoked into a duel, acquires a boomerang and has his first encounter with a platypus. It is indeed an eventful stopover in Down Under!

There certainly is a lot of action in "The Nutmeg of Consolation", settings change quickly and along the way Jack and Stephen find themselves in unprecedented situations. And yet, at the same time, there is more wit and irony in this book than in many of the volumes written beforehand. Undoubtedly, the tale's main character is Stephen, deeply immersed in the local flora and fauna whenever possible, but sometimes - and for various reasons - irritable and agitated, his fortunes changing several times during the course of the novel. Through his personage, Patrick O'Brian keeps the story together in a wonderful fashion. Definitely a favourite of mine in the series - at least up to now!

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels continue to defy convention. In form and structure, the novels really aren't separate stories, but instead consist of separate episodes within a much larger narrative. While with most series of novels, the author builds each novel as a self-contained narrative, with each story building to its own particular climax. Not so with these novels, which often end on a point of minor transition but hardly the high point of the novel.

"The Nutmeg of Consolation" continues in this line. At the end of the last novel, "The Thirteen Gun Salute," Aubrey, Maturin, and the crew had been stranded on a proverbial desert island, populated only by pigs, ring-tailed monkeys, and birds. "Nutmeg," fittingly enough, opens with a game of cricket as if no time had passed from one novel to the next. The "first act" of "Nutmeg" sees the most action in the novel, as Aubrey's crew comes under attack by a numerically superior force of savages (O'Brian is hardly politically correct), led by a fierce warrior-queen. O'Brian writes thrilling battle scenes, and this is no exception.

Eventually Aubrey and Maturin return to civilization. In dire need of a ship are able to locate the titular Nutmeg of Consolation, a small Dutch ship that in physical appearance would be a mere sloop, but thanks to Aubrey's status as post-captain the Nutmeg qualifies as a frigate. Desperate to halt French progress in the area and eager to prove that the British rule the seas, Aubrey takes the Nutmeg out in pursuit of a much larger French ship. In a chase that spans for hundreds of miles, O'Brian gets plenty of opportunity to capture the daily life aboard ship as only he can.

This episode then gives way - after a joyous reunion with Tom Pullings - to a trip to Australia and Botany Bay. Here Maturin is able to indulge his whims as a naturalist, but not after getting himself and his crew into hot water with the local army forces by thrashing an army man in a duel. Aubrey features less prominently in this portion of the novel, thanks in large part to his taking of a double-dose of physic without Maturin's approval, and ending up much the worse for wear as a result.

"Nutmeg" is a wonderful book because the journeys and adventures develop at a slow pace. O'Brian allows himself the luxury of capturing the various details of 19th-century life in great detail, in all their humor and sadness. A throw-away tale about an encounter with polar bears is one of the most moving passages in all of O'Brian's works, and his description of Maturin's unfortunate encounter with a platypus is a wonder.

All that is to the good, but I must confess that I was a little hungry for more action by the end of the novel. This probably reflects more on me than on the book, but I look forward to return to a little more cannonfire and broadswords in the coming novels. But to be fair, this four-star rating would probably be a five-star if it had been written by somebody other than O'Brian - he has just set his personal bar so high.

"The Nutmeg of Consulation" opens with Captain Jack Aubrey and the surviving crew of HMS Diane playing cricket on a deserted, lush tropical East Indies island. However, all is not tranquility in paradise, since Aubrey and his men are attacked soon by Malay pirates. Rescued by a Chinese merchant, the crew sails aboard the merchant's junk to Batavia, the capital of the British-occupied Dutch East Indies. Governor Raffles gives Aubrey a Dutch sloop, newly rechristened, "The Nutmeg of Consolation". Soon Aubrey takes Nutmeg into battle against a more powerful, heavily armed French frigate; one of the most brilliant duels he has waged since his successful mission with HMS Sophie, recounted in the novel "Master and Commander". Aubrey and Maturin are reunited with Captain Thomas Pullings and their ship, the former Royal Navy frigate Surprise, now a privateer owned by Maturin, employed by His Majesty's government for special intelligence operations.

Surprise sails for Sydney, the capital of the Australian penal colony of New South Wales. There Aubrey and Maturin must contend with devious politicians and Royal Army officers. Maturin makes several forays into the countryside, collecting natural history specimens and reuniting with a long-lost HMS Surprise shipmate.

Without a doubt this is one of the most exciting installments in the Aubrey-Maturin series, emphasizing Maturin's talents as a doctor, naturalist and spy. O'Brian excels again in his lyrical descriptions and vivid scenes, including his superb knowledge of South Pacific natural history, and depicting once more the strong bond of friendship between his two protagonists.

The fourteenth of Patrick O'Brian's brilliant twenty-volume nautical series finds Captain Aubrey and Stephen Maturin in the south seas. After we get off the deserted island where O'Brian left us shipwrecked in "The Thirteen Gun Salute", we get a new ship, fight the French, find the Suprise, and finally end up visiting the penal colony that is today Australia. O'Brian, of course, has done his homework. The brutality, violence, corruption, and degradation of Australia make for some harrowing reading. Maturin occupies himself with his nature studies, surrounded by wholly new species, including the platypus that provides us with another cliffhanger ending. Because while "Nutmeg" is a sequel to the previous volume, it is also left unfinished. O'Brian's dry wit, intelligent prose, and nautical research are as powerful as ever. On to the next one.

This fourteenth novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series begins where the last one left off, with Jack, Stephen, and 157 crew members cast away on a not-quite-desert island in the South China Sea, attempting to build a schooner from the remains of the wrecked DIANE. After time out for a game of sand-lot cricket (these are Brits, after all), they find themselves holding off a concerted attack by predatory Malays. O'Brian certainly knows how to start his story off with a bang! With a little fortuitous assistance, they make their way back to Batavia, and Gov. Raffles supplies them with a recently raised Dutch ship -- which Jack renames NUTMEG. They set off to rendezvous with the SURPRISE, with adventures and single-ship action along the way, and eventually make it to the penal colony at Botany Bay. O'Brian has some pointed and highly critical observations to make on the British governance of early Australia, and he also maintains his high standards of character development, wit in describing the relationship between the captain and the doctor -- their personalities are extremely differenent in many ways -- and beautifully painted pictures of life and weather at sea. This is one of the best so far of the latter part of the series.

Let's face it, all of Patrick O'Brian's novels in this series are wonderful. The Nutmeg of Consolation is no exception. If you have gotten this far in the series, there is absolutely no reason to stop now. This one takes place primarily in the South Pacific and Australia, and therefore does not have much in the domestic life of Aubrey and Maturin. The novel opens when they are stranded on an island in the South Pacific. Adventures naturally ensue, and ultimately, they find themselves in Australia, clashing to a certain extent with the locals. All in all, a completely enjoyable novel, filled with the humor, the action, the human drama that we come to expect in the Aubrey-Maturin series. Enjoy.

Perhaps because this was my first novel by Patrick O'Brian and it was written after many earlier novels with the same characters I may be have missed some detail about the two main characters, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, which reading earlier works may have revealed. I found both characters to be rather sterile. However, as a maritime historical novel, O'Brian's command of meticulous sailing detail was hugely impressive. Furthermore his knowledge of what was known about the flora and fauna circa 1800 was worth reading this novel alone for. (It is not surprising that O'Brian has written a biography of Sir Joseph Banks). Particularly interesting was his account of life in Botany Bay at this time. I also found O'Brian's references to the Irish Question very interesting. Overall I enjoyed the historical detail in this novel rather than the characters in it. I for one would be quite happy had the male water mole (platypus) been more deadly!