Customer Reviews

Quentin Durward

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4 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Quentin Durward is good reading, right up (almost) to the very end. It's excellent historical fiction with very rich characterization, especially of Louis XI. Excellent, that is, except for the women. While two of the minor female characters are interesting, the female lead is as dull as dishwater. My real complaint is that the ending is bungled. After the tremendous buildup full of exciting action and convincing sets, you turn the page and...it's just over! Misses the crecendo and the denoument. Still, I enjoyed it, and recommend checking it out of the library, as I did.

I read this novel forty years ago in the Modern Library edition and I am amazed that it is out of print except in expensive library editions. It is one of Scott's finest novels, full of action and with a fine portrait of King Louis. It was the first novel to use a gypsy as a character. It was made into a movie in the 1950's. Scott of one of the most neglected geniuses in literature and the world is the poorer for it.

When I was 13, I asked my father what his favorite book was when he was my age. He told me "Quentin Durward". The next time we were in a bookstore together, I found a paperback copy of this book and bought it...for 75 cents! When I read this book, I entered the medieval world of knights, kings, lovely medieval ladies, and chivalry. I later learned that Quentin Durward is about fighting to preserve moral order in a changing world. What book could be more relevant today? I just bought this book for my 13 year old son, and he has it on his list of books to read this summer. The generations in my family will be connected by this book and the themes it addresses.

p.s. When going through my father's library, I discovered the old copy my father had read. It had his father's name written on the first page, and his grandmother's name on a bookplate inside the front cover!

This is the first Sir Walter Scott novel I've read since 1975. I was struck by how modern -- or even post-modern -- its structure is. For one thing, the novel is a narrated by fictitious narrator named Sir Walter Scott, honest, who stumbles into a private library salvaged from pre-revolutionary France; for another, its annotations reference sources which may or may not exist, but which the fictitious narrator claims he read in the private library referenced above. Further, with the exception of the heroine (dish-water dull, I agree), the characters all behave as modern people would. Yet, as far as I can tell, Borges never wrote about Sir Walter Scott. Go figure.

I believe that Sir Walter Scott was the man who invented the historical novel, and they say that this is one of his finest efforts. Certainly, it puts a lot of modern fiction into the shade, especially the sort of modern novel which amounts to prolonged gazing at one's own navel. (I have The Sense of an Ending (Borzoi Books) in mind...)

But this is heresy! How can you possibly prefer clunky old Walter Scott (SO unfashionable!) to the winner of the Man Booker Prize (SO fashionable!). My only answer is that literary reputations come, and literary reputations go. Time was, when Sir Walter Scott was one of the best-read authors in history, but his reputation took a serious dive when "real writers" such as Ezra Pound and James Joyce came along.

Nevertheless, "Quentin Durward" is very good reading. Not only is it a good story, you will actually gain some valuable knowledge about history, in particular the French king Louis XI, and the Duke of Burgundy.

How about the style? Well, when I was in 8th grade I decided it was impenetrable, even yucky. But the decades passed (as they will) and now the style offers no impediment whatsoever.

One very refreshing thing is that Quentin Durward is a Complete Pre-Feminist Male Hero. He is strong, valiant, a terrifying fighter, and extremely good-looking into the bargain. He respects women, and shows them every courtesy; in fact, at the end of the novel he almost surrenders his greatest love to rescue a Flemish girl who has been captured by a gang of soldiers with no good intentions. On top of that, he is nobly born, and expects that others treat him accordingly, mostly because he conducts himself according to a strict code of nobility.

And all of these things are gone, gone with the wind -- if they ever really existed.

I'm looking forward to reading more from this author, especially since you can get his complete works for the Kindle for almost nothing. :-)

This 2008 (Bibliolife)Bibliobazaar edition of Quentin Durward (paperback and probably hardcover too)has bright white paper but the text is too small. It is a scanned & reduced copy of the original published text. There are nine lines of text per inch. The text somewhat resembles the #7 font size bold Baskerville Old Face in the MsftWord font menu. I am returning this book and plan to find another version with larger text.