Customer Reviews

The Stranger from the Sea (The Poldark Saga)

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

 

 

Unlike the previous reviewer, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel. I had had some recollections of the PBS Poldark Series when it was on TV back in the '70s. But beyond that, I did not know anything else about Ross Poldark and his family. That is, until I read this novel, the first of the series for me.

In this novel, Winston Graham provides rich character sketches of Clowance and Jeremy, two of the Poldark children. Clowance is a free-spirited, sensitive, yet sober-minded kind of young lady. You see her becoming acquainted with a young man who was fished out of the sea, and are witness to her growing attraction to him. He (Stephen Carrington) is an adventurer, a dreamer, a striver, a charmer, and a gambler. Yet, he has a good heart. A big heart. I don't think it at all strange or odd that a young woman should be attracted to a man who is a bit rough round the edges as Stephen is. The reader may consider Stephen Carrington as a force of nature in terms of his personality and spirit.

Jeremy's story is especially touching. He and his father have a somewhat uneasy and distant relationship, which by turns, begins to become closer. And there is also Jeremy's growing love for Cuby Trevanion.

Contrary to what the earlier reviewer said, I thought "The Stranger from the Sea" was a wonderful story. In addition to Ross and Demelza, you begin to see in this novel how the lives of their children are shaping themselves. I liked that. And the author's descriptions of Cornwall are so evocative. You can almost feel the salt of the ocean on your skin and clothes as it pounds against the beach, or feel the touch of a rising breeze sweeping across the hills, signaling the approach of an autumn storm.

I can hardly wait to read the rest of the series!

I absolutely love the first 8 Poldark books, the ones that concentrated on Ross and Demelza; Francis and Elizabeth, and George Warleggan. I'm in the minority that didn't think the stories of their children needed to be told. But, even given that feeling, THE STRANGER FROM THE SEA is a pretty poor first follow-up. (The Miller's Dance and The Twisted Sword are stronger novels, but I nearly didn't read them after being so disappointed with this book.) And I still wish I'd stopped reading this saga with "The Angry Tide" and not given in to the temptation to see what was going to happen to the children of Ross, Demelza and George.

In THE STRANGER FROM THE SEA, I found myself taking a particular dislike to the character of Stephen Carrington - I could not see in any way how Clowance would ever be attracted to him. His personality was arrogant; nothing about his circumstances made him believable, and the reader could sense that he was a liar from the beginning. To me, Stephen was an irritant. Jeremy and Cuby's story was more interesting, but their romance is something of a repeat of the old love/conflict of Ross and Elizabeth in some respects. I liked Jeremy more as his story is continued in the further sequels, but from the start of STRANGER, I never grasped Clowance's character or what attracted so many men to her. It was as if Mr. Graham was trying to create a Demelza for the younger generation, but for me Clowance just didn't work, even as a pale copy of Demelza. I admit that Clowance's senseless attraction to the worthless Stephen colors my opinion of her. It starts her off badly, like a racehorse that stumbles out of the box.

In common with many another multi-generational and multi-charactered family saga, a strain of repetition and less fascinating characters than those in previous books becomes evident - this is strongly apparent in THE STRANGER FROM THE SEA.

After the powerful ending to The Angry Tide, Winston Graham made the intelligent, bold, but sometimes criticized decision to move this next Poldark novel a decade into the future from where the last installment ended. It is now 1810, the eighteenth-century is but a memory, the war with France, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of British lives and drained the national treasury, plows into its third decade, and in Cornwall, the tragically costly Warleggan-Poldark feud has, in Graham's words "cooled to ashes." In this segment of the series, the children of the aging but far from antiquated Ross and Demelza move onto center stage and it is as much on their lives as those of the now older generation that the plot focuses. Clowance Poldark, oldest surviving daughter of the Nampara household, and her older brother Jeremy, each become fixated upon love interests. Jeremy is infatuated with the gracefully elegant Cuby Trevanion, a young woman from an ancient but impoverished family of the gentry, while the normally sensible Clowance loses her heart to the title character of this volume, the mysterious Stephen Carrington, the "stranger from the sea." When Carrington is first introduced to the series, it is as he is pulled nearly dead and clinging to the wreckage of a ship that washes in near Nampara Cove. While recovering in the Poldark home, Carrington seems reluctant to discuss his past, and is judged (probably correctly) to be a privateer or smuggler. However the energetic, rugged Carrington, partly an ambitious ne'er do well, partly a sort of lower-class version of the unconquerable Ross Poldark himself, soon asserts his presence in the local community, and becomes popular for his bravery and grand plots to gain wealth.

Unlike the previous reviewer, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel. I had had some recollections of the PBS Poldark Series when it was on TV back in the '70s. But beyond that, I did not know anything else about Ross Poldark and his family. That is, until I read this novel, the first of the series for me.

In this novel, Winston Graham provides rich character sketches of Clowance and Jeremy, two of the Poldark children. Clowance is a free-spirited, sensitive, yet sober-minded kind of young lady. You see her becoming acquainted with a young man who was fished out of the sea, and are witness to her growing attraction to him. He (Stephen Carrington) is an adventurer, a dreamer, a striver, a charmer, and a gambler. Yet, he has a good heart. A big heart. I don't think it at all strange or odd that a young woman should be attracted to a man who is a bit rough round the edges as Stephen is. The reader may consider Stephen Carrington as a force of nature in terms of his personality and spirit.

Jeremy's story is especially touching. He and his father have a somewhat uneasy and distant relationship, which by turns, begins to become closer. And there is also Jeremy's growing love for Cuby Trevanion.

Contrary to what the earlier reviewer said, I thought "The Stranger from the Sea" was a wonderful story. In addition to Ross and Demelza, you begin to see in this novel how the lives of their children are shaping themselves. I liked that. And the author's descriptions of Cornwall are so evocative. You can almost feel the salt of the ocean on your skin and clothes as it pounds against the beach, or feel the touch of a rising breeze sweeping across the hills, signaling the approach of an autumn storm.

I can hardly wait to read the rest of the series!