Customer Reviews

The Temple of Optimism

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Temple of Optimism is one of those books that puts a smile on your face as you read it. Its about England before the car came and, for better or worse, opened the country for all to see.

And its about people that fill your living room with a world that you know was real, because of the great mansions which inhabit the oh so English countryside, but which needs a real writer to breath life into. James Fleming weaves intrigue around those essentials of life: Land, love and money.

I got absorbed from the start, was engrossed during the middle and sped to the end.

Here is a Trollope-ian romp through Eighteenth Century England's country set, from landed gentry (the chief characters) to the well-drawn eccentricities of the local unlanded. The chapters dealing with the "villain's" dinner party are not to be missed. How come no one else writes this stuff this well?

Fleming's novel, The Temple of Optimism, begins in a rather odd, impressionistic fashion, but quickly adopts a more conventional narrative form. The characters are interesting, and yes, it is a love story, but what's wrong with that? No, it isn't Jane Austen but I wasn't expecting her. Nor was I expecting the originality of the vision, the basic fun of the good guy and the vigor of the bad guy. He convincingly puts philosophy in the mouth of his villain, and joy in his hero. Wonderful.

This story was like going back in time similar to CITY OF DREAMS and SHADOWBROOK in America. However, Winterbourne was located in rural England of 1788. Written by a Scottish sheep farmer who has worked as a bookseller and accountant, some of the descriptions are imaginative and artistic.

The death of the mother who'd abandoned her son but whose body was brought back to the estate for burial in the English cemetery was a turning point. He'd felt guilty but actually she chose to leave the surroundings to live in a city to forget the past.

This was a good first novel, and he brings the varied characters to life with his novel way of expressing things. The jacket painting of the estate, farm animals, hills and valleys, with the tricorn hats on the men, and the clouds overhead show Derbyshire as it once was. I did not find a great deal of 'optimism' in this tale.

The book jacket compared this novel to the work of Jane Austen. As I read it I found myself disappointed. It is more of a cheapish romance novel than anything I've read by Austen.

Some of the characters are interesting, even likable, but they are inconsistent. The flights of fancy are improbable. They are more along the lines of what you'd see in Anne of Green Gables (which were fine for a young girl, but not as fitting for adults).

The author also underestimates the strength of the culture. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina gives a better account of the consequences the main characters could have expected from the course of their actions. The writing style and attitude are contemporary to 2000, not 1788 despite the setting.

Maybe I would have liked the book better had I not read the Jane Austen reference. It's too late to tell, but it isn't too late for you. Be warned: this book is not what you're looking for if it's Jane Austen you like.