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The Man in the Iron Mask (Hardcover)

by Peter Hoyle (Author)

2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Philip Rampick, an impoverished recluse and memoirist living in a down-at-the-heels housing project somewhere in England, suffers the delusion that he is "the Man in the Iron Mask" immortalized in Dumas's novel. Aside from his strange spinster sister, Sylvia, his only apparent contact with reality is the neighbor, companion, confidant, and "jailer" who narrates the story and becomes obsessed with Rampick's life, modus vivendi, and compulsively kept "diary." Gradually and inevitably, the narrator's obsession becomes his nemesis and undoing. Originally published in Britain, this strange and fascinating novel features an intricately textured plot and a startling denouement. A complex and compelling study in madness. Ronald L. Coombs, SUNY Health Sciences Ctr., Brooklyn Lib.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Hoyle's first novel (published in Britain in 1984): an ambitious tale of a "gentle madman" who assumes the identity of the Dumas hero. The nameless narrator (whose wife has just left him) lives in a seedy housing-project in present-day England. One day he hears sobbing from the apartment above and investigates to find a disheveled man named Philip Rampick, who is under the illusion that he is the famed man in the iron mask, Pretender to the Throne, imprisoned by his brother, the Sun King, Louis XIV: "I expected you today, Monsieur. I know you bring a message from the King." Rampick believes the narrator to be (alternately) either his mortal enemy, the Musketeer d'Artagnan, or his kindly gaoler, Saint-Mars, and the narrator - his own life empty - falls wholeheartedly into the folie a deux. When Rampick's exasperated sister arrives to claim her wandering brother, the narrator takes him on a journey (wonderfully described, and very funny) through industrial England - with Rampick all the time thinking he's being transferred to another prison in 17th-centuryFrance. Predictably, though, the narrator becomes even more mad than the madman, and is finally institutionalized - where he learns that Rampick has committed suicide (although a psychiatrist's "note" at the end indicates that the "narrator" may have been Rampick himself all along). A tricky, metaphysical novel, sometimes brilliant, but finally self-conscious and overintellectualized - and it presumes a familiarity with the Dumas classic many readers may not have. For a more fully realized variation on the same theme, see Hoyle's second novel, Brantwood (above). (Kirkus Reviews)

Product Details

Hardcover: 180 pages
Publisher: Carcanet Pr (October 1986)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0856354996
ISBN-13: 978-0856354991

Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,401,694 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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1 book cites this book:

The Man in the Iron Mask (Oxford World's Classics) by Alexandre Dumas p�re in Front Matter

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A modern novel that toys with pointlessness., December 11, 1998

By	"timonsesaias" (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This novel is set in vaguely modern Britain (the precise date would be a spoiler) and deals with a charater who discovers that his upstairs neighbor believes himself to be the Man in the Iron Mask, both of history and of Dumas' novel. The action follows the character's increasing involvement in and frequent resistence to this madman's fantasy world. Likewise the character is drawn into the madman's family life. Without getting specific, the novel is about the "cantagiousness" of madness. This is a serious issue, but this is a modern novel and is mainly interested in the question for "effect" and not in any philosophical way. It is well-written, and those who want no more from a novel than literary in-jokes and surreal effects should find it thoroughly satisfactory. For my tastes (and I do like the surrealism of Borges and Kafka, for example) the book did not seem to be about real people; nor had it anything interesting to say about Dumas; nor anything interesting to say about the historical Iron Mask. I came away from this book feeling that it had been a pointless exercise.

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