by Patrick O’Brian
What in the world possessed me to read yet another book about a bunch of British guys on a ship (the Royal Navy) in the late 18th century, immediately after reading an edition of Joseph Conrad’s short story, “The Secret Sharer” (complete with representative works of critical essays), that’s also about a bunch of British guys on a ship (the merchant marine) in the late 19th century, which I absolutely hated?
This: last November I saw the DVD, Master and Commander starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, and loved it. (Both also starred in A Beautiful Mind.) Brian told me that our brother-in-law is a fan of Patrick O’Brian’s novels, and since I thought the movie was so awesome, then certainly the book must be even better. Because they usually are, right? Wrong!
Novels, because they aren’t limited to about 2 hours of film time, are far richer and offer background that is cut from the movies. In this case, we learn how Captain Jack Aubrey of the HMS Sophie and Doctor Stephen Maturin become friends. We have the pleasure of reading how Aubrey receives command of the Sophie while grounded in Minorca, and prepares her to set sail.
But instead of receiving orders to pursue and capture a French Naval ship and the setbacks and near misses and heroic battles wonderfully portrayed in full, Hollywood splendor, the Sophie only takes part in several skirmishes, none of which are…all that. About halfway through, the book was a surefire way for me to get to sleep and yet I continued doggedly, waiting for a full-scale battle only to reach an anticlimactic ending.
However, Aubrey and Maturin are well-rounded characters, neither of whom are perfect, which makes Aubrey, to me, especially endearing. If you have an elementary knowledge of Spanish and French you’ll either cringe or laugh at the way he horribly mangles both, using words from each language — plus English — when communicating with non-British characters.
The language O’Brian uses is mind-boggling — he really knows his way around a sloop and more than merely peppers the narrative with “mizzen” here and “topgallantsails” there, whatever those are. You get the full jargon and yet, even though I had no idea what the Sophie’s crew was doing at certain times, the story is so character-driven that it didn’t matter. For all I know, a “poop-deck” is how sailors referred to the ship’s litter box, since it was a long-standing tradition to have a ship’s cat for rodent control and crew morale.
Master and Commander is the first in a series of Aubrey/Maturin novels and although I was a little disappointed, now that I know what to expect, I look forward to reading the next one.
