one eye, one arm and one a-social anorak (Losing Nelson - Barry Unsworth)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Losing Nelson - Barry Unsworth
Date:	27/05/01 (49 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An interesting character study, with some good insights into the career of Nelson.

Disadvantages: Too much historical detail? Unsatisfying (in)conclusion.

To Charles Cleasby, February 14th 1997 is not Valentine's Day, it's the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, where Nelson became a national hero. The thought of not getting home in time to re-enact the battle in his basement at the exact time
that it was fought makes him feel ill.

Horatio Nelson is not just Charles's hero, he is his obsession.

Cleasby is a very repressed ex-public schoolboy.
The son of a stern and emotionally undemonstrative father
he feels unable to live up to, and a mother who left home when he was nine. He is financially secure thanks to an inheritance,
but his social gaucheness (he is unable to maintain eye-contact with anyone for example) has turned him into a recluse.
So he scuttles to and from the sanctuary of his home,
and the models in his basement, as rarely as possible.

He is trying to write a definitive biography of Nelson,
and to this end he hires a woman from a secretarial agency
to act as his amanuensis. But Miss Lily, as he calls her,
does more than just type up his manuscript, she tries
to break through his reserve by taking an interest in his hero.

But she is far less impressed by Nelson's achievements, based, as they were, on so much loss of young life. Thus we see Nelson from stereotypically different male and female perspectives.
Their relationship is reminiscent of that between Miss Kenton
and Mr. Stevens in The Remains of the Day (not that this book
is in the same league I'm afraid.)

At school, history tended to put me to sleep (mind you we never did glamorous stuff like heroes and battles) so I did learn quite
a lot about Nelson from reading this that I didn't know before.

In the end there was so much detail that my interest waned.
The author would probably say that getting into the minutiae
of Nelson's career is necessary to portray Cleasby's
obsession,
but, like Cleasby, the novel never really goes anywhere.

Yes, it's an excellent character study of a loner,
yes it doubles as an insightful mini-biography of Nelson,
and yes it makes some good points about hero-worship
and the subjective nature of heroism. But if you like a good plot, well, nothing much happens here, so steer well clear.

But if you want a good mediaeval murder mystery for Christmas
I thoroughly recommend Barry Unsworth's book "Morality Play".

Summary: