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Overview
Jeremiah (Jem) Mount, it would appear, wants for neither pluck nor luck. Indeed, by the time he's twenty-one, this yeoman's son has turned pornography into profit, landed a stationer's apprenticeship, and bamboozled his way into General Monck's good graces and Oliver Cromwell's government as a clerk to the Great Council. It's there that Jem first makes the acquaintance of a bright, affable young fellow named Samuel Pepys, and it's then that the worm of Jem's good fortune turns. With envy Jem watches as his galling colleague Sam advances in the governmental ranks, angles a pretty wife, and buys a house in the City. He also keeps a diary that irksomely, to Jem, takes no more than a passing notice to a sometime drinking companion named Mr. Mount. Jem's professional jealousy deepens, and in his own memoirs he plots revenge on this measly mouse of a Pepysian man who happens also to be English literature's most celebrated diarist. Haplessly, though, Jem's plots to bring down his unwitting rival thrust him into the arms of General Monck's imperious wife, who submits him shamelessly to her emotional whims and sexual fantasies, whereas the object of Jem's own desire - Elizabeth St. Michel, otherwise known as Mrs. Pepys - eludes him as blithely as she foils his vengeful designs against her husband.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
FYI: Mount is editor of the Times Literary Supplement and a Sunday Times columnist. His novel Of Love and Asthma received the 1992 Hawthornden Prize. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Michael Upchurch
...[T]he book isn't just a tour de force. It's also a wrenchingly funny commentary on a life that, like most, consists of interim compromises, thwarted desires and sadly unfulfilled expectations of improved finances....The book satisfies in the same way that the most artful memoirs do — and, indeed, its conjured illusion of continuing, shape-shifting life is so fluid and persuasive that it handily competes with the realities of its chosen era.— The New York Times Book Review
Merle Rubin
Having steeped himself in the history and flavor of the period, Mr. Mount gives us Jem's adventures, amours, triumphs and misfortunes as told in Jem's own words.— The Wall Street Journal
Kirkus Reviews
A mildly diverting, occasionally winsome historical comedy from veteran Mount (Of Love and Asthma, 1992, etc.). The text purports to be a memoir by Jeremiah (Jem) Mount, a distant ancestor of the author's and a contemporary of the famed diarist Samuel ("Sam") Pepys (1633–1703). Pepys is Jem's great antagonist, drifting upward through the ranks of society and government in Restoration England as Jem ceaselessly struggles in his dozens of business and social ventures. The narration tends toward the dull and seems to loiter dutifully on the pages. Early sections are promising as Jem recollects his plucky youth in Churn at the time when his nose for business and swindle first develops. Later, he leaves home and thrives in the briefly evoked scruff of 17th-century London. A stationer and map-seller, Jem supplies charts to the "General"—i.e., the Duke of Albermarle—that prove crucial to the Duke's naval victories against the Dutch. Having fallen in love with Nan, a seamstress, Jem discovers that she has married the General and is now the Duchess. These affiliations, taken together, result in Jem's being retained as a servant. From here, though, Mount's story sags to its conclusion. While Jem's manhood, ambitions, and professional competence are variously humiliated, he must also watch Pepys rise through the ranks of English bureaucracy while he himself falls in hopeless love with Mrs. Pepys. Many pages are spent detailing Jem's various attempts to unseat Pepys by unmasking his philandering and larceny, but nothing comes to fruition. His investments in timber ruined by the Great London Fire, Jem sails to Jamaica, returns home, takes work in an ink factory, and dies after fallinginto a vat of boiling ink. The court and parliamentary intrigues are droll, but Jem's character is lukewarm, and historical London only rarely springs to life.Book Details
Published
March 31, 1999
Publisher
Avalon Publishing Group
Pages
425
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780786706495