Fiction, Fiction Subjects

The Truelove

Name: The Truelove
Author: Patrick O'Brian
ISBN: 9780393310160

by Patrick O'Brian, O'Brian

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Overview

The fifteenth installment in Patrick O'Brian's widely claimed series of Aubrey/Maturin novels is in equal parts mystery, adventure, and psychological drama.

A British whaler has been captured by an ambitious chief in the sandwich islands at French instigation, and Captain Aubrey, R. N., Is dispatched with the Surprise to restore order. But stowed away in the cable-tier is an escaped female convict. To the officers, Clarissa Harvill is an object of awkward courtliness and dangerous jealousies. Aubrey himself is won over and indeed strongly attracted to this woman who will not speak of her past. But only Aubrey's friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin, can fathom Clarissa's secrets: her crime, her personality, and a clue identifying a highly placed English spy in the pay of Napoleon's intelligence service.

In a thrilling finale, Patrick O'Brian delivers all the excitement his many readers expect: Aubrey and the crew of the Surprise impose a brutal pax Britannica upon the islanders in a pitched battle against a band of headhunting cannibals.

This splendid installment in O'Brian's widely acclaimed series of Aubrey-Maturin novels is in equal parts mystery, adventure, and psychological drama. A British whaler has been captured by an ambitious chief in the Friendly Isles (Tonga) at French instigation, and Captain Aubrey of the Royal Navy is dispatched with the Surprise to restore order.

Synopsis

The fifteenth installment in Patrick O'Brian's widely claimed series of Aubrey/Maturin novels is in equal parts mystery, adventure, and psychological drama.

Publishers Weekly

This entry in O'Brian's late-18th-century seafaring series will delight fans, while offering newcomers a good place to jump in. Here Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are assigned to help a Polynesian queen in her struggle with a Napoleon-backed rival, and a female convict is smuggled aboard by a midshipman in Australia. (July)

About the Author, Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O'Brian's historic naval adventure novels were solely the pleasure of British readers until the late '80s; but for Americans, it's better late than never. The appearance of the author's Aubrey-Maturin series in the States, with its compelling protagonists and rich period detail from the Napoleonic Wars, earned thousands of fans including Iris Murdoch, Eudora Welty and Tom Stoppard.

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Editorials

Slate - Christopher Hitchens

“I devoured Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog.”

A. S. Byatt

“Gripping and vivid… a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit.”

George Will

“O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century.”

Boston Globe

“I haven’t read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O’Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn’t stop.”

New Republic

“Patrick O’Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars.”

Keith Richards

“I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with Master and Commander. It wasn’t primarily the Nelson and Napoleonic period, more the human relationships. …And of course having characters isolated in the middle of the goddamn sea gives more scope. …It’s about friendship, camaraderie. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin always remind me a bit of Mick and me.”

New York Times

“It has been something of a shock to find myself—an inveterate reader of girl books—obsessed with Patrick O’Brian’s Napoleonic-era historical novels… What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love.”

New York Times

“[O’Brian’s] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today’s putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade.”

Chicago Tribune

“What lifts The Truelove into the highest ranks of fiction is what it shares with the rest of its author's writing: page after page of unmistakably original insights into the mysteries of the world.”

Washington Post

“The Aubrey-Maturin series… far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart.”

Chicago Sun-Times

“There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his.”

New York Times Book Review

“The best historical novels ever written… On every page Mr. O’Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don’t, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives.”

Publishers Weekly

Boston Globe

I haven’t read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O’Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn’t stop.— E. O. Wilson

Chicago Tribune

What lifts The Truelove into the highest ranks of fiction is what it shares with the rest of its author's writing: page after page of unmistakably original insights into the mysteries of the world.— Dick Adler