The Gentleman is introduced on its title page as:
“Being a Truthful Account Concerning the Hazards of Love, Marriage, Duels, Poetry, Inventors, Family, Anarchists, Airships, Intercourse With the Devil, Ladies’ Undergarments, Painting from Life, the History of Exploration, &c., Set Down by Mr. Lionel Lupus Savage & Edited With Objections by Mr. Hubert Lancaster, Esq., Containing Nothing Either Allegorical or Metaphorical and Never Deviating From The Truth.”
It is a hilarious and affectionate send-up of Victoriana and romance.
Lionel Savage, a very bad poet, has to marry for money. He selects a lovely young woman named Vivien and during the courtship he thinks that he has fallen madly in love with her. Alas, after marriage he discovers that he can no longer write and he determines that he hates his wife. In despair, he confides in the devil, and when Vivien promptly disappears Lionel assumes that he has accidentally traded her for a renewed ability to write. He then realizes that he does love his wife and that he will have to journey into Hell to bring her back.
Lionel teams up with his unflappable butler, Simmons, a character type that we’ve seen a thousand times but that I never get tired of. Simmons responds to comments like “I’m going to kill myself!” with a calm, “Very good, Sir.” Lionel also teams up with his unconventional sister, a mad inventor, and his brother-in-law, who is not married to Lizzie, and also happens to be a famous explorer.
All of these characters are delightfully overblown. Lizzie, the sister, announces that she’s been thrown out of school for “a dalliance with the dean’s son,” which she seems to have taken on purely for educational purposes (Lizzie loves to try new things). The explorer, Ashley, is constantly dropping comments like, “That was the beginning of it all-the first Tibet trip, the Peruvian debacle, the Greenland rambles. Surely you’ve heard of them?” Meanwhile the editor leaves footnotes giving his own, rather stodgy opinions on every page.
One reason that this book works so well is that there is nothing mean-spirited about it. One gets the impression that the author loves all the versions of Victorian romance from the gothic to the steampunk oeuvre. Lionel, who narrates the book, is self-centered and fickle but not malicious, and the whole book consists of him getting his comeuppance for his caddish behavior. The characters are silly but good-hearted and fun to spend time with. The story moves along at a brisk pace, making this a light, fun read packed with witty dialogue and slapstick physical humor. There’s a strong feminist slant to the story and a subtle yet extremely effective blow for racial justice in the pages as well.
Best of all, the book is — in addition to being hilarious — genuinely heartwarming. Here’s Lionel:
I am not by nature a man who has friends, but then I am not a man who believed I needed friends. Perhaps I am ill. I have made three friends in two days, though it feels much longer. Granted, one of them belongs to an organization which has imprisoned me in a most cowardly manner, the other is my brother-in-law who tried not long ago to kill me, and the third is the Devil; but, then, I have never been conventional.
Awwww.
This is a soap bubble of a story in which terrible emotional wounds are healed by arguing about poetry (free verse versus blank verse). There is romance — in fact there are two, and both are quite satisfactory. Mostly it’s a romance in the older sense of the term, in that it’s an adventure. I had a great time with these people and their utter refusal to do anything sensible (with the exception of the constantly sensible Simmons). The book is sweet, smart, clever, and so much fun!
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!
Sounds wonderful!! Thank you, Carrie.
*insert pathetic, whiny diatribe against the book being in 1st person because I’m a turd!*
WHYYYYYYYY AM I SUCH AN ASS-BUTT?! 🙁
My craptasticness aside, I’ll be double damned if this review still doesn’t have that evil voice inside my head saying, “Jacqueline, reeeeaad it!” That voice is a troll because it knows I hate singular 1st person POV. *whines some more because reasons*
I loved this one. I listened to the audiobook and it’s great. I agree about it not being mean-spirited, it hits the same spot for me as Cold Comfort Farm.
@Lisa You know something, while audiobooks have never really worked for me…
WHAT IF I USED THEM FOR 1ST PERSON STORIES!?
I would be so interested to see if 1st person would work better for my stubborn brain if it was being read to me by quite literally a voice not my own! WHY HAVEN’T I EVER THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE?!?!?!!
@Jacqueline–I’m with you in that first-person is grating for me 90% of the time, but this sounds like a FP book I’d be eager to read. It sounds like a loving satire (à la Cold Comfort Farm, like @Lisa said) in which case FP might have a different tone altogether than a standard novel. The excerpt above where he ponders his new friendships is funny and sweet, and the POV lends itself well to the writing style. Requesting this from the library!
@Rose GOOD POINT HON! I still know what a butt I am, so I’m going to give audiobooks a try again with this. It still feels good to know I’m not the only one who gets all sightastic over 1st person. I reeeaaally need to work on getting over that.
@Jacqueline you’re not alone!! I’ve put down nearly every FP romance novel I’ve ever picked up. The audiobook trick sounds like a great idea! Post about whether it worked for you.
(Also, your name is really pretty and the name I always wanted to give a daughter when/if one arrives! 🙂 )
@Rose THANK YE FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY LITTLE BITTY FANGIRL HEART! No, really. Everybody loving the crap out of books in 1st person & I’m over here in my lil grumpy boat going, “Buttttttt!!!”
I definitely will do that! I normally live tweet all my romance book reading (and Asian drama watching) experiences on Twitter because it’s a good cheat sheet for when I write my review scripts for my YouTube channel. It will be SOO interesting to see how live tweeting an audiobook is compared to my usual fair. Either way, I’ll make a note to come back and be like I HAD THESE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS hahaha.
Awwwwwwww, that is so sweet! My mom named me after Jacqueline Kennedy because she adored her. Fun fact! My nickname, Jacquie, is spelled that way because my grandmother was reading a romance novel with a heroine which had that name and spelling! I so wish I knew what book it was.
@Jacqueline that’s a fabulous name story! HaBO that book!!!
@Rose I WISH I TOTALLY COULD! But sadly, mom couldn’t remember the details so all I know is that it had to have been a book published in or before 1989 and that the heroine had the name Jacquie. Doubt that would be even the least bit useful for a HaBO. *sobs*
Sounds to be in the same league as the Johannes Cabal series, which is AWESOME, but this one has romance too!!! This is definitely going on my TBR list. 🙂
Well, this sounds like tons of catnip for me, so onto the wishlist it goes.
I ADORED this book. I’m so glad other people are reading it. I hope the author writes more!
Speaking of the author, did you see his photo?? YUMMY!
I loved reading this book. I got it in a book subscription and read it in one sitting.
:: mad dash to Amazon ::
August?! But I want it now!
:: sob ::
@Louise – It came out August of 2016, so it’s available now. It’s just more than I spend on splurge books, so it’s going to the top of my Serious Decision Book-Buying List. 🙂
@Sierra– Well, it’s available now if I cough up for the hardcover. (I don’t “do” Kindle.) For the paperback we have to wait a year. Or wait for the library to acquire it–but this sounds more like a book I’d want to own.
Trivia: Isaac Asimov once got his publisher to go along with an experiment: one of his books came out in hardcover, paperback and book-club concurrently instead of with the usual delays. They discovered that–don’t everyone yawn at once–overall sales were not affected in any way whatsoever. Sadly, nobody else seems to have had the same idea.
@Louise – Ah, yeah. I get what you meant now. 🙂 Sadly, I have no room for more physical books. (Literally. We still have a few boxes of books because we can’t fit them on our multitude of bookshelves, even with books two deep on many of them. And this is AFTER purging several boxes. We need a bigger place.) So it’s on my e-book list. 🙂