For the third time this year, a fiction informed by fact of the literary variety found its way into my reading life. And curiously enough, all three about the Bloomsbury set. The first, The White Garden by Stephanie Barron was quick and entertaining, but in truth, the best parts were the garden descriptions and the cover design. Vanessa and Virginia did not work at all for me. I had to force my way through to the end. But now, on the third attempt with the historically inspired, I found a much more satisfying read in Jill Dawson's The Great Lover, a cleverly imagined and skillfully written treatment of the life of Rupert Brooke.
The novel begins with an elderly Nell Golightly receiving a letter from a Tahitian woman who claims to be the daughter of poet Rupert Brooke. She wants to know more about her father, not the stuff of history but the more elusive and personal details such as what his voice sounded like. Nell had known him well when she was a teenage maid at the Orchard Tea Garden in Grantchester, and what follows is a dual narrative with the voices of Nell and Rupert alternating, one perception completing or illuminating the last. Nell's insight about biography and its limits sets the tone for the book and hints at authorial intent.
"A biography is a good way to find out things but to my mind, well. It has its limits. After all, a biography is written by a person and a person does not always understand another as well as they might think. I enjoy a good biography as well as the next person but I do think they set too much store by facts and not enough by feelings."
Brooke's tenuous hold on sanity is constantly strained by his own feelings of inadequacy, his conflicted sexuality, his self-deceptions as to what defines class differences. All masked to others by charm, insouciance. And clouded in his own mind by youthful idealism as when he examines the working class reader's ability to appreciate literature in his musings about whether he dare approach the maid, Nell.
"There is this strange idea that the lower classes, the people entering into the circle now of the educated, are coarsely devoid of taste, likely to swamp the whole of culture in undistinguished, raucous, stumpy arts that know no tradition. It is only natural that the tastes of the lower classes should be at present infinitely worse than ours. The amazing thing is that it is probably rather better. It is true that many Trade Unionists do not read Milton. Nor do many university men. But take the best of each. Compare the literary criticism of the Labour Leader wit that of the Saturday Review. It is enormously better, enormously readier to recognise good literature."
Brooke appears always just outside of what he wants - without as much money as most of his peers, perhaps without as much talent as some of the Bloomsbury folks with whom he plays, a great lover without a lover until he was 21. Oppressive obstructions to what his heart desires. But Nell appears the picture of sanity to him, and he wants her only to the extent that he feels he won't have her.
"There is something so choking, so suffocating, about being adored. The oxygen of indifference is what I need: it surely makes my heart pump healthily. I am a Poet, so I must be the one doing the loving. The Great Lover, that’s me, not the beloved. The beloved is despicable. That’s the role of a girl."
Nell's longings are also disguised but she is the master of her practical world. Rupert attempts to master his existence through abandon whether that be by swimming au natural in Byron's Pool or by falling in love for the sheer risk of rejection or by planning to write that to which he is unattached.
There is such subtlety of emotion here. This is really a beautifully imagined and written novel. And goes so far beyond an idealized portrait of a beautiful young poet whose life was cut short. You should give it a try. First to comment and request it below, can have my copy. Claim it and then email me with your shipping address.
For synopsis and links to other reviews on this TLC Book Tours event, please click here.
(As an aside, I think that the cover is all wrong for this book. Read the poem, "The Great Lover," in the back of this edition for clarification. The cover image definitely gives an incorrect impression of the novel.)