FFB - Jack Absolute - a new historical hero

Jack Absolute (2004) is the first in a trilogy of books by C.C. Humphreys. The period of the American Revolution – and in particular the year these events take place, 1777 - is filled with adventure and intrigue, when the English troops and the rebels recruited Native Americans to their cause. And of course the French, still smarting at being bested in Canada, are only too keen to side with the rebels to wrest the colony from the Crown. It is a time when colonial families are split, some being loyal to the Crown while others want freedom. Into this powder-keg strides a new and most welcome hero, Jack Absolute.

Jack has an interesting history, although we only snatch a few glimpses of it in this eponymous novel, which promises to be the first of a series. Several years before the events in this book, Jack was captured then adopted by the Iroquois, learning their language and way of life. Now, he is recruited to rally these warriors to the Crown’s cause.

Unfortunately, there’s a spy in the English army and Jack must also find this spy and kill him.

Well-researched, exciting and a quick read, Jack Absolute contains plenty of ingredients to keep your interest. Clearly knowledgeable about sword-play, Humphreys inflicts a London duel on his hero at the beginning of the story and this contest echoes and haunts Jack even in the new continent. Canadian author Humphreys is an actor and it was while playing Jack Absolute in Sheridan’s The Rivals that he became captivated by the character. The man wouldn’t let him be, so eventually he conceded and this adventure is the result. Thus Jack returns from adventuring in India to find his name and earlier exploits have been used by Sheridan in his new play...

There are apt literary allusions, a poignant love story, believable and vicious fighting, humour and irony and a magnificent foil for Jack in the guise of his Native blood-brother Até.

Discovering this character reminds me of those long-ago heady and exciting days when I first found Cornwell’s early Sharpe novels. Jack Absolute has that same page-turning quality and definitely provides sheer reading pleasure.

The other two books are The Blooding of Jack Absolute (2005), which is a prequel, and Absolute Honour (2006).

 

Not lost in translation – 1 - German and French

An earlier FaceBook discussion about the paucity of foreign language books translated into English prompted me to check out my own library.  Below are two images of a quarter of the library.

The other shelves are elsewhere… These books here are in the main fiction, with some reference and art books and Jen’s Spanish tomes. I must admit that the majority of translated works on the shelves are not modern authors, after all, and some I have yet to read (among several hundred others!)

Here you’ll find Dumas, Simenon and Verne – the most popular novelists translated.

Others are, in no particular order:

Allain & Souvestre’s Fantomas, the first of a series, originally in French, published in 1911. There were 31 sequels. Souvestre died of the Spanish ‘flu in 1914, while Allain fought in the trenches, survived, produced eleven more Fantomas novels plus six hundred novels, and married Souvestre’s widow. Fantomas was an antihero, malevolent, a genius of crime, waging war on bourgeois society, masked and wearing evening clothes, a dagger in hand. He ‘violated society women and left their delicately slashed bodies for the servants to find…’

 

And of course the collected works of Guy de Maupassant, which I actually picked up during a visit to Canada! Also, Count Jan Potocki’s The Sargasso Manuscript. This last is a selection of stories written in the tale within a tale style, describing the adventures of a young Spanish captain reared in France who, on a visit to his country, sleeps in a haunted inn and finds his life turned into a gothic nightmare. Originally written in French and first published in St Petersberg in 1804. The original only in Polish contains stories for 66 ‘Days’; this English translation covers only the first fourteen days. Potocki was a Polish nobleman, traveller, diplomat, soldier, ethnologist, archaeologist and balloonist.

Another ‘Frenchman’ is Claude Izner. This is actually the penname of two sisters, Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefevre. They’re booksellers on the banks of the Seine and experts on nineteenth century Paris. Izner’s hero in The Murder on the Eiffel Tower is a young bookseller, Victor Legris, who witnesses the death. As he investigates further, more deaths occur… Legris’s follow-up adventure is The Pere-Lachaise Mystery (2003,2007).

 

Thomas Mann is considered the most important figure in German literature in the first half of the twentieth century. His prose is of his time, omniscient with author intrusion, but soon you get lost in his often monumental tales. The Magic Mountain (1924), Death in Venice (1911), Confessions of Felix Krull (1955) and Buddenbrooks (1901) which drew on autobiographical material. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929.

Some years ago I went through a Hermann Hesse phase and found his collection Stories of Five Decades as a good introduction to his work, ranging from 1899 (he was born in Germany in 1877) up to 1948. He is known for, among others, The Prodigy, Rosshalde, Demian, Siddhartha, Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game. He got his Nobel in 1946.

Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is a marathon 7 volumes and I haven’t finished it yet. Its new title is In Search of Lost Time (revised translation in 1992). My copy is a translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (1981), and it flows beautifully.

‘… so strong an element of hypocrisy is there in even the most sincere people, who lay aside the opinion they actually hold of a person while they are talking to him and express it as soon as he is no longer there…’ – Swann’s Way, p163.

‘There are mountainous, arduous days, up which one takes an infinite time to climb, and downward-sloping days which one can descend at full tilt, singing as one goes.’ – Swann’s Way, p424

 

Zola was remarkably prolific. He gained immediate notoriety with Therese Raquin (1867), the book being labelled ‘pornography’ by critics, whose comments Zola referred to as ‘a churlish and horrified outcry’, thus ensuring its sure-fire success. The novel is a grim tale of adultery, murder and revenge and is still powerful today.

Next, I’ll look at the Spanish and other language translations in my library…