Genre: Historical Fiction
Page Count: 422
Being denied, that’s how I felt when I received every other book from my shopping-cart except this novel. Having one of the most appealing titles and a beautiful cover to go along with it, I knew I had to get my hands on it somehow, even though I didn’t know anything about this novel at all. That’s what denial does to you – a lesson learned from by book-shopping tales.
Now that I have owned, cherished, and read this beautiful sounding book, let’s see if it really is worth the effort that I put into getting it, or in general, worth reading. After all, it’s a thick one at over four-hundred pages.
This novel has one of the most vivid, gripping, and absorbing beginnings I have ever read. As the novel opens, a defeated and injured army captain, John Lacroix, is being carried in a horse-carriage in the midst of the dark and wet night. The carriage man, using his memory of roads as his sight would do him no service in such darkness, carries the captain to his house where he’ll be looked after by the house-maid Miss Nell. Picturesque, neatly detailed, and engaging, Miller’s patient prose offers readers a promising start.
Parallelly, in another village, a trial is going on where a few witnesses are trying to identify the captain and his men responsible for the burning of a town, murder of its men, and raping of the women. Here, the novel sets up as two of the soldiers present at the trial, British corporal Calley and his Spanish companion Medina are sent to capture and execute Capt. Lacroix – the man charged guilty for the brutal crimes committed in the burning of the town. The cat and mouse chase begins.
Lacroix after getting physically well decides to go off to islands to remedy his postwar emotional traumas; or put another way, to escape his guilty past. And although he manages to reach a remote island, after being beaten down and robbed, and once there finds a welcoming family to stay with, and even fall in love, little does he know that his past is revengefully after him.
Sadly, Miller’s prose soon falls flat with its linear-style storytelling, and despite its suspenseful plot, it becomes a difficult and disengaging book to read. I continued reading because I wanted to like this novel, given my buoyant hopes prior and at its start, and was curious as to where the novel would end. It took me almost two and a half weeks to finally finish this book. With its story going nowhere and Miller’s prose offering nothing exciting, I even wanted to discontinue it a few times.
Towards the end however, as Lacroix settles with the family on the island, the story gains its strength back in the brimming romance between Lacroix and Emily, one of the two sisters he’s staying with. With a few particularly beautiful passages, Miller’s bland prose finds back its colors as he slowly and beautifully proceeds the new-born romance.
Where love-tales nowadays start and end with intercourse, Miller makes the reader nostalgic with his desirably gentle and sweet relationship-building between an escaping soldier and an escaping house-lady. It is also here as the chasing officers exhaust and Lacroix finally opens about his past with Emily, that Miller offers insights into who a soldier really is: a man determined to carry-out his commands.
Finally, and disappointingly, the end comes and goes in too
quick a time than it took to get there – leaving even more to be desired. While
there are certain things to be like about this novel: its title and beautiful cover,
a suspenseful plot, Miller’s picturesque prose and storytelling, and a sweet romance
towards the end – ultimately, its mostly flat writing, dragging story, and disappointing ending
despite being four-hundred pages, makes it an overall mediocre book for me.
Rating: 3.5/5 *** January 17, 2021_