A Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory
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Book Reviews of A Respectable Trade
Book Review: Excellent Story about a Difficult Subject
Summary: 4 Stars
As a fan of this author, I wasn't disappointed with this book. The subject is difficult, but so real. I honestly hadn't ever read a book from this point of view concerning the slave trade in England. I recommend this book highly.Book Review: Very enjoyable--different from her other work
Summary: 4 Stars
This was an insightful novel that paints a picture of slavery I never knew...predating Anerica's struggles. Very well written and paced.Book Review: Bristol made real. Characters not so much.
Summary: 3 Stars
*Could contain spoilers*
I went into this book with some expectation that it would be better than "Fallen Skies," which left me greatly disappointed with the sketchy characterizations. This book, however, continued that disappointment. Most of the characters in this book suffer from two dimensions (at most). Some, like Sarah Cole, remained one-note throughout. What struck me most was that both Mehruru and Frances were not pitiable in the deserving sense (as the premise surely demanded), but pitiful in the contemptuous sense. I couldn't care one way or another how their lives turned out. Mehuru's reasons for loving Frances so deeply were not convincingly drawn. And while I understand that Gregory wanted to illustrate the captive conditions that Frances suffered, she was so weak and so unsympathetic in her inactions & submission that I despised her for most of the book.
Starting around page 250, I gave up on trying to enjoy it and instead decided to appreciate the detail of the Bristol atmosphere (the only evocative portion of the entire book - even the descriptions of the hellish slave holds seemed generic) and laugh out loud at the insane bouts of dialogue and erratic behavior of the characters (i.e., meek and mild Frances embarking on a wide-eyed, disheveled screaming fit at Josiah about the duplicity of the Merchant Venturers).
Gregory didn't seem engaged with these characters at all, though an interview segment at the end of the book implies that she was. But the treatment of the characters seems at arm's length or, at best, haphazard. For instance, Sarah disappears for about 100 pages of the book, although the majority of the action takes place inside the house where, presumably, Sarah is still living. At the end, Frances lays in bed, heavily pregnant, and arouses no suspicions due to a convenient array of bedclothes. Perhaps Gregory intended these absurd oversights as a way to show how disengaged the characters had become with each other, but it just so happened to disengage this reader as well. By the end I was as listless as the pathetic, throat-clutching Frances. But the book read fast (a week) and I MSTed the heck out of it, so the entertainment value was high.
I hear her Tudor novels are good, so I'll stick with this author for another go. But so far, it's 0 for 2.
2 stars for the book. 1 extra star for added MST3K material.
Book Review: A FORBIDDEN PASSION...
Summary: 3 Stars
This is an intriguing book by the author, with a story line that is simple enough. Frances Scott, an impoverished thirty-four year old, gently reared daughter of a cleric, is left to fend for herself by her dead father. Her uncle, Lord Scott, has been assisting her and has found her work as a governess, a job that she loathes. When an upstart tradesman, Josiah Cole, proposes matrimony, she jumps at the chance. It is a marriage of the utmost convenience.
What she does not know is that her husband and his spinster sister, Sarah, trade in slaves, as well as other commodities. When a shipment of slaves comes in, Frances is expected to train the slaves to be servants that can then be sold to wealthy families. After all, having an African servant was all the rage in late eighteenth century England. Her instruction of her captives is a slow process, giving Frances an opportunity to get to know her slaves and the cruelties that have been inflicted upon them. She is, however, without resources to help them.
Along the way, she falls in love with Mehuru, her major domo, and he with her. Therein lies the rub. In eighteenth century England, it was unheard of for a lady of gentle breeding to do so, and Frances has not the strength to follow her heart. Meanwhile, her ambitious husband is oblivious to all that is going on in his household, and involves himself in one scheme after another, trusting on some new found friendships that are suspicious at best. When he finds that his "friends" have merely taken him for a ride, all hell breaks loose.
Much of the dialogue between Frances and Mehuru is pretty laughable, reading like a bad Harlequin romance. Their love affair simply does not ring true. Moreover, the characters in the book are too one dimensional and are pretty much caricatures. Overall, the book is a choppy, uneven affair, but a still a moderately enjoyable one, if one is a fan of the author. Others may not be so forgiving. Still, there are parts of the book that are somewhat interesting, and I was sufficiently intrigued to get the Masterpiece Theatre production of the book for which the author herself wrote the screenplay.
Book Review: More Treatise Than Novel
Summary: 3 Stars
While the purpose was obviously educational about the English slave trade and how slave-stealing affected Africa as well as slaves themselves, this wasn't up to Gregory's usual standard as a novelist. As an American, I knew of the horrific conditions slaves endured aboard ship and in both America--including the North before the Civil War--and the even worse treatment of slaves and high mortality rate in the Sugar Isles. I didn't know how Africa was being stripped of so many healthy people, those left to maintain societies there were so few the whole continent was adversely affected. The story, however, is quite thin. Mehuru, the African priest stolen as a slave, is the most interesting character. Frances, the near asexual spinster white governess who marries a slave trader to function as a slave trainer, is not Gregory's usual full-blooded female character. Their attraction comes out of nowhere after his first impression of her is how ugly she is. Stockholm syndrome? We don't get a hint of that in the book. They couple once, and she conceives--usually rather unlikely--as her husband is impotent. The husband gets his just deserts, Frances suffers for her passion, and we get an Afterward saying how many escaped slaves in England were sheltered by working people, inbred with the English, and are ancestors of a lot of English people who are not aware of it today. Probably true in America and other places where slavery existed, though there was more of a stigma to marry a black person in the US going way back. Hardly justified, but the reason Thomas Jefferson let his children by Sally Hemmings go north and pass as white. Gregory's motives are good, her storytelling gifts overwhelmed by her convictions in this book.