The Romantic
-
-
4.4 • 55 Ratings
-
-
- £5.99
-
- £5.99
Publisher Description
Soldier. Farmer. Felon. Writer. Father. Lover.
One man, many lives.
Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss. Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa. In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days. As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is. This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.
From one of Britain's best-loved and bestselling writers comes an intimate yet panoramic novel set across the nineteenth century.
'Picaresque, big-hearted and moving, this is Boyd at the top of his game' Guardian
'There are few reading pleasures as great as giving in to a William Boyd novel' Sunday Times
'One of our best contemporary storytellers' Spectator
'Simply the best realistic storyteller of his generation' Sebastian Faulks
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cast as a true story "discovered" by Boyd (Any Human Heart), this raucous picaresque chronicles an Englishman's search for fulfilment and his encounters with prominent historical figures. Cashel Greville Ross is raised by an aunt, his parents having drowned shortly after his birth in 1799. He joins the British army as a young man, serves as a drummer at Waterloo, and travels the globe in search of his fortune. In Pisa, he meets Mary Shelley, who introduces him to her poet husband, Percy, and the couple's good friend Lord Byron. In Africa, he races Richard Francis Burton and John Speke to locate the headwaters of the Nile. After he's almost court-martialed for disobeying orders in Ceylon, Cashel does a stint in debtor's prison in England, founds a brewery in America, and becomes an accidental smuggler of Greek antiquities in Trieste. He also falls in love with numerous beautiful women, among them a countess in Ravenna and a free-spirited Bostonian. Whether in describing military life on the far-flung frontiers of the British empire, detailing the financial perils of 19th-century publishing, or backgrounding Cashel's adventure as Nicaraguan consul to Trieste, this inventively charts the highs and lows of a life extravagantly lived. Once again, Boyd holds the reader spellbound.
Customer Reviews
Classic Boyd
Almost as good as Any Human Heart