John McDermott

This book is a pot-boiler. It was written in 50 days and it shows. The opening is brilliant. Our hero, Fabrice, age 17 and burning with ambition, stumbles upon the fringes of the Battle of Waterloo. The vivid description inspired Tolstoy; the light and even humous style engages the reader. One anticipates a lively narrative. One is disappointed. Things progress for a bit, but then the story bogs down in the endless working out a of a love affair that, at least from a contemporary perspective, is truly inane. It appears that the author ran out of plot ideas long before he ran out of pages that needed to be filled. Sadly Fabrice is never allowed to mature. Though years pass, he is as addled by teenage emotion at the end as he was at the beginning. But...that opening is brilliant.