This is one of my favorites, which partially brings an arc to a close. These arcs are intersecting, which is one of the brilliant aspects of Patrick O'Brian's roman fleuve. But there is a sense of closure in this one, which (in a reread) marks a milestone.Structurally, it is remarkable in a number of ways. It feels like three novellas tightly wired together. It begins with Aubrey and Maturin sailing triumphantly into Halifax with the news that the Shannon had defeated the Chesapeake. This ship-to-ship duel, based on the details of the real battle, had closed the previous book. Now we get the glorious sense of triumph on the British side as the news spreads.This first novella takes place in Halifax, and ends with Stephen and Jack leaving. Before then, Stephen and Diana deal with their difficult situation, Stephen fairly emotionally battered, and Diana gallantly trying to maintain her identity and her own sense of honor in a world of men. Jack, unfortunately, as all too often happens on land, gets himself into trouble. It seems to eat neatly ended by the end of the book, but . . .There is a thrilling ship chase from Halifax up north and down toward England. When Jack and Stephen get back to England there is a great deal of turmoil and trouble which not only is going to set up the rest of this book, but is also going to launch the next several books’ arc; this includes a trip to Napoleonic Paris for Stephen and Diana.Jack and Stephen are sent to the Baltic, where once again a real situation is fictionalized so that our guys can be central to the action. As a result, they end up as prisoners in France.The writing in this book is so strong, so vivid, and so brilliant, reaching the heights of the sublime to the very delicious humor that O’Brian excels at.Compare this passage, while Jack and Stephen are sailing up a narrow passage between Denmark and Sweden and being fired upon from the heights of Elsinore. While waiting for cannonballs to smash down all around them, they talk about Shakespeare, and specifically Hamlet's grave."So there he lies," said Jack, his telescope leveled. "Well, well: we must all come to it. But it was a capital piece, capital. I never laughed so much in my life.""A capital piece indeed," said Stephen, "and I doubt I could have done much better myself. But, do you know, I have never in my own mind class did among the comedies. Pray did you read it recently?""I never read it at all," said Jack. "That is to say, not right through. No: I did something better than that — I acted in it. . .”Then there is Stephen’s hapax phenomenon, which Jack has not seen above a few hundred times. But Stephen is amazed:He pointed cautiously with one finger and Jack looked out to the southwest. At this height they were above the low blanket of fog that covered the sea: clear sky above, no water below; no deck even, but a smooth layer of white mist, sharply cut off from the clean air; and ahead, on the starboard bow and on the starboard beam the surface of the soft, opaque whiteness was pierced by an infinity of masts, all striking up from this unearthly ground into a sky without a cloud, a sky that might have belonged to an entirely different world.Both Jack and Stephen in this book continue to reveal their complexities. Each has chances to be heroic, Stephen covertly, and Jack not only in ship action but in his practical method of tackling an escape from the infamous Temple prison in Paris.The book ends with a marriage, with high emotions, and with enough threads dangling to make one desperate for the next.
Continuing my travels with Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, I have now reached the seventh chapter in this ongoing novel. The Surgeon’s Mate seemed a bit rambling even by O’Brian’s standards (although I suppose one might see the opening – Jack returning to the sea and the command of a ship – and the ending episodes – Jack fleeing a French prison – as variations on the theme of escape, thus placing a kind of parenthesis around the novel, a structure O’Brian seems fond of) and that is probably the reason why I liked it slightly (very, very slightly) less than the two preceding volumes.There is no lack of things happening in this volume, however – the book begins where the last one left off, in Halifax, then moves to London, from there to Scandinavia and finally to Paris. There are no naval battles (but another exciting chase) and no discovery of exotic flora or fauna (but more spy work by Stephen); indeed the various intelligence machinations during the Napoleonic Wars are very much in the foreground here, turning this at time almost into an 18th century version of a John le Carré novel. O’Brian never quite reaches (or indeed aims for) the dizzy heights of moral ambiguity where Le Carré places his novels, but something he shares with that author is the way he can even the most mundane everyday activities endlessly fascinating (placing both in sharp contrast to Neal Stephenson who can make them endlessly boring). After seven volumes, this is turning out more and more to be the second mark of greatness for the Aubrey-Maturin series, together with the characterisation and friendship of its protagonists: the incredibly vivid sense of detail Patrick O’Brian brings to bear on the world he describes.The freshness of his colours, the fullness of his sounds, the immediacy of his smells, the intensity of his tastes and sensations would already be remarkable in a novelist who transmuted a world into language that was spreading out right in front of him, but to achieve this sensory and sensual richness of description for history, for a world gone and disappeared is nothing short of – and I do not use this word lightly – genius. Even with something I consider a slightly (very, very slightly) weaker installment of this monumental novel of naval history, of friendship and adventure, of warfare and discovery, I am becoming steadily more impressed with the series as a whole the more of it I read. I can feel a shiver of excitement run down my spine at the thought that there are thirteen more volumes of this waiting for me on the shelf, and a tiny stab of sadness in my heart that there are only thirteen more volumes left. Who knows, by the end of it I might even agree with the Times as quoted on the cover of my edition that Patrick O’Brian was “the greatest historical novelist of all time.” (Okay, not very likely, as I’m inherently suspicious of any statements that feature “of all time”, all the more so if “greatest” is also a part of it. But I can at least feel some degree of sympathy for such a claim, pointless hyperbole that it is.)
What do You think about The Surgeon's Mate (1992)?
You know you are reading an excellent book when you are disappointed that there are only 20 in the series. The Surgeon's Mate is the seventh of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels. They are quality stuff.Because there are so few in the series, my reading method is thus: read a book, wait some considerable time, read it again, before I move on to the next one. They are so packed with content and insight that there is much treasure to be rediscovered on re-reading. This was my second reading of this episode, and when it was finished I was terribly dismayed to find that the next one, The Ionian Mission, is the one I haven't yet bought! However, not all is lost, it is on its way.The book follows Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin returning to England (via Nova Scotia) after their American adventures, taking Diana Villiers, the eponymous Surgeon's mate, with them. Diana, with child, and at risk because she had given up her English citizen ship goes to live in Paris, despite the war against the French, while Jack, with problems at home, and Stephen, set off on another mission, which may end disastrously. Or not. I'm not saying any more.Can't wait for my new book to arrive!
—Christine
I'll admit, I took a really long break shortly after starting this. It wasn't intentionally! So when I finally relocated my copy, the reading again went smoothly. And I must say; I really do love this series! If you're not used to it, it takes a page or two to get into the old fashioned jargon - but then it's smooth sailing (pun intended). This particular novel I found extra enjoyable, as the enemy this time in parts of the book is my native country - Denmark. The british having bombed my capital some years before and my love for Aubrey and Maturin, gave me a bit of an emotional conundrum. And the ending! It has you by the edge of your seat and as I was reading the last couple of pages I was swearing myself all to hell for not having the next book right at hand! If you enjoyed the movie 'Master and Commander' you should must certainly read this series - and hope to all the heavens that there will someday be a sequal. (And I'm not just saying that in the hopes of seeing the dear Russell crowe in silk stockings and that amazing naval uniform once more. no sir. Not at all!)
—Leodora Murphy
EDITORIAL REVIEW: Aubrey and Maturin are ordered home by desptach vessel to bring the news of their latest victory to the government. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought in the French intelligence network in the New World, and the attentions of two privateers soon become menacing. EDITORIAL REVIEW: "Vividly detailed 19th-century settings and dramatic tension punctuated with flashes of wry humor make O'Brian's nautical adventure a splendid treat."�Publishers Weekly Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are ordered home by dispatch vessel to bring the news of their latest victory to the government. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought in the French intelligence network in the New World, and the attention of two privateers soon becomes menacing. The chase that follows through the fogs and shallows of the Grand Banks is as tense, and as unexpected in its culmination, as anything Patrick O'Brian has written. .
—Duncan Mandel
