Review of The King's General by Daphne Du Maurier

Historical fiction, but not as satisfying as some of her other works, like Jamaica Inn or The House on the Strand

The King's General is a historical romance that is principally set in the sixteen forties, the time of the civil war in England. The narrator is Honor Harris, daughter a noble Cornish family. On her eighteenth birthday, she meets Sir Richard Grenville, a colonel in the army who is remarkably self-assured, rude, and witty. So begins an unconventional courtship in an apple tree leading to an engagement engineered by her family to belatedly save Honor's honour. Unfortunately, before the marriage can occur, Honor suffers a terrible accident and she breaks off her wedding to Richard and refuses to see him again.

Twenty years later, the civil war has reached Cornwall and Honor meets Richard again. He is now a general in the King's army but as Honor recognises, bitterness over their broken engagement has led to the development of several faults – he is arrogant, unwilling to listen to anyone else, and cruel. Regardless, he and Honor develop an unconventional relationship, again scandalising her family. When the Cornish troups are routed, Richard and others plot a new uprising. But it comes to nothing and it's ultimately up to Honor to save his life.

I'm in two minds about this book. On the one hand, I greatly enjoyed the originality of the story and its positive portrayal of disability. Honour is paralysed from the waist down by her accident but she grows to be respected by her extended family, Richard never treats her any differently, and she lives a full life. It's also unusual in having such a flawed love interest. Although Honor's attachment to Richard doesn't falter, I think that as a reader, you feel an interesting tension between his tenderness towards her, and his treatment of others that made me both like and dislike him at the same time. It's a page-turner that sustains its tension until close to the end, and the setting of the Civil War feels realistic. Honor describes what it's like for a house to be requisitioned by the rebel army, for example, the privations and destruction that the family experience, and the struggle to regain their comfortable way of life again. It also has some nice Gothic touches (there's a secret room where an uncle with an intellectual disability was once sequestered, for example).

On the other hand, it doesn't quite have the same magic as other Du Maurier books like Frenchman's Creek, The House on the Strand, or Rebecca and I'm not sure why I feel like that. Some of it may be due to my dislike for the male lead, which intensified as the novel progressed. I think that the author wants you to feel like this, but I think it possibly reduces the reader's investment in the love story, and by the end, I felt that I was glad to see the back of Richard. I also think that the ending was probably too obvious. If you know anything about English history, it's clear that the final uprising is going to fail, and it's evident from early on that Honor is going to use her knowledge of the secret places in the house and estate to save Richard so there isn't really any tension in the final chapters.

Be aware too that there's some dated language in this book – Honor refers to herself as a 'cripple' throughout. There is also a dated attitude to gender roles. One of the characters, Will, is negatively portrayed as extremely effeminate (and weak, cowardly, and gossipy as a consequence) while Honor dislikes his sister for being "too masculine". Oh, and if you don’t know anything about the English civil war, you might want to look at Wikipedia first - Du Maurier assumes that you’ll be familiar with the outline of it.

What I'm reading this week

I just finished Under the Greenwood Tree, a rarity as it's a Thomas Hardy novel with a happy ending! The heroine is difficult to stomach though: superficial, vain, capricious, flirtatious, she's more a walking portrait of the supposed weaknesses of women than a rounded character.

I'm currently reading The Turn of the Screw. It's been a very slow re-read so far as quite a few new thoughts have struck me about the text, and I'm stopping to write them down. Definitely my favourite ghost story though (in part because the question of whether there are ghosts in the story is never resolved).

Next up will be Birds on a Carousel, a collection of stories by Nathaniel Koah. I read his novel The Salt Beneath Me last year and enjoyed it, so looking forward to this one.