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A review by tomleetang
Restoration by Rose Tremain
3.0
A ballsy, bawdy novel about the licentiousness of the Restoration and the reaction against it. Our hero, Robert Merivel, engages in a series of picaresque adventures, as he works towards humanism and away from purely sensual gratification - often and repeatedly failing due to an inability to control his trouser snake.
He's not the only one to try and change his wicked ways, but under the auspices of King Charles II - who is presented as a model of monarchy at its most louche and capricious - the characters seem to be unable to break the cycle, instead taking on the attributes of their thoughtless king, who exercises an irresitable pull on his subjects.
Merivel, however, is among the most rephensible. At one point, he has sexual relations with a mentally ill woman under his care. Of course, a reader should be careful not to judge the characters in historical fiction solely on the morals of their own time, but it still makes for a pretty repulsive act.
Merivel provides an amusing, jocular narration, but by the end of the novel he resembles that hopeless friend who once upon a time we rooted for, but have eventually decided - somewhat sadly - that they're a lost cause. The same could be said for Restoration as a whole.
He's not the only one to try and change his wicked ways, but under the auspices of King Charles II - who is presented as a model of monarchy at its most louche and capricious - the characters seem to be unable to break the cycle, instead taking on the attributes of their thoughtless king, who exercises an irresitable pull on his subjects.
Merivel, however, is among the most rephensible. At one point, he has sexual relations with a mentally ill woman under his care. Of course, a reader should be careful not to judge the characters in historical fiction solely on the morals of their own time, but it still makes for a pretty repulsive act.
Merivel provides an amusing, jocular narration, but by the end of the novel he resembles that hopeless friend who once upon a time we rooted for, but have eventually decided - somewhat sadly - that they're a lost cause. The same could be said for Restoration as a whole.