A review by grubstlodger
The Fatal Tree by Jake Arnott
1.0
The key to the book’s failure, is the (mis)use of eighteenth-century slang, which sinks the book utterly. It is like the novel was written in standard English but then translated into cant by a computer programme.
The reason for this is that the author doesn’t seem to realise that people use slang in their own ways and even those who use great swathes of slang do not choose the slang term at every single opportunity. Just because a person has a slang word for ‘eyes’ or ‘stairs’ doesn’t mean they only use those words every single time they want to describe eyes or stairs. In this book ‘eyes’ are always ‘glaziers’, ‘stairs’ are always ‘prancers’, ‘tea’ is always ‘prattle-broth’ and a bad feeling (whether it’s morning sickness or grief) is always ‘crank’.
We simply don’t get the opportunity to enjoy the romance of Bess and Jack, thrill to Jack’s prison escapes or feel hatred to Jonathan Wild because the whole thing is mired in the gloop of canting verbiage. It becomes a tremendous slog.
Which is to say nothing of it's plot, a patchwork quilt of better books stitched together. The thefts come thick, fast and obvious in the beginning; we start by lifting from ‘Moll Flanders’, proceed into the first picture in a ‘Harlot’s Progress’ and continue into ‘Fanny Hill’ - and so we continue, with barely a scene or moment that hasn’t been borrowed from some other book.
The reason for this is that the author doesn’t seem to realise that people use slang in their own ways and even those who use great swathes of slang do not choose the slang term at every single opportunity. Just because a person has a slang word for ‘eyes’ or ‘stairs’ doesn’t mean they only use those words every single time they want to describe eyes or stairs. In this book ‘eyes’ are always ‘glaziers’, ‘stairs’ are always ‘prancers’, ‘tea’ is always ‘prattle-broth’ and a bad feeling (whether it’s morning sickness or grief) is always ‘crank’.
We simply don’t get the opportunity to enjoy the romance of Bess and Jack, thrill to Jack’s prison escapes or feel hatred to Jonathan Wild because the whole thing is mired in the gloop of canting verbiage. It becomes a tremendous slog.
Which is to say nothing of it's plot, a patchwork quilt of better books stitched together. The thefts come thick, fast and obvious in the beginning; we start by lifting from ‘Moll Flanders’, proceed into the first picture in a ‘Harlot’s Progress’ and continue into ‘Fanny Hill’ - and so we continue, with barely a scene or moment that hasn’t been borrowed from some other book.