Mr Midshipman Hornblower, by C. S. Forester

[sophia_sol]

Awwww my wee babby Hornblower, he's so CUTE and EARNEST and GREAT. He's all shy and awkward and lonely and prone to some pretty terrible depression and with the worst self-esteem, and he's also very intelligent and capable and oh so honourable, and basically it's the BEST.

This book (and I am going to assume the rest of the series) is, um, rather dramatic and unrealistic, but entirely charming.

I can't help but compare to Patrick O'Brian (OF COURSE, books set during the Napoleonic war centered on a British officer at sea) and like, it's nowhere near as good? But it's a different kind of enjoyable to read. Forester isn't as good at characterization as O'Brian, but who is? And I kept getting lost in Forester's fight scenes, which doesn't happen to me in O'Brian. And Forester doesn't give me those moments of just basking in a perfect turn of phrase or amazing idea, or giggling with delight over something that just happened. But Forester is enjoyable and ridiculous and fun and above all not stressful. I definitely need to read the rest of the series.

Something I appreciate in this book: despite being a book set almost entirely at sea in a male profession, it still managed to have a great (though brief) female character role. Aww Kitty Cobham you're wonderful.

Comments

[soupytwist]

My favourite thing: O'Brien apparently made Aubrey and Maturin musicians because he was so frustrated by Hornblower. I just love the idea of him reading Hornblower and then turning to the diaries of Captain Cochrane with a muttered "I can TOTALLY do better than this". :D :D

[sophia_sol]

OH THAT IS DELIGHTFUL. :D And I must agree that the incessant references to Hornblower being tone-deaf got rather old rather fast...

[soupytwist]

Heh, yeah. Also, the books don't have Archie, who was always my favourite thing about the movie versions.

[sophia_sol]

Ooh, I don't know anything about Archie. Tell me more? Why is he your favourite?

[soupytwist]

Eeee, best question. :D Archie is amazing! The movies are really fun, if again not as spectacular as the Master and Commander movie.

Basically, the movie people making Hornblower for ITV/A&E decided that book Horatio was TOO dour to carry the thing by himself. So they decided they must give him a friend! For some reason, they didn't go with his book best friend William Bush - Bush is in the movies too, but like his book character kind of doesn't get THAT close to Horatio? (They're friends, very good friends even, but Bush doesn't really get Horatio out of his shell.) And they wanted a character who would.

And therefore, Archie was created. :D He's very much the awesome-sidekick-guy, but I think he's delightful: he's FUNNY, which neither Bush or Horatio really are. So he turns into the joker with Horatio as straight-man. Which, uh, is kinda a misnomer here because I pretty much shipped them from the second they were in a ship together, lol. There is a lot of potential there, is all I'm saying. :D Oh and that was helped by the fact that Archie was also the one all the terrible things happened to. He starts off the victim of a (HEAVILY implied to be sexually violent, urgh) bully, and then a variety of other bad things happen before he dies tragically.

(The dying tragically was apparently at the behest of the Forrester estate, who didn't like this random non-canon character turning up and stealing a lot of airtime or something? But that basically backfired, because what ended up happening was that the movies said Archie was the REASON Horatio ended up all tragic and repressed. Which I kind of like, in the 'oh god my heart' way. It was basically the biggest possible screw-you of a character death they could manage. It's tragic, but BRILLIANT.)

[sophia_sol]

oh gosh this is amazing. I mean I'm probably never going to watch the movies because I'm terrible at visual media but I am glad to know about this! :)

[soupytwist]

Oh yeah. They basically wrote Archie with the fandom trope bingo card next to them. ("Tragic backstory - check!" "Random homosocial nudity - check!" "Dying declarations of love - check!")

[toft]

I really enjoyed the first Hornblower book, despite it being, as you say, nowhere near as good as O'Brian, but I'm afraid I very quickly got put off the books because Hornblower's relationships with women got so upsetting to me? But ymmv. More details available if you want them!

[sophia_sol]

Oh yes, please do share more details! That's really unfortunate to hear.

[toft]

Well, as far as I gather, he makes an unfortunate hasty match (possibly is manipulated into it because of Duty?) and then falls in love with a married woman and spends a lot of time thinking how stupid and disgusting his wife is and how much he despises her...

[sophia_sol]

Oh nooooo all I'd heard was that he never managed to figure out how to how to connect with either of his wives (...or any human beings) - now I'm really disappointed. I think I'll keep reading for the time being anyway, and then reevaluate when I get to the relevant bits.

[toft]

Yeah - I noped out fast, so it's possible that it gets better? I'll be interested to know your assessment, anyway.

[sophia_sol]

WELL turns out I noped out super fast too, and apparently at a different unfortunate bit than you did? I started reading Beat to Quarters (aka the Happy Return) because I didn't have access to the books that come directly after Lieutenant Hornblower, and got about a third of it in before I read the back cover copy. And discovered that WHOOPS apparently he falls in love with a beautiful (single) woman he's having to transport back to England and I went OH NO.

And then I went and read the wiki plot summary and went DO NOT WANT. And then I read the last few pages of the book to see a bit of how it plays out in the book itself and went REALLY DO NOT WANT. And then I abandoned the book and have no interest in reading further Hornblower books.

Sigh. When the books are ignoring Hornblower's love-life they're fun but I have zero patience for what the author is doing with Hornblower's relationships with women.

[reconditarmonia.livejournal.com]

Back in middle school, I read immense amounts of that genre - Hornblower, Ramage, Bolitho, Kydd, and even some of the Marryats (which are fun). Nothing beats O'Brian.

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

Huh, I've never even heard of any of the rest of those! Though it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that there's a whole genre of this stuff, and it also doesn't surprise me that O'Brian is the clear winner.