The Skull and the Nightingale by Michael Irwin
My rating: 3/5 cats
this book is a little Cyrano, a little Frankenstein, and a little Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
it’s a dirrrrty book about the seedy underbelly of 18th century england we all love so much, complete with costumed fumblings, indecorous passions, gentility masking bestial impulses, and letters. lots of letters.
richard has just returned from his grand tour, which i’m sure you know is like rumspringa for the english leisure class, and he returns to london unsure of his future but full of ambition. he had been orphaned at a young age, and came under the financial protection of his godfather, james gilbert, but has rarely been in his company. now, ready to make his way in the world, he visits his godfather, isolated out in the country, hoping to be named his heir and to enjoy a life of leisure and the arts, free from those gauche concerns about money or stability.
he finds his godfather to be a well-preserved older gentleman, reserved, rigid, formal, and disinclined to share his thoughts with him, especially those concerning richard’s future. and he’s a little bit creepy. obviously, i’m thinking this the whole time:
richard is introduced to gilbert’s neighbors, all of whom are in his debt in one way or another. it is a gloomy collection of the fearful, the uncouth, and the diffident.
and soon richard will be included in their numbers. his godfather has a proposition for richard—he is an old man who has never allowed himself the pleasures of the animal urges. he has refrained from courtship in favor of philosophical experimentation, and is the kind of man who manipulates people into situations and sits back and observes what happens without having to dirty his hands with any participation. so his new experiment is richard. richard is to return to the hustle and bustle of london and live, properly funded, as a participant in all that london has to offer in the way of excess and diversion, and to report back to gilbert with accounts of his exploits. which is a sweet deal, from richard’s point of view—he gets cash to go out and live the life he wanted to live anyway with the drinking and parties and women, all within his grasp, and for the cost of a few letters.
but it’s a delicate situation. does he refrain from mentioning certain things in order to avoid coming across as an irresponsible reprobate and jeopardize his hopes of becoming gilbert’s heir? and yet if he withholds too much, will his godfather believe that his money is being wasted and cut him off completely? tricky indeed. fortunately, it turns out that gilbert is quite the closet perv, and welcomes richard’s less classy dealings, going so far as to arrange a seduction under his very roof.
and so it goes, on and on.
richard’s moral erosion under the tutelage of his godfather is interesting, but since he is a little rapey to begin with, the descent is less dramatic than it could have been. there are some wonderful secondary characters in this book, but the best ones either disappear or become domesticated, disappointing both richard and the reader.
it’s not a bad book by any means, but some of the potential is not realized, for me. there is a lot of psychological build-up and hints of diabolical machinations that end in rather pedestrian realities, and ultimately it leaves the reader with more of a sad and pathetic tone than the heroic emotional and social apocalypse that ends Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
a personal note/entreaty. i requested this book because i thought it was going to be a gay novel. this is not a gay novel—not that there’s anything wrong with that. i thought i would read it for dana, and i could pass it along to her and she would be thrilled. you can understand my reasoning: the lack of gender-specific pronouns in the synopsis-copy in sentences like this: when Richard does the unthinkable and falls in love with one of Gilbert’s pawns, the hintings at excess and hedonism, the unexplored, passion, salaciousness…usually, in a victorian novel, these are code for “gay novel.” plus, he also wrote books called bears in my bed and educating boys, and we all understand what that means, right? okay, there i jest. but here’s the thing—the other gay-signal i got was when this book was compared to Crimson Petal and the White, a book i have never read, but i have always seen on gay reading lists. so i read some reviews of that book on here, and i couldn’t find any reference to gay themes at all. just a lot of dirrrrty het-sex. have i been mislead? this is my real question, and the point of this irrelevant babbling—explain to me please why that book is always on gay lists if it is about a lady-prostitute and her gentlemen clients. because that is too huge of a book to be on those lists if there is only a gay uncle or something, who comes in to wave and deliver life-lessons or whatever. thank you.
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