I saw Partick O’Brian’s 21st installment of the Aubrey/Maturin novels on the shelves at Borders a few weeks ago and I found that I had mixed emotions about it. I’ve grabbed each new book as soon as it was released for the last ten years, but so far I haven’t bought this one. It’s not that I’ve lost interest – I’d love to read another 20 – but it seemed to me that if the series had to end, then the end of “Blue at the Mizzen” was a fine place to do it. I did pick up the 21st and read a few pages, but now I find I am unwilling to be taken any farther on a journey I thought had ended.
Has anyone out there read “21” and found it added to the series? No spoilers please.
I’ve read the series twice. I was given the first book as a gift, plowed through the next ten and faithfully waited the two or so years as the rest came out. After O’Brian died I read the entire set again (I can’t recommend the companion dictionary enough) thinking it was a completed body of work.
I remember from the obits that he only wrote a few chapters of the 21st book. Please don’t tell me it was ghosted to finish it?
I thumbed through it a bit. It wasn’t ghosted. It looks like he had a broad outline of what would happen, and that’s the book. A lot of it was reproductions of his handwritten notes about the book. From skimming, I couldn’t get a real good idea of what the plot was.
I checked out “21.” Patrick O’Brian was working on 21 when he died. The book contains the complete handwritten pages of roughly the first three chapters (80 handwritten pages? – I don’t have the book with me), plus the typescript of the first 2/3s.
Since it reproduces the manuscript, the hardback book is larger than hardback books. It won’t line up well with your other POB hardbacks (if you have any. I collect the PBs myself).
In other words, you can read the typewritten section and then try to parse out the rest of the material by sqinting at POB’s handwriting and looking at the notes he based his story on (for example, there’s a dinner party scene, and he blocked out who was sitting next to whom).
There’s also a very nice Geoff Hunt cover which loosely renders in pastels a meeting of ships at sea, plus the ink sketch on the back of the Surprise in mourning that he did after POB’s death.
Consider this book a souvenier and not something to add onto the series. I’m glad to have seen it, since I’m a writer and interested in how other writers create. I love POB’s novels, and reading the typescript was entertaining. If you take it for that and nothing more, it’s a nice tribute.
I saw it, but pretty much decided that the ending of Blue at the Mizzen was entirely satisfactory. At least for the moment, it was happy endings all around. And given that the Napoleanic Wars were over, it’s not like there’d be a lot of chances for Aubrey to gather future glory.
Finagle, I share the sense of being satisfied with a happy ending. I’m curious where the series might have gone next, but I can only think of one dangling thread (no spoilers here) and I have a sense that O’Brian wouldn’t have resolved it right away anyhow.
It’s true that after the war the scope for Aubrey’s particular skills might have been narrowed, but I’d have enjoyed hearing 70- or 80-something Jack Aubrey’s opinion of HMS Warrior.
I checked it out of library and wouldn’t buy it, simply because I couldn’t decipher the handwritten section. One of these days I will get back on the Gunroom list and plow through and see if someone transcribed it.
All I can guess is that Norton couldn’t get anyone to read the chicken scratches either.
parsnip-plowing through 13 today having picked it up at 10 on Christmas. So fun to stay up all night even through have to go to office.