Burnt Norton by Caroline Sandon
| Burnt Norton by Caroline Sandon | |
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| Category: Historical Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Robert James
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| Summary: Dull and depressing with unlikeable characters, this isn't one I'd recommend. | |
| Buy? No | Borrow? No |
| Pages: 320 | Date: June 2013 |
| Publisher: Head of Zeus | |
| ISBN: 978-1781850671 | |
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After the death of his youngest son in a terrible accident, Sir William Keyt starts to lose interest in life. It takes meeting young Molly Johnson, a bright and beautiful daughter of a local landlord, to rekindle a spark for him. He brings her into Norton House as a maidservant, where she quickly catches the eye of his bookish eldest son, Thomas. But Sir William wants Molly to be more than a maid to him, and as a rich man and an MP is used to having his own way.
I'm sure there are people out there who want to read three hundred or so pages of bad things happening to worse people; I'm just not one of them. The almost relentlessly bleak plot of Burnt Norton had me rolling my eyes - one or two tragedies happening to a family can make them sympathetic, but after a certain point I just lost interest. On the plus side, with the exception of one completely unrealistic paragon of goodness and a couple of characters who were bland but not actively unlikeable, most people only got what they deserved. (Just a shame they couldn’t have got it a bit sooner!)
To be fair to Sandon, she does a much better job of capturing the feel of the time period, especially the social status of different people, than she does of bringing her characters to life. Additionally, her descriptions of Burnt Norton - where she now lives - are good, particularly when Sir William starts to try and build a bigger Norton in an attempt to impress people. Her writing is fairly fast-paced – it has to be to fit all the calamitous events into a novel of this size!
All in all, though, this is a dull and depressing read which I’d only recommend if you were absolutely desperate to read about the upper classes in the 18th century.
For wonderful historical fiction, I'd recommend anything by Anne O'Brien, but perhaps particularly Devil's Consort.
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Comments
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Caroline Sandon said:
If you want to write such a scathing review you might try to spell my name correctly, and just in case you hadn't noticed, most of the story is based on fact!!
Yours sincerely
Caroline Sandon
Bookbag said:
We apologise for getting your name wrong. It was unforgiveable and has now been corrected. (We originally had Ms Sandon's first name as 'Carolyn'.)
Robert James said:
Many apologies Caroline, not sure what on earth I was thinking of to misspell your name - most embarrassing!
I had noticed that it was based on fact, actually - however you do mention in your author's note that you altered dates and facts. For example, one of the most depressing aspects of the novel (it is being marketed as a novel, after all) was the life of Molly Johnson's illegitimate son and his time at the Foundling Hospital. According to the author's note, It is quite possible that Molly Johnson did have an illegitimate child but her association with the Foundling Hospital is imaginary. I took this to mean that the depressing details of his life were made up - apologies again if this is not the case and I misinterpreted the note.
