C.S. Forester’s The Good Shepherd has been made into a Tom Hanks movie that’s coming out eventually – remember when you could see those in theaters? – and it’s also under a buck on Amazon right at this moment. I figure that, combined with the fact that the guy wrote the Hornblower novels, was worth taking a chance. And if it wasn’t? Hey, well, I’m out a buck.
3 thoughts on “Book of the Week: The Good Shepherd.”
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Hornblower’s are good stories, but writing them out our chronological order makes them frighteningly inconsistent, and the character is not nearly as honorable an stalwart as one remembers. A free excerpts from my notes on several volumes:
The first of the Hornblower books to be written and the sixth in the internal chronology, Hornblower is a markedly different fellow – Forester wisely changed him for the better in subsequent volumes. The pride, quick temper, and disloyalty – -both to his family and his subordinates – that Hornblower displays are all distasteful and unbecoming a heroic lead.
The book is still well written, entertaining, and informative, but wow is Hornblower much more of a bastard than I remember from my first reading 20 years ago. Dismissive contempt for his most loyal lieutenant combined with constant pining for a married woman and scorn for his loving wife make him thoroughly unlikable.
What to do when you’re an escaped prison in a hostile country? Betray your wife and desired mistress back home and conduct a tawdry affair with the widowed daughter-in-law of your protector.
textual quirks that are either inconsistent with the rest of the series stylistically or with established continuity abound.
Examples:
1) Repeated parenthetical monologueing about his wife’s letters – never done before and quite jarring.
2) Not a single mention of the late Captain Bush – at least a nod should have been expected as a short comparison to the flagship captain he finds so inferior.
3) No mention of Brown – did he open the hotel he wanted, has he moved to France, anything?
4) passing referral to his choice of flag lieutenant Gerard – a perk position – as being given to ‘the son of an old friend’. A – we’ve never met a person named Gerard that I can recall. B – Hornblower has NO friends. HH coldbloodedly views all other officers as competition and has nothing but contempt for every officer we’ve ever had described in detail (IIRC) save for Admiral Pellew.
Apologies for a minor threadjack. House Arrest makes one chatty.
Also check oiut CSFs early short stories and other novels. Quite good, particularly ‘The Gun’.
Nah, that was interesting.
I actually started listening to a podcast series I’ve been hearing about, The Magnus Archives.
It’s quality, and right up our host’s alley. Hence the plug.
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The stories are good, the narration and production are solid. I’m pretty sure there’s a meta arc, but I’m not far enough in to start picking it out.
About my only gripe is that a minor key underlayment is used to enhance tension and pacing, and in my headset it’s about 5 dB too loud–drawing attention to itself, instead of the story it’s framing. (There was also a bit of difficulty level matching episodes at the beginning, but they seem to have it figured out quickly. I didn’t have to touch the volume after episode 3 or so.)