Review of Merivel by Rose Tremain
Hook / reveal placement in literary historical fiction with sex to spare
While the Three Dog Problem novel did win the last poll (with a little outside help to break the tie), that was our first casualty in this month’s book battle. The opening was compelling and had excellent satire, and I thought the characterization of Queen Elizabeth was spot on and fun to read. However, I didn’t make it through, and you can see why in my reading reactions at this chat link:
Why the funny book "A Three Dog Problem" fell flat for me
Then I proceeded on to read the runner-up, “Merivel.” It turns out that this is actually a sequel to the book “Restoration,” which many people had raved about (but I have not read), yet Merivel can be read as a standalone without feeling like you missed too much. While I didn’t love the ending, and I ended up speed-reading after about 70% into it because it got really weird for me (i.e. “gang-bang in a carriage without any real consequence” weird. More on that later). I found that this book was worth reading though, primarily as a study in the art of progressive reveals of secrets and hook placement to keep up the reading pace despite all inclinations to put it aside.
You can see my back and forth thoughts about why to keep reading or not in the initial reactions I had over here.
I was surprised when I looked at other top reviews praising this book (newspapers) that none of them mentioned how much sex was in this book, as if they hadn’t noticed. To balance things out, I thought I’d give you a more realistic picture of the sort of person you’re dealing with when you look at Merivel. Since there is so much sex in this, for this review I felt it only appropriate to express my sentiments fully by sprinkling in a good dose of the word fuck. Enjoy.
Spoilers for the rest of this review******************************************************
TL;DR summary
Merivel is an equal-opportunity fucker. Ladies, do you worry that you’re too thin, too fat, too old, too poor, too married, or completely stark-raving mad to get a man to bed? Well, have no fear, for Merivel will take you (& he fucking well does throughout the whole book.)
Basically, this is a 1600s Great Gatsby where Dr. Merivel is Nick and King Charles is his Gatsby, except this Nick is far more “successful” with the ladies, despite his ripe age of 57 to 59 in this tale. The royal courts are full of debauchery that leads to everyone’s downfall because we all know the richest die miserably unhappy. Don’t read this if you are depressed, but it might cheer you up if you want to appreciate your life as “better” in comparison with a miserable old ass who truly hates himself. The End.
Now onto the highlights, followed by the writing craft notes breakdown…
⭐️All I loved:
What I loved most about this book was the humanity and irreverence in the historical details. The book takes place in the 1600s, and it succeeds very well in never making you feel you are being told that “back then, we did things like this.” Nearly every scene feels quite real as seen from a very human and highly flawed character, which is a monumental achievement for any historical novel.
For instance, there are scenes of the good Doctor Merivel performing surgeries with nothing but opium and alcohol to pacify the patient, who had to be held down screaming by the assisting nurse. This nurse happened to be an unshakable Irish woman who never flinches at the sight of anything, which was darkly humorous in itself. The descriptions of Versailles that contrasted the thousands of workers and stone cutters outside the palace, drowning in poverty, while the inner palace area overwhelms everyone in its splendor were exceptionally well done. I could even believe just how impossible it was for anyone to get an audience with King Louis, and the pageantry of the people in this setting was superb. Anyone who wants to experience what life was like during this time period would highly enjoy this book for its keen attention to so many small details that make the pages come alive.
The self-deprecating humor of Merivel throughout made the narrative very funny, even when most people would consider the events sad without his commentary. Yet, his tone gets progressively more and more grim as the novel goes on.
🤨All that made me go “WTF just happened”:
There is very little character arc of change. The only changes are his devolving into deeper depression and apathy about his life, so it’s like he’s died several times before he actually dies. As a reader, it’s hard for me to get behind a character who doesn’t want anything specific and is struggling to find meaning in his life. He’s battling feelings of hopelessness for most of the book, (when he’s not screwing anyone). You could almost say it’s like he was trying to recapture his youth by going to Versailles and fucking another man’s wife as if he was in his 20s, but even then, he never strives for any specific goal. So how are we to cheer him on when we don’t know what to cheer for? Perhaps that is the point though, to make us feel as lost as he does. It seems meant to be as ambiguous of an ending as possible, and I almost felt glad to see him put out of his misery when he dies at the end.
While it was apparently “normal” to lock your mentally ill relatives in an attic at home during the 1600s rather than let them suffer inhumane conditions at an asylum, the King’s attitude toward his “mad old mistress” began to indicate that from here on out, the King wasn’t meant to be a likable character in this book. He’s presented in the most unflattering ways possible, IMHO. We even get a grand scene of the King staying at Merivel’s home for a break, during which he takes one of Merivel’s other old mistresses upstairs and fucks her loudly enough for the whole home to hear just “how well the King is being pleased.” After a few more scenes where the King appears apathetic toward the people who are starving everywhere in the common villages, I was sick of him.
Also, there was five-some during a carriage ride. What do you even call that? A menage a cinq? Did those really happen in the 1600s? I started imagining men calling for a carriage like, “And I’ll take a whore with that, please, for me and my merry men.” A bit excessive, don’t you think? It could have happened hypothetically, but did we really need that scene to understand just how much Merivel can’t keep his prick to himself? After that, I couldn’t take much of the rest of the book seriously.
Now for the writing craft analysis: Mastery of the “Steady Hooks & Reveals”
What I’ve noticed is that for a literary tale to work, (i.e. keep people reading), it relies on many well-placed hooks and twists. Without these hooks, I never would’ve made it to the end because this tale has a lot of things I’m not a big fan of in it.
I selected the most memorable hooks that maintain some tension for the reader to make it through another chapter (or until the next hook). I’ve also noted where they occur so that you can see the well-distributed spread of them.
✥Page 1 hook: An old book has been found under his bed. What’s in the book?
Learning that he wrote this book by hand, his life story, isn’t revealed until page 2. He longs to hide this book of secrets from the world, which made me wonder what he’d done, and that reveal doesn’t come until about 50% into the book.
✥End of chapter 1 hook: Why does he keep thinking of John Pearce, mentioned in this book that he’s now re-reading?
Answer isn’t revealed until about 30% into the book, when Merivel reflects on how the Quaker Pearce took him in when he crossed the King and had nowhere to go. He continues to see Pearce in his mind as if Pearce is his conscience for the rest of the book.
✥Chapter 2 conflict/hook: Merivel’s chief worry for the whole book is his daughter Margaret, who’s 17, that “marriageable age” when she must soon be wed before he loses the favor he regained with the King. Honestly, his love for his daughter was the only redeeming quality about him that made me like him, for a few chapters. This conflict of what to do with Margaret isn’t resolved until about 85-90% through the book, when she finally meets a good young man who loves her with “a love Merivel has never known,” so the blessing is given and they will get a happy ever after. However, they are the ONLY ones who get happiness in the whole book.
This hook was strong enough that the author was able to keep coming back to Margaret in perilous situations throughout the book whenever the action was dying down for Merivel. It’s what I’d call the “fallback conflict” that stopped the story from dying when it slowed.
✥Start of Chapter 3 hook: Merivel is going to see the King to get a letter that will get him “in” with the court at Versailles. He gets the letter, but *PLOT TWIST/ reveal* mid Chapter 3 = the King keeps Merivel’s wife (who’s lost her mind and doesn’t know who he is anymore) hidden away in the attic of the castle. Merivel doesn’t freak out about this reveal as much as you’d expect because apparently his wife had always been the property of the King. In fact, the King had promised royal favors and payments to Merivel for marrying her “in name only” while the King fucked her at every opportunity, to hide it from his other mistresses. He suggests the woman Celia is drugged, and the King envies her calmness.
This reveal created a good bit of tension throughout the rest of the book because Merivel never really got a full annulment of his marriage, or so it seems, which makes him unable to marry again even if he’d wanted to, and also has made him very accustomed to the habit of going to prostitutes and having mistresses himself.
✥End of Chapter 3 reveal: In fact, here’s one of his prostitutes now, his favorite old Rosie, the washerwoman. I was surprised at having a sex scene show up suddenly like this, a “comfort fuck” to calm his nerves before his trip to Versailles…but little did I know there was MUCH more sex to come.
✥Chapter 4 midway: Hook (Robbed by highwayman! Will he die? No, he lives, even though he doesn’t seem to care whether he lives or not much at this point. The self-deprecating humor was funny for a while, but after this scene, it becomes more morbid until you realize he is seriously depressed.
✥Chapter 5: he arrives at Versailles! And it’s a fucking mess. Will he ever see the King? (Hook question)
✥Chapter 6: The King ignores him. Just when I thought the story was about to die, a flirtatious woman reels him in to come with her to her Parisian home. (Hook question: What does the woman want?)
✥Chapter 7: He arrives at her huge mansion & is showered with kindness. End of chapter: surprise! He didn’t imagine the chemistry because she kisses him! (Hook)
✥Chapter 8: Reveal: She’s desperately hot for him because, it turns out, she is fucking lonely because she’s in her 40s now and her husband never fucked her because he’s a gay Swiss army guard and fucks all the boys in the secret royal gay club (Fraternite’). Now, our Merivel is a doctor, so boy has he got a cure for her! (Spoiler alert: It’s in his pants, and by now I start realizing he can’t ever keep it in his pants for too long).
End of chapter 8: (Hook) Her husband decided to come home the morning after their first fuck!
✥Chapter 9: Merivel is kicked out by her husband who threatens to kill him if he returns, after someone who spied on them tells her husband about the affair. This hook was strong enough to maintain tension through a few chapters when one wonders if Merivel is in love with this Louise, (sadly, he’s not, just more fond of her than others). Will they ever end up together? (Hook question)
✥Chapter 10 shows them promising to try and be together at her father’s mansion in Switzerland later this summer (hook) while Merivel goes back to England.
✥Chapter 11: His daughter Margaret is dying of Typhus, which occupies a few chapters, (BIG tension hook) after which she finally survives it and befriends the King. However, Merivel is afraid the King will fuck his lovely young virgin daughter (because honestly the King fucks everyone in this story, but Merivel still “adores him.” It’s tiresome, really.)
Thus the pattern continues throughout the whole book. Every chapter has some similar hook like this right when the story feels like it’s about to die, or a sex scene is thrown in to brighten up an otherwise dull chapter.
I had first thought there was some other plot structure to it, but it’s really just hook, after reflection on death, after hook, after meaninglessness of life, after hook…
And just like in Gatsby, everyone dies, including Merivel. Sir Merivel takes more and more opium, gets more depressed, and watches everyone die (except his daughter). The King dies, followed by his favorite servants and mistresses, and at last, even Merivel dies at the home of his washerwoman prostitute. Only his daughter Margaret got engaged and seems in many ways better off without her father.
I compare it to Gatsby because it is a grand disillusionment story. While the King gets sick, is reduced to nothing, and dies, everyone he was attached to is thrown out for King James to take over. King Charles never seemed to really care about anyone other than himself for more than a paragraph once, and neither does Merivel (except he does love his daughter). Even when Merivel later gets the opportunity to be with his latest rich mistress Louise and marry her, he starts to tire of her, and then runs off to take care of the sick and dying King (hook again) to keep an otherwise dead story alive for another chapter). Honestly, Merivel was married to the King. How could he belong to anyone else when his patronage and everything depend on King Charles’ favors? And sadly, Merivel doesn’t even try to go back to Louise (the mistress he’d promised to marry) after the King dies.
Have any of you read Merivel? What were your thoughts?
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