'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Merivel is Everyman - and he speaks directly to us down the centuries. A big-hearted rogue who loves his daughter, his country house and the English King. He tries to be diligent, but constantly backslides into laugher and laziness. But the lady, a clever botanist, leads Merivel deliciously on - until her jealous husband bursts in with duelling pistols.Īs he narrates the picaresque journey, Merivel gets into all sorts of scrapes he is torn between enjoying himself and making something of his life, through medicine and the study of science. Switzerland, by contrast, is perhaps a little too comfortable. Versailles - all glitter in front and squalor behind - is a fiasco: Merivel is forced to share an attic (and a chamber pot) with a Dutch clock-maker while attempting to sustain himself on peas and jam and water from the fountains. Robert Merivel, courtier to Charles II is no longer a young man - but off he goes to France in search of the Sun King and to Switzerland in pursuit of a handsome woman.

(Apr.Get ready to laugh, prepare to weep - Robert Merivel is back in Rose Tremain's magical sequel to Restoration. Agent: Bill Clegg, William Morris Endeavor. If something seems lacking, that may only be in comparison with the first novel’s unflagging inventiveness and its film adaptation’s unrestrained opulence, and from Tremain’s focus on the Restoration’s sadder, waning days, with both Merivel and Charles realizing how short of their former promise their lives have fallen. Wonderfully rich scenes light up the meandering narrative: the King’s mistress in retreat the bear on the loose Merivel walking the royal dogs.

As before, Tremain contrasts beauty and coarseness, melancholy and slapstick, tenderness and pageantry. Though she recovers-and the prospect of a new romance, with a gay Swiss Guard’s beautiful, neglected wife, Louise de Flamanville, arises in the meantime- Merivel remains weary, disappointed, and haunted by memories, his malaise mirroring that of King Charles II, whose reign is ending with England beset by poverty and unrest. Merivel sends the bear back to England before returning himself to attend to his ailing daughter, Margaret. Merivel travels to Versailles looking for joie de vivre, encountering instead a cliquish court, shabby accommodations, and an ill-treated pet bear. Set in 1683, 15 years after the end of Tremain’s Restoration, this sequel finds sometime doctor, sometime court jester Robert Merivel restless despite his comfortable county estate in England.

Rose tremain merivel