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Jill Dawson
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Book
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Publisher | Sceptre | ||
ISBN | 9780340935651 | ||
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Reviewer
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Jayne
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Synopsis
Nell Golightly is living out her widowhood in Cambridgeshire when she receives a strange request: a Tahitian woman, claiming to be the daughter of the poet Rupert Brooke, writes to ask what he was like: how did he sound, what did he smell like, how did it feel to wrap your arms around him? So Nell turns her mind to 1909 when, as a seventeen-year-old housemaid, she first encountered the young poet. He was already causing a stir - not only with his poems and famed good looks, but also by his taboo-breaking behaviour and radical politics. Intrigued, she watched as Rupert skilfully managed his male and female admirers, all of whom seemed to be in love with him. Soon Nell realised that despite her good sense, she was falling for him too. But could he love a housemaid? Was he, in fact, capable of love at all? In a dazzling act of imagination, Jill Dawson gives voice to Rupert Brooke himself in a dual narrative that unfolds in both his own words and those of her spirited fictional character, Nell. A memorable tale of love in many guises, of heartbreak and loss, the novel brings Brooke vividly to life as it shows him to have been a far more interesting, complex and troubled figure than the romanticised version allows.
Review
The Great Lover by Jill Dawson is an amazing book which evolved from a visit to Grantchester and her fondness of the poet Rupert Brookes.The way Jill has woven pieces of letters and the poetry of Rupert into this delightful novel makes it read as though it really did happen in the way that it reads today. Jill acknowledges that the book is not fact but from her own imagination, also her extensive research into the archives in various places and including The Rupert Brookes Society archives held at Grantchester. She has based characters in the book on the photographs of the people of the house at the time when Rupert stayed at Orchard House and The Old Vicarage in Grantchester, where he lodged regularly over the years. I loved the character of Nell the house maid, so charming and yet so smitten by Rupert who seems to be loved by every one he meets. How she would do anything he asked of her, and I am sure that there must have been someone in the household that really did fall in love with Brookes in that way in real life.
The contents of the archives and Jill’s use of picturesque language, have allowed her to write a novel that I am sure will gain great recognition and will become yet another part of that archives, on this very well loved English Poet whose poems many know – but of his life and times many may be ignorant and this story helps to fill in, by its wonderful descriptiveness many of those gaps!!
You can now read an interview with Jill Dawson .
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