JEM (AND SAM): A Revenger's Tale
by Ferdinand Mount
Carroll and Graf
Available from News Weekly Books for $30.00 plus p&hWinner and loserFerdinand Mount has been a prominent figure in the British political and literary worlds for more than two decades.
The originator of a number of thoughtful reflections on modern times, he is possibly best known for his iconoclastic defence of family life (
The Subversive Family, first published in the mid-1980s) in which he identified and corrected a number of myths present in historical and sociological scholarship and cited wildly in the gender wars of the period.
His message - that the family for all its failings was, is and will remain the principal focus of one's loyalties and affections despite the efforts of churchmen, bureaucrats and ideologues to impose their will upon it - was a reassuring one and, as he shows, historically accurate too.
Mount is also an accomplished (if under-appreciated) novelist. Like his relative, the late Anthony Powell, he likes to work on a big canvas using a series of novels and a cast of interconnected characters to produce a multi-generational British social history. His chronicle of post-War Britain continues with a new instalment,
Fairness.
As well, Mount has been writing historical works like his brilliant novella
Umbrella relating the life and times of British Prime Minister and statesman Lord Aberdeen. It is probably into this category that
Jem (and Sam) falls.
Jem is Jeremiah Mount - a probable relative of the author's - who achieved historical note by appearing occasionally and inconspicuously, in Samuel Pepys' diary.
From this handful of passing references, Ferdinand Mount has created a full-blooded character and placed him at the centre (if one-step removed on most occasions) of all the historical action of late 17th Century England: the end of the Protectorate, the Restoration, the Anglo-Dutch Wars and the Great Fire of London.
Jem the perpetual loser; Pepys the teflon-coated social climber - their rivalry (it is mainly one-sided, Pepys remaining fairly oblivious throughout) the centrepiece of the plot (and the title).
Ferdinand Mount has a real talent for characterisation and his empathetic approach to life and its foibles (so prominent in his other works not least
The Subversive Family) combine to produce a work of real quality.
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