Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian


 Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander is the first in his Aubrey-Maturin series of sea novels—novels that are perfect as novels of derring-do on the high seas, but also so much more than that. I've just finished this initial installment for maybe the third time: These books compel one to read them and read them again. For the lovely language of which they are made, the characters we become fascinated with, the look into a distant time—the Napoleonic wars—and place—on board ships and in port towns, they are true classics.

O'Brian says somewhere that he kept two sets of Jane Austen at home, one downstairs and one upstairs. Apparently he never wanted to be far from the novelist who, it seems clear, was his mentor and inspiration. Like Austen, the Aubrey-Maturin novels take place among a small defined group of people who live under a rigorous code in a small defined space. Like Austen, he finds the world among those people in that tight space, and shares it with us in a way that makes us nod and smile.

Those who need something more than pure pleasure in their reading will be happy to hear that the novel does touch on issues that remain serious today: nations and nationalism, money, bureaucracy, guilt, the lives of working people, and more. All of that, of course adds to the pleasure, and pleasure is foremost for this reader.

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