Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845)

I found this book amazing, fascinating, and irritating.
Let's get the irritating part out of the way first. I have no sympathy for the wealthy and powerful of any age and even less for the simpering Victorians -- perhaps this is a result of too many hours watching Master Piece Theater. In addition, I found the writing style of the mid 1800's ponderous compared to the current almost journalistic approach of many writers. Unlike another reviewer, I did not find Disraeli's insertion of reams of social and political commentary into the storyline a detraction. Again this is a personal bias of mine: I am an avid reader of history.

The fascinating part of Sybil is the historical context and Disraeli's narrative descriptions of life outside the Victorian Beltway. As I mentioned, I found his social and political digressions very interesting. I also found it fascinating that today's romantic novels are direct descendents of the Victorian's popular literature: something that may be common knowledge to many but was lost on me.

Lastly, Sybil amazed me because the social conflicts that so troubled Disraeli are still with us. America. One hundred and sixty-four years after Sybil was first published, the same dynamics of wealth and self-absorption that Disraeli wrote about still thrive.

Reading Sybil was time well spent. ( )

Why don't more heads of state write novels? Actually, after reading Sybil we should be thankful that they don't, since apparently Disraeli thinks it's totally legit to interrupt the narrative for whole chapters devoted to the political and social history of England. Actually, I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would at first. When Disraeli is actually talking about things happening, he's really fairly good at it. Also, he has this dramatic device that initially annoyed me-- ending a chapter on a cliffhanger and then jumping ahead in the next chapter and filling in the resolution much later-- that I soon came to like, since I did want to know what happened next and thus kept on reading. Like Gaskell in North and South, though, Disraeli tangles with social problems that can't be solved in a novel, even a 400-page one, and so the resolution doesn't quite work. But Charles Egremont is a decent, likable protagonist (the best sort, really), and his overbearing, scheming mother was certainly fun; I wish she had had more to do. And that Sybil herself had had a character of any sort beyond "immensely virtuous", really.