Mr. Chartwell

Esther Hammerhans lives a mild life although lonely since her husband, Michael, died. When she opens her house to a lodger, she gets someone she did not expect. Her lodger is a large black dog, known as Black Pat, who not only speaks to her, but also runs roughshod through her life. Through conversations with Black Pat, she learns that this dog is on assignment and his client is Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill is about to retire from office in a few days. With this, a dreaded companion throughout his life has re-emerged. Black Pat is back to wreak havoc on his psyche. The dog wanders in and out to cause sorrow and angst.

When Esther and Winston meet, they find that they are the only ones who can see this awful animal. Winston show more implores Esther to fight the dog because this is a war. She realizes what a drag Black Pat has been on her mind and takes his advice to fight back.

Black Pat is the embodiment of depression. This depression has haunted Winston and Michael their whole lives. It even drove Michael to take his own life. Now it is stalking Esther. Armed with good friends and resilience, Esther refuses to be taken down. show less

Mr. Chartwell is a bully. He barges in where he isn't wanted and settles in with his rude, boorish ways. He selects his victims indiscriminantly. In this case, one is an eminent English politician and the other a timid librarian.

I liked this debut novel about a difficult topic that plagues many of us for unknown reasons. Ms. Hunt is not afraid to name the elephant in the room. Call it the Black Dog, Black Pat, or Depression, it can come unbidden and stay until its weight of possession becomes a familiar presence. The author takes a dark subject and brings some light to it with her fresh and quirky approach. I'm looking forward to what she'll tackle in her next book. I'll be reading it!

Winston Churchill fought a life-long battle with clinical depression. He characterized that depression as being a big black dog that bedeviled him. In "Mr. Chartwell," Rebecca Hunt takes that metaphorical description and makes it literal. Churchill's depression is literally a big black dog who gives his name variously as Mr. Chartwell (Chartwell being the name of Churchill's home estate) and Black Pat.

When widowed and lonely young librarian Esther Hammerhans advertises for a boarder, she is unprepared for who turns up to take the room. A huge, talking black dog who walks on his hind legs and cracks impenetrable jokes and whose name is Black Pat is not exactly whom she expected. But she finds herself unable to say no and he moves into show more her spare room, and, from there, into the rest of her life and her house. After an encounter with Churchill in which each recognizes the other as an unwilling companion of the obnoxious dog, Esther comes to realize that if she cannot find the willpower to deny Black Pat entry into her life, she will be trapped with him for the rest of her life...which might not be terribly long under his baleful influence.

A dark subject, lightly treated. show less

It's rare that I review a book and attempt to comment on how well it is "crafted" (I don't feel I'm in a position to comment on how an author's process works), but Mr. Chartwell just seems to beg that kind of description. In her debut work, Hunt was able to capture a unique concept and develop it in such a way where enough is described to draw the reader in, but mysteries remain hidden until they are needed. In addition, the "real people" of her narrative were so deftly incorporated that the reading becomes even more personal without drifting into pseudo-biography.

Her unique concept? What if depression were a physical entity? What if Winston Churchill's "Black Dog of Depression" was, in fact, a big black dog? And where does that dog show more live when he's not bothering Churchill?

On intimate terms with Churchill - and many members of Churchill's family - the Black Dog takes on increased significance in the final days leading to Churchill's retirement from Parliament. So the walking, talking dog is spending more time with Churchill and needs to find a nearby room to rent. Enter Esther, with a story of her own, unsure of how she feels about letting the dog into her house.

Hunt parses out bits of Esther's story in such a way that you're never 100% sure what the full story will end up being. Both the dog (Mr. Chartwell) and even Churchill end up serving as conduits to understand a character which may have initially seemed expendable.

Highly recommended show less

A wonderful little book. I love the way depression is concretized into a giant, snarky dog--much better than any of those hideous commercials for antidepressants. There's a portion of the book in which two of the characters who are suffering from relationships with the dog--Mr. Chartwell--recognize each other, and have this comically oblique conversation, made even more so by Churchill's circumlocutions. It was the sort of "I'm a (depressed) nobody--who are you?" that happens in real life.

Mr. Chartwell is enjoyable, funny (!), and different from the vast majority of books being published. I was so pleased when my ER copy finally arrived, and the wait turned out to be well worth it.

At Chartwell, his English countryside home, Winston Churchill spends his last days before resigning from public life contemplating his life and career. In London, Westminster Palace librarian Esther Hammerhans is dreading an upcoming anniversary. Her colleague and friends are doing all they can to bolster her mood to prepare her for the unhappy day. Both Churchill and Esther are visited by an exceedingly large black dog, Black Pat, seemingly invisible to all but Churchill and Esther, who is determined to attach himself to their lives and bring unhappiness.

In Mr. Chartwell, first-time author Rebecca Hunt does an amazing job of representing depression as "other." Black Pat is an unwelcome, oppressive, stubborn entity visited upon those show more who are unlucky enough to suffer. He is indifferent to class and circumstance; he refuses almost all offers and demands to leave the sufferer be. Hope is the only defense. Though the book is about depression, it is not depressing. Hunt is able to illustrate love, support, longing, frustration, friendship, fear, and hope among her characters. Even Black Pat is multidimensional; he's loyal, gruff, jokey, insistent, and even playful. In the end, Mr. Chartwell is a touching snapshot of a few days in the life of two people living rich and perhaps greatly satisfying lives who have also been affected by depression.

As an aside: I am a librarian with personal experience with how people and families are affected by depression. I also recently visited London and Kent and toured Chartwell. This book felt very personal to me. However, the book's themes are universal; no knowledge of WWII history, libraries, or depression is necessary to appreciate this well written book. show less

I find it strange that I unknowingly gravitated toward this book about depression whilst in the thrall of my own, but perhaps there is order in the universe after all.

This debut novel provokes mixed feelings in me. On the one hand, it is well-written and unusually cogent for a novel whose center is mental illness; its depictions of grief-induced depression resonate truthfully and its female protagonist, Esther, is a sympathetic heroine without feeling overwrought or cloying.

The flip-side of the novel, however -- the side that includes Churchill and his life-long battle with clinical manic depression/bi-polar disorder -- strikes some false notes, at least for me. Hunt picks up the mythic metaphor of Churchill's "black dog" (the image show more Churchill supposedly used to signify his depressive periods and one whose shadow appears on the deceptively bright, chipper cover of the book) and runs with it, personifying depression as Black Pat, a massively threatening yet charmingly seductive combatant in the mental game which both Esther and Churchill are fighting.

My problem with this extension of the popular metaphor is that it firmly externalizes depression in a way that can feel very misleading to the reader who actually has depression. Depression is not a stranger at the door or even an enemy in the room -- it is your own twisted face sneering back at you, your own voice whispering that you are worthless, that your friends only tolerate you, that your lover only uses you, that your family finds you pathetic, that there is no meaning and no true joy and nothing worth reaching for. Depression is an internal enemy, and while the novel starts to hint at that parallel toward the end, I found that the externalized metaphor was taken too far in the bulk of the book, to the point that it became a frustration for the reader (me) rather than the emotional connection that it should have been.

In fairness, there are many things about the Black Pat character Hunt has created that do have a truthful resonance. Depression is incredibly seductive -- there is nothing easier to do, when that black weight starts pulling at the loose threads of your life, than to let the burden press you into the ground, to curl up and close up and give up. Depression does have a largeness in your life -- its effects are broadly destructive, it is unwieldy and impossible to ignore. And to fight depression is a complex but necessary act of defiance, in reality, self-defiance. I did appreciate Hunt's construction of an historically consistent Churchill, a protective force, representative of that constant mental struggle, battling upright against his particular demon, even into his last days.

I cannot accuse Hunt of counterfeiting such a darkly intimate experience, only of taking what was originally a psychologist's metaphor for the unexplainable a little too far. There is value in this novel -- in the end, it does acknowledge, subtly, that those who encounter the "black beast" (and I am more comfortable with that phrase, if we must, since personally I struggle to think of a black dog as anything other than cuddly) must and should fight, and that some can shake the darkness from their lives (those whose depression is born of grief or other external circumstances) and some must battle continuously because the beast is borne within their brains and cannot be fully exorcised.

As I read the novel, I struggled with it, but having finished it this afternoon and considered it, the bottom line is that the book can have a positive impact, even though it may frustrate certain readers. A worthwhile, if difficult, exercise.

A final note, in anticipation of some reactions: I do know that this novel is "only fiction", and obviously my own experience and my own current state of mind focuses my attention more minutely on certain details than others, but even were I not where I am now, I do feel that if a novelist places a particular mental illness at the center of her novel, she had better be sure her details in that regard can hold up to serious scrutiny. Otherwise, such a novel can hold only superficial entertainment (which is not terribly admirable for a book about depression) and little artistic or personal truth. show less