Clarissa Oakes

Book number 15 in the Aubrey-Maturin series of sea stories. This one sends our characters to a Polynesian island in the vicinity of Hawaii, where the French have thrown their support to one side of a local war, leaving the English to weigh in on the other. But plot is often not exactly at the forefront of these novels, and it's especially true of this one. The only battle we get this time happens at the end, on land, and is resolved very quickly and entirely "off-screen." Instead, the main focus is on the fact that one of the sailors has smuggled a woman on board in Australia. Which is fine by me, and I found this a pleasant installment, overall. Well, pleasant except for the fact that this one does force me to contemplate the ugly show more colonial history of the British navy more than usual for these books, even if everybody is treating everyone else respectfully here and even the anti-colonialist Stephen declares their intervention the lesser of evils. I mean, I do know what happens to Hawaii after this... show less

A concentrated chamber-drama-at-sea. Leaving the awful penal colony of Botany Bay, Jack is disgruntled - something is amiss. He soon diccovers that a stowaway is on board, a female convict brought on board by one of the officers. Through no real fault of her own, she causes strife and dissension amongst the other officers, leaving Jack, with a new set of orders to carry out, in a towering fury while Stephen looks on and lends a sympathetic ear. At the core of the book is Clarissa's own awful story, related without self-pity or apology.

'Clarissa Oakes' is a rather odd installment in the Aubrey/Maturin series, or so it seemed to me. It covers a single voyage with no naval battles until the end, and only brief skirmishes at that. Most of the novel is taken up with the general awkwardness of a voyage with a depressed and sexually frustrated captain, a mysterious woman who has sneaked aboard, and officers who have severely fallen out with each other. In a word, the ecosystem of the Surprise is out of kilter and this makes for an unusually sombre book. Previous volumes in the series have explored Stephen's depression, however this is the first examination of Jack's. Given some of the dangerous and unpleasant adventures Aubrey has been through, it is striking to find him show more ground down by the mundanity of his crew not getting on well enough. Central to these personnel problems and to the book in general is Clarissa Oakes, a convict sneaked onto the ship by a crew member. Once she emerges from disguise as a boy, her presence disrupts the homosocial dynamics apparently vital to the ship's functioning. This is conveyed with some subtlety, as Jack and Stephen have incomplete knowledge of what's happening. Clarissa eventually confides in Stephen about her past, in a scene that proves quite shocking. She is certainly a tragic and enigmatic figure.

Having a woman on board results in various conversations about men at sea being lonely and sexually frustrated. Sodomy is of course forbidden by the Articles, which seems very short-sighted. Notably, it's highly unfortunate that Jack and Stephen aren't sleeping together, as basically the entire months-long bad mood that Jack was in could have been avoided. Someone (Martin?) comments that Stephen provides Jack with companionship like that of a wife, as they talk as equals and have an affectionate relationship. With the notable exception of banging. Other than worrying about Diana and his new daughter, Stephen is in pretty good humour and does his best to console Jack with music, conversation, and medical advice. Although the characterisation is as strong as ever, the unhappy mood pervading the book inevitably made it less enjoyable than the rest of the series. There is very little in the way of puns, farce, or encounters with wildlife. Instead there is a great deal of social awkwardness, bad temper, and a near miss with cannibalism. I hope the mood is a little less gloomy in [b:The Wine-Dark Sea|938791|The Wine-Dark Sea (Aubrey & Maturin #16)|Patrick O'Brian|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1565969963l/938791._SY75_.jpg|388063]. show less

The quote on the front cover of my edition of Clarissa Oakes reads "The greatest historical novelist of all time." (The Times). Usually, such a description would warrant qualification, or simply be out-and-out hyperbole. In this case, however, it is nothing other than the truth. O'Brian has delivered not just a novel, but a whole series of novels, whose every page is a sustained, joyful coruscation of un-showy brilliance. Masterful. And indeed commanding.

Not the most riveting Aubrey/Maturin installment, but....: "The Truelove", the immediate precursor to Patrick O'Brian's "The Wine Dark Sea", is quite frankly not the most riveting installment in the Aubrey/Maturin saga. And yet it is an interesting psychological glimpse into the personalities of the officers and crew of Her Majesty's Hired Vessel Surprise, when a female stowaway, Clarissa Harvill, is discovered. She becomes quite literally the main attraction to Surprise's junior officers, and even a trusted veteran like Captain Thomas Pullings, falls prey to her charms. For once neither Captain Jack Aubrey nor Dr. Stephen Maturin are the main focus of this tale, devoted instead to the enigmatic Clarissa Oakes (She is married off to one show more of the junior officers later during the tale.), who provides Maturin with a tantalizing clue regarding a French spy working in Whitehall. Instead we see an idyllic sojourn in the South Seas marred by personality disputes, a brief battle on a Polynesian island between French privateers and Surprise's crew, and the eventual appearance of the French privateer Franklin, which will play a prominent role in the next novel in the series. This book still deserves highest praise for O'Brian's eloquent prose and vivid descriptions of Polynesian natural history. show less

This has perhaps slightly more unity of plot than the other stories in the series. I'm not sure whether or not that works for or against it. It does make for a less open-ended book; on the other hand, there was maybe less of a sense of a flow between it and the previous book, and on into the next. I did quite like the title character, though. This wonderful sense of emotional flatness which had been created by her past life, a character that was never knowingly manipulative or melodramatic, but who disrupted and caused change simply by being there, by being who she was.

I'm slightly worried about a certain aspect of Stephen's life on finishing this. I really, really hope that PO'B won't end up doing what I think he's going to do - though show more I suppose I'll just have to suffer through the rest of the book to find out. *g* show less

Clarissa Oakes, Patrick O’Brian’s fifteenth book in his Aubrey-Maturin series, picks up shortly after the events of The Nutmeg of Consolation, with Captain Jack Aubrey and the crew of the Suprise having departed from Australia with two unexpected new passengers: Stephen’s former assistant, Padeen, who had been transported to Australia in lieu of a death sentence for attacking a man while in the throes of addiction to laudanum; and Clarissa Harvill, brought aboard by Midshipman Oakes.

The broad plot focuses on Aubrey and the Surprise traveling to Moahu, where they will aid Queen Puolani against a rival claimant to the throne, Kalahua, who has allied himself with the French and captured the crew of the English whaler Truelove. Along show more the way, they stop and resupply at Annamooka in Tonga, offering O’Brian the opportunity to further explore Polynesian culture. While this sets the plot in motion, much of the story explores shipboard life and the complications that can arise due to jealousies and rivalries with a midshipman’s wife aboard. The novel also continues the circumnavigation of the globe that began in The Thirteen Gun Salute and will end in The Commodore.

Like the previous eight novels, Clarissa Oakes exists outside the normal flow of time – this novel being the ninth of eleven to exist in what O’Brian described as an extended 1812, with these books taking place between the beginning of June 1813 and November 1813. Those looking for a perfect chronology are advised to simply enjoy the story and the way in which O’Brian perfectly recreates the world of the Napoleonic Wars, using Aubrey and Stephen’s activities to comment on the rapid changes occurring in this era and the passage of time in the series’ internal chronology. Interestingly, the U.S. edition changed the title to The Truelove, after the British whaling vessel that appears near the end. This Folio Society edition reprints the original text with insets containing historical portraits and sketches to illustrate some of the scenes. show less