The Monsters of St. Helena
by Brooks Hansen
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Description
A notorious episode in Napoleon's career, brilliantly illuminated in fiction Brooks Hansen's new novel is the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's last exile, in 1815, on the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic, "the place on earth farthest from any other place." The island is populated by English expatriates and the descendants of Portuguese settlers and their slaves--and by the spirit of the island's first native, the sixteenth-century nobleman Fernando Lopez, who haunts them all, and the novel, show more in strange and captivating ways. Bonaparte's arrival--with a retinue of fifteen hundred people--throws the island population into turmoil and particularly alarms the slaves, who see "Bony" as a white demon. After settling in a tea-house in a patch of briars and fruit trees, where he will write his memoirs and await his inevitable end, Napoleon is befriended by a teenage girl, Betsy Balcombe--the only person who is able to penetrate the imperial facade and get to know the proud, wounded man within. Naturally gorgeous, splendidly isolated, with its own history, manners, graveyard secrets, and even a vivid folk religion, the island of St. Helena becomes a character in its own right. The Monsters of St. Helena is a novel as unique and delightful as the territory it depicts, and a great achievement for this gifted writer. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
A very solid performance from the author of The Chess Garden. An interesting premise of Napoleon in his final exile befriended by a young girl on the island.
I guess that I cannot complain too much about the book, considering the fact that it had been free, but was a great disappointment especially since I had been looking forward to reading it since October (the original set date it was to come out before being postponed). It was just so fictionalized as to reduce it triviality. I had expected it to be more factual. Several instances were out of sequence, others just the figments of the author's imagination.
Hanson was undoubtedly influenced by Blackburn's " The Emperor's Last Island", & states as much in the bibliography, but where Blackburn had succeeded, Hansen failed miserably.
Hanson was undoubtedly influenced by Blackburn's " The Emperor's Last Island", & states as much in the bibliography, but where Blackburn had succeeded, Hansen failed miserably.
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Authors from the United States
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Monsters of St. Helena
- People/Characters
- Napoleon Bonaparte; Betsy Balcombe; Toby; Count Emmanuel de Las Cases; Fernando Lopez; William Balcombe (show all 7); Timu
- Important places
- St Helena
- First words
- Sixty million years ago the plates beneath what we now think of as the South Atlantic Ocean buckled slightly, sending up a range of fiery, spewing volcanoes, while at the same time giving way to an even more cataclysmic flood... (show all), so deep and wide that it eventually swallowed the furious mountains entirely.
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Statistics
- Members
- 52
- Popularity
- 581,934
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (2.89)
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
