The Sea-Hawk…book review

by Richard Subber | Nov 17, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading

…good storytelling…

Book review:

The Sea-Hawk

by Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)

New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1924

366 pages

Sabatini always invites the reader to get comfortable, to enjoy reading for literate pleasure, to relish good storytelling.

The Sea-Hawk has enough swash and buckle for any Sabatini fan.

Sir Oliver is a Cornish lord, a superman, and a wannabe corsair who can more or less bend steel with his bare hounds. Rosamund is the gentle lady of his heart’s desire. They get together at the end, but they have some swamps and fire and soul-searching to go through before they get to that entirely predictable end.

No reader—with or without delectable experience of Sabatini’s literary style—could fail to imagine the final outcome after reading just a few pages.

This inevitable foreknowledge is part of the appeal. You know how it’s going to turn out. You know that Sir Oliver and Rosamund will be smitten with self-doubt, and enlarged by courageous idealism, and sustained by everlasting love.

Sabatini makes it entirely comfortable to enjoy every minute of it, and he has the civilized decency to avoid any mention of heaving bosoms. The reader’s imagination has its own work to do.

p.s. The Sea-Hawk is a lot like Sabatini’s Scaramouche, except there’s water.

* * * * * *

Book review: The Snow Goose

…sensual drama, eminently poetic…

by Paul Gallico

click here

–

As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”