Taking another look

at Stevenson’s St. Ives…

Book review:

St. Ives,

Being the Adventures

of a French Prisoner in England

by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907

438 pages

This is a re-do of my earlier post on Stevenson’s St. Ives, because I now confess that I stopped reading at p. 390. So, don’t worry about spoilers….

I’ve always embraced a coldly mechanical willingness to stop reading a book whenever the time comes….in St. Ives, the time comes at Chapter XXXI.

Stevenson died after writing XXX chapters of St. Ives. Perhaps not too many eyebrows were raised when a respected contemporary writer, Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, wrote the remaining six chapters from Stevenson’s notes.

Stevenson’s oeuvre is fastidiously lush, precise, sophisticated, with deeply contextual character development and dialogue that leaves me breathless with anticipation for more. There’s an abstractly beautiful love interest. Did I mention that I’m a fan of 19th century prose?

Quiller-Couch doubtless had his merits as a 19th century writer. He ain’t no Stevenson.

Q-C’s contribution to St. Ives lacks the prepossessing heartiness of Stevenson’s dialogue and storyline.

Q-C can’t quite gin up the panache and persiflage that RLS animates on nearly every page.

Q-C makes a too sincere but unavailing effort to match the rural patois that Stevenson offers for the reader’s delight.

Q-C bungles the parlous adventures of the eponymous protagonist, injecting a wretched slapstick element that leads an RLS fan to transition uncomfortably into pursed-lips mode.

Stevenson’s prosaic mastery is, sadly, missing in the last six chapters of St. Ives, and, therefore, ignorance shall be my penalty for closing this truncated masterpiece before I reached the end.

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.

 On this website you can read: my poetry in free verse and 5-7-5 format—nature poems, love poems, poems about grandchildren, and a spectrum of other topics—written in a way that makes it possible for you to know, as precisely as possible, what’s going on in my mind and in my imagination; thoughtful book reviews that offer some exceptional critique of the book instead of a simple book summary; examinations of history that did and didn’t happen; examples of my love affair with words; reflections on the quotations, art, and wisdom of famous and not-so-famous people, and occasional comments on politics and human nature.

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