A less irritable reader however might be moved to accept that this is less a historical novel and more a fantastical novel, with a dreamlike atmosphere in places.
I have the same problem and pleasures with this historical novel set during the reign of Charles II as I do with the author's Music and Silence.Īt once pleasingly rich but with annoying inaccuracies like the Quaker studying at an English university (Anglicans only back then). Merivel exults in the king's fondness for his fool, and thinks he's been even more pampered when the king gives him a house, an income, and a bride, but soon the unraveling begins. While at court, Merivel indulges himself with food, drink and revelry and soon becomes a sort of court jester. Inadvertently, through no help from the doctor, the dog does survive. Merivel knows the only way to get ahead in England of this time is to please the king.
In part one it depicts the newly-made physician Merivel's lucky break in being asked to treat the king's spaniel who is sick. There is humour in this, yes, but also much sadness.
At first I thought this was going to be a comic, slice of life rendition of a young man's (Robert Merivel) rise as a sycophant of the king. I felt like I had been transported back in time to all the disagreeable muck and smells and ribaldry of the 1660s. Steeped in the voices and eccentricities of the age of Charles the second, Restoration: A Novel of Seventeenth-Century England is wonderful.
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