Winston Graham's THE BLACK MOON: A NOVEL OF CORNWALL

George Warleggan finished the last novel of the original Poldark Quartet, Warleggan, feeling very much like his star was on the ascendant. He's married the girl of his lustful dreams, taken over the ancestral home of the nemesis of his dreams, and has a baby on the way. Er, well, his new wife, the former Elizabeth Poldark* has a baby on the way, anyway. But (mild spoilers for that novel ahoy!), while his book was called Warleggan, the baby coming is probably one who should have (cough) quite another, but very familiar, surname. Cough.

Whether or not there's a cuckoo in George's nest -- said maybe-cuckoo being born in the first chapter during a lunar eclipse, giving this novel, The Black Moon, its title -- he's got some trouble on his hands in this one, as his lively little Poldark stepson has discovered a delightfully hilarious way to irritate George (at least, by proxy) and just cannot stop doing so, even though it gets everyone else in trouble until someone gets caught in the act. D'oh!

And then there's the governess George has engaged for his wife's older son, Elizabeth's cousin Morwenna, who is nowhere near as pretty as Elizabeth (who is still considered a classic beauty nonpareil even after years of marriage and motherhood and household management) but still catches the eye of a man or two, one highly suitable by George's standards, one less so. Very less so. Because this is still a Poldark novel, and Ross is still part of the picture, and so is his wife Demelza, and Demelza comes from a poor family of miners, and her brothers have grown up to be big strapping handsome men, and her little brother Drake is the strappingest and handsomest of all.

Hey, it wouldn't be a Poldark novel without a pair of star-crossed lovers, would it? Verity and Andrew. Caroline and Dwight (though their course of not-smooth true love still hasn't gotten them to the altar as of this book; Dwight went for sailoring last novel, remember,  and in this one has gotten himself both shipwrecked and captured by some very cranky villagers in the middle of Revolutionary France. Oops), meet Morwenna and Drake. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Meanwhile, Ross Poldark, now happily married through four novels and then some, with a growing son and a new baby daughter and a wife he loves dearly, with a prospering mine and money to spend on fixing up his house, can't stand contentment. When he learns of Dwight's plight in France, and that Caroline has managed to persuade the government to do something about it (sort of), well of course Ross has to get involved. Even though it's dangerous. Or perhaps because it's dangerous. Because Ross Poldark. Duh.

And then there is one more Poldark, who until this volume has barely been a figurant but roars forward for key moments in this book: Agatha. Agatha is Ross' great-aunt, an old maid who has seen six generations of her family living out their lives in the house that is now George's. She's been good for an excuse for Ross to visit and for moments of comic relief here and there, but now she's finally a character. And what a character she is. And her little cat, too. Vale, Miss Poldark. Your last barb hit home.

Interestingly, The Black Moon was written a good 20+ years after the previous book. Winston Graham apparently got tired of his career as a highly successful and beloved author of historical fiction and turned his hand to mainstream work for a while. Of course he was good at this too (Marnie, anyone?), but he was eventually persuaded to return to this beloved world of miners and fishermen and barely-making-it-landed gentry in 18th Century Cornwall. I would say he didn't miss a beat, but really, I do detect slight differences in his prose in this later Poldark book. The quality is still first rate, but it's a bit more economical, more precise, less wild. He's grown as a writer, we see, but sometimes miss his excesses. Or at least I do.

But still, it's a Poldark novel, a novel of Cornwall, full of scenery porn, resource drama, borderline class warfare, and ROMANCE. One can't help but love it, and be glad there are still several more to go.

*First love of Ross Poldark, wife of the late Francis Poldark, mother of Geoffrey Charles Poldark, etc.

Winston Graham's WARLEGGAN: A NOVEL OF CORNWALL

Lordy, I do love me some tempestuous, romantic historical fiction now and then, and it doesn't get much more tempestuous, romantic or historical than Winston Graham's wonderful Poldark novels, of which Warleggan is the fourth. And possibly the most tempestuous, if not the most romantic.

Though it's quite the soap opera, is Warleggan. The title, of course, referring to the family name of those dastardly anti-Poldarks, the gotten-up and unscrupulous nouveau riche Warleggans, whose scion, George, grew up with the cousins Poldark but never quite gained their acceptance because his family was so very, very declasse.

But here he is, getting a novel named for him! Do the Poldarks finally admit him to their charmed-not-really-charmed circle? Do they finally see that he's not the villain of their tale but merely a different kind of hero? Does he get a happy ending?

Well. Sort of. Yes and no. Um.

This most soap-operatic yet of Graham's wonderful Novels of Cornwall doesn't feature George Warleggan all that much (though certainly more than did the prior novel, Jeremy Poldark, feature that boy, who spent almost all of that book in his mommy's tummy). He looms over events somewhat, yes, and it is certainly a carefully executed action of his that is the most important development in the overall Poldark plot, but...

But it is the affairs of yet another pair of star-crossed lovers that hog most of the reader's attention. Lovers and the Poldark who abets them, but this time it is mostly Ross playing cupid rather than Demelza, for one of the lovers is his friend Dr. Dwight Enys (he of the prior tragic live affair in assign earlier novel).

Meanwhile, Ross and Demelza are not themselves the picture of wedded bliss, because Ross's first love, Elizabeth, who jilted him while he was away in America getting his rakish facial scar, is still a big part of their lives. She jilted Ross to marry his cousin Francis, meaning she is both family and neighbor, and then [REDACTED TRAGEDY] strikes and suddenly she becomes an even bigger problem...

And then there is Warleggan. Remember Warleggan? This is a book named for Warleggan. When I watched the original BBC adaptation as a  tween, I gnashed my teeth at him, I bit my thumb at him, I spit at the mention of his name. As an adult better attuned to problems of class and economics, though, I kind of feel for him. His family's success has thrown him into social circles that his family's background has not prepared him to navigate well. He has decent enough instincts for how to behave, has learned what fork to use and all that rot, but he is not to the classy (and somewhat impoverished but still one has FORBEARS) manor born. If the cousins Poldark had been nicer to him as young'uns they might all have been friends, or at least business partners. But nope.

But so, can we blame him for seizing the opportunity he does? Sure, he's kind of a jerk about it, but he has feelings, too, and he didn't just one day decide a chip on his shoulder would set off his slightly coarse good looks, right?

And anyway, he might not entirely be getting what he wants. Hur hur hur. He might only have given his NAME to his son, IYKWIM.

The first four Poldark books are often regarded as a quartet, and to a degree things are decently enough rapped up here, but I find there are eight more "novels of Cornwall", some yet with Poldark in the title, so I'll keep on reading them.

And yes, I had a cheeky peek at the first episode of the new adaptation, but promised my mom I'd wait and watch the rest with her when it airs on PBS here in the states later this year. I see it's got a more lavish budget than the original, and lots more scenery pork, but I don't find the cast to be any improvement on Robin Ellis, Angharad Rees et al. But they might grow on me, these new actors, and I know Ellis has a small part in NuPoldark. We shall see.

Winston Graham's JEREMY POLDARK

Not since Tristram Shandy has a novel's titular character taken quite such a long time to actually appear -- by which I mean be born -- in his novel as does Jeremy Poldark. And Jeremy Poldark actually takes longer!

He's not a character so much as a placemarker in his book, is Jeremy, second child of Ross and Demelza Poldark, Regency era Cornwall's sudsiest soap opera couple. The year of Jeremy's birth also sees his daddy on trial for his life, accused of attacking revenuers and inciting a riot during the wreck of a pair of ships near his property one tempestuous Cornwall night, his parents somewhat estranged over some behind-the-scenes meddling Demelza seems to have done to ensure a favorable verdict, his family's fortunes threatened by dastardly deeds of business (by which I mean, mostly, the upstart Warleggan clan), and, as always, his daddy making eyes at Cousin Elizabeth, who was originally set to marry Ross but who married Ross's cousin Francis instead back when Ross was given up for dead in the American Revolution (see the first Poldark novel, Ross Poldark).

For added historical flavor, the assizes at which Ross is tried coincide with a local election, and of course the Poldarks live in a rotten borough, so lots of tasty machinations ensue -- by the way, if you don't want to click on that boring old Wikipedia explanation of a rotten borough, you might enjoy one E. Blackadder explaining it to the Prince Regent:

And yes that's House doing the chicken impression

The machinations in Jeremy Poldark aren't quite as hilarious as those in Blackadder the Third, but they're still a pretty entertaining backdrop to the novel's action.

Other subplots include Jeremy's Aunt Verity finally getting to meet the stepchildren that came along with the marriage Jeremy's mother helped make happen in Demelza, and the somewhat hapless Dr. Dwight Enys,  perhaps Ross' best friend, meeting yet another woman who flummoxes him, though admittedly with less disastrous results than the last go-around.

And as I said, Jeremy eventually gets around to getting born, but even his birth is something of a non-event. One hopes this new hero gets more to do in later books...

Winston Graham's DEMELZA: A NOVEL OF CORNWALL

This 1970s version of the cover of Winston Graham's second Poldark novel, Demelza, keeps cracking me up. I wouldn't have touched it in a million years, with its emphasis on lustiness and defiant love and whatnot. I would though, have been missing out.

As I observed recently, I was sold on the idea of reading these by the BBC TV adaptation (America's Grandest New TV Saga the little green label on this book cover says), but even so was not quite prepared for how much I would like these books, like Graham's writing, like the characters and their world.

It's a small world, is late 18th Century Cornwall, populated by struggling tin and copper miners, struggling farmers and the odd ridiculous bastion of Georgian gentility, but it feels the effects of the wider world in its own way, as last novel showed us in the hard homecoming of Captain Ross Poldark after Britain's loss of its American colonies, and this one shows us in its tiny echoes of the nascent French Revolution happening just across the water from its wind-and sea-swept shores -- mostly in the form of food riots in the bigger towns, but still, rumblings all the same.

But for our purposes, the biggest stirring is still Ross's decision to marry his kitchen wench Demelza, who has turned out to be the perfect wife for him and, in her own novel here, to be a fascinating character all on her own. Unbelievably happy in her marriage and motherhood, she thinks everybody should be so, and so a lot of the plot of Demelza spins out from her efforts to secure her kind of happiness for Ross's cousin Verity, long separated from her man by family and social disapproval of his past as a wife-beater, violent drunk and all-around less-than-ideal prospect for any daughter. But it's true love! Can't anyone see it but Demelza? No, apparently not, so off she goes on her errand, with surprising and far-reaching results.

For while Demelza is off match-making, Ross is busy trying to do his bit as a social reformer, trying to keep his workers' offspring out of trouble, their livelihood from going belly-up, and to keep himself from decking every ponce in a powdered wig who winks at his wife, cheats him at cards, or outmaneuvers him in business. Oh, and to do all of this mostly in secrecy, which is hard to do in a small world with a busybody wife running around playing cupid and touching off family and social drama.

And again, there are lots of lovely moments, poignant and well crafted, like when the great old Grambler mine, on which the Poldark fortune seems largely to have originally been built, closes down and the gentlemen gather around the huge steam pumps that keep its galleries more or less clear of water to watch their last ups and downs and Ross's cousin Francis chalks the word "Resurgam" ("I shall rise again") on the side of the biggest of them to express the hope that someday what's still down in the Grambler will be economically worth digging for again. I hope it will, I do! But those darn Warleggans, the upstart banking family who are always on the verge of becoming the Poldarks' nemesis but never quite manifest as same, seem destined to keep copper prices low and the mine owners and their employees poor and dependent, those bastards!

Thrown into the mix is a High Romantic sub-plot involving a fancy lass who marries an honest, big-but-dim mining man and regrets it to the ruin of, well, just about everybody in some fashion or another. It's this sub-plot that raises a lot of modern eyebrows, because of course it all ends tragically, but then, oh, what's this? All of these characters we have come to love and sympathize with are loving and sympathizing the guy who killed his wife! To quite an extraordinary degree. Because the fancy lass had it coming, I guess? Um.

So no, I didn't like that bit either, but such has been the way of the world. If there's one thing a reader of novels learns over and over again, it sure do suck to be a girl. But then again, it mostly seems to suck to be a guy, too, though the old saw about being laughed at versus being murdered still comes to mind. Or at least until everybody is up against bigger problems, like rampant deadly disease, economic ruin and shipwrecks with pickings for all to fight over!

ALL THE MELODRAMA.

Winston Graham's ROSS POLDARK: A NOVEL OF CORNWALL

I first encountered the romantic (and Romantic) figure of Ross Poldark, veteran of the British side of the American Revolutionary War, on television, via the glorious BBC adaptation that PBS aired when I was a kid. I knew that someday I'd have to get my hands on these books to read them, because I could just tell that stuff was getting left out.

Oddly, though, this does not seem to be the case, much; the television show has proven to be very faithful to the books, or at least to this first one*. Which is to say that all the melodrama of the returned, wronged veteran plot is here, with just a dash more melancholy in the form of a prologue concerning Ross's father and uncle as the former lays dying and the latter lays plans to marry his son to the girl Ross has always fancied. Because everyone presumes Ross to be dead, of course.

Oh, Ross! The odds are stacked against him from the start. His father being a younger son, what patrimony there is for him is meager at best -- just enough to qualify as "landed gentry" with all the responsibilities of a country squire, not enough to afford to live at all well. The tin mine from which his father's fortune was drawn has sucked it all back down again, and a rotten pair of no-good servants have let the family pile get so run down that they're housing chickens in the living room... welcome home, war hero!

Oh, and yes, his childhood sweetheart is indeed marrying his cousin, son of the older son who got all the money and the original estate and the tin mine that's still worth a damn! Did I mention melodrama? Because melodrama.

But melodrama isn't all that's on offer here. There is also some wonderful nature porn, of which author Winston Graham was a gifted practitioner. In the high Romantic tradition, weather is often a stand in for/emphasizer of emotion, so, for example, a solitary figure standing quietly still and watching the sea can be understood as in turmoil if the waves are being especially powerful and crashy. But sometimes it's just there for the sake of being there. I'm already half in love with Cornwall, between growing up watching Poldark on television and having recently enjoyed the excellent Doc Martin series, exteriors of which were shot in Port Isaac, Cornwall (which, take a look at SF superstar Alastair Reynolds' relatively recent photo odyssey there, tracking down Doc's house and whatnot), and it's obvious that Graham was, too. With good reason.

But Graham does interiors, too, like that of a cottage in which dwell a family under Ross's care, and how the family spends its exhausted evenings. Graham gets the whole "world lit only by fire" and turns this shack into a mysterious abode of shadows and half-secrets: "On the floor Matthew Mark Martin's long bare legs glimmered like two silver trout; the rest of him was hidden in the massive pool of shadow cast by his mother."

Winston Graham is one cinematic writer, no?

But he is also, as it turns out, a writer with a real gift for honest, ordinary human emotion. Especially -- and this is quite rare -- happiness. For example, a scene, one that really just concerns Ross and Demelza rowing out to watch the yearly pilchard catch, is one of the loveliest I've read in a long time, not so much for the scenery (although that is nice) as for the rarity it captures: a moment of quiet, slightly awe-stricken joy, joy that is recognized and savored by our usually troubled hero. It's a total grace note, this scene, but I'm so glad it's there.

For Ross is a most turbulent, even exhausting character. A member of a family so ancient and steady they would probably have regarded the Cecils as gotten up parvenus, he shuns the local gentry in favor of the miners and farmers and poverty-stricken villagers who are his tenants, not out of any hipster-ish disdain for the manners and mores of the former so much as an inborn sense of decency (sharpened by the memory of his reprobate, skirt-chasing-and-catching father), which gets him into plenty of trouble when his proteges get caught poaching or when he rescues an urchin from a beating and makes the life-changing decision to adopt said urchin as a member of his household staff even after said urchin turns out to be a 13-year-old girl... and everyone in Cornwall starts thinking what you're probably thinking right now, unless you already know Ross and his story...

All in all, this first Poldark book is one of the loveliest things I've ever read; even the love story, which  sort of element usually makes me retch, is a thing of beauty. I suspect this is because Graham focused on the friendliness and companionship rather than on the passion. Ross Poldark spends most of the second half of the book hopeful and happy. And Graham found a way to make these states of mind anything but boring.

For pure pleasure in reading, Ross Poldark cannot be beaten.

*Though this is, of course, in plot and tone, really, this faithfulness. One way in which the TV show is lacking is in the way it portrays the relationship between Ross and Demelza. Robin Ellis did not really sell Ross's tenderness and genuine love for her, or the sheer happiness she brought to him. But could anyone, without a lot of cheesy voice-overs?