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Originally Posted by gmw
. It seems to me that Tey wrote with an agenda. .....
I don't like Grant, ........ I don't have much more to say about Tey's book that you don't already know, or can't guess  . |
I don’t mean to play the devil’s advocate because I know you’ve tried Grant twice. But I’ll just mention that I decided to give it another try too, given how many folks here seem to enjoy his character. I just finished the last novel,
The Singing Sands, and really enjoyed it. This time it was easy to empathize with Grant - he had humour, depth and character, and plenty of little grey cells. And I thought Tey’s writing was very good; lots of atmosphere and great observations about human nature.
Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I loved this as an adolescent, but as I feared, it didn't hold up on this reading.
........my antennae went up and stayed up when Carradine mentioned the Boston Massacre as an example where popular history has got it wrong. No big deal, he said, and only four "casualties."
I found it telling in a way that Tey quoted large swaths of Rose of Raby, as if such highly fictionalized history, complete with conversations and thoughts, qualified as one of those primary sources. Essentially she borrowed what served her case, no matter the provenance. All sorts of unsupported allegations were strung together with such phrases as, "he might have," "he must have," "he may have" and "he would have."
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Agreed - I was very taken aback when Tey had Carradine just casually throw away four deaths like that. It’s hard to imagine what she was thinking when she wrote that. Maybe coming through the WWII had blunted her feelings?
I realize it’s dangerous to rely on Wikipedia, but it sounds like she first fabricated, and then borrowed what served her case. According to Wikipedia, the
Rose of Raby Grant was quoting from doesn’t even exist, nor the history book he read.
“Both Tanner's history and the novel are non-existent. It has been suggested that the title of the latter is derived from Guy Paget's 1937 biography of the same name.”
When I looked, I only found one other book entitled
Rose of Raby, but it was published in 2011.