Barry Unsworth: Losing Nelson

Penguin

$24.95

Review: John Connor*

Charles Cleasby, the main character of Losing Nelson, is a lonely, repressed, reclusive, socially inept obsessive-compulsive with paranoid tendencies.

Obviously, a man with this rich an array of personality defects needs someone without such defects, someone to rely on, to admire and emulate - in short, a hero. Who better to choose than Horatio, Lord Nelson, the man whose courage and brilliance ensured that Britannia ruled the waves?

In the basement of his London home Charles, with the help of model ships and a converted billiard table, re-enacts the great battles of his hero. He is also writing what he believes will be the definitive biography of Nelson.

Unfortunately, he is unable to use a computer because the reflections in the screen frighten him. He is therefore obliged to take the risk of allowing another human being into his home, his amanuensis, Miss Lily.

If Barry Unsworth had not written Losing Nelson, his attention to historical accuracy and detail is such that he could have written the definitive biography of Nelson.

Here is the great man seizing victory at Cape St Vincent, destroying Bonaparte's dreams of an Oriental Empire at the Battle of the Nile, putting the telescope to his blind eye at Copenhagen and dying in the moment of his triumph at Trafalgar.

Nelson is every inch the Boys' Own hero. Yet there is the unsettling problem of what appears to be his less than heroic betrayal of the Republican rebels at Naples in 1799.

As if this isn't bad enough, Miss Lily begins to question other aspects of Nelson's heroism.

To make matters even worse, and despite his best efforts, Charles is developing tender feelings towards Miss Lily. There is a chance that his narrow, well-ordered world will fall apart.

It is a mark of Unsworth's powers as a writer that, working with this material and a small cast of characters, he has produced a brilliant novel.

Through the unlikely character of Charles Cleasby he explores with great skill and sensitivity the themes of love, pride, truth, betrayal and the loss of faith.

Charles is a marvellous creation, a neurotic mess, hilarious in all his pompous self-delusion but ultimately tragic as his humanity is revealed. Once you have met him you will never forget him.

* John Connor is an Auckland writer and lecturer.