Merivel

March 4, 2013
Set in 1683, 15 years after the end of Tremain’s Restoration, this sequel finds sometime doctor, sometime court jester Robert Merivel restless despite his comfortable county estate in England. Merivel travels to Versailles looking for joie de vivre, encountering instead a cliquish court, shabby accommodations, and an ill-treated pet bear. Merivel sends the bear back to England before returning himself to attend to his ailing daughter, Margaret. Though she recovers—and the prospect of a new romance, with a gay Swiss Guard’s beautiful, neglected wife, Louise de Flamanville, arises in the meantime— Merivel remains weary, disappointed, and haunted by memories, his malaise mirroring that of King Charles II, whose reign is ending with England beset by poverty and unrest. As before, Tremain contrasts beauty and coarseness, melancholy and slapstick, tenderness and pageantry. Wonderfully rich scenes light up the meandering narrative: the King’s mistress in retreat; the bear on the loose; Merivel walking the royal dogs. If something seems lacking, that may only be in comparison with the first novel’s unflagging inventiveness and its film adaptation’s unrestrained opulence, and from Tremain’s focus on the Restoration’s sadder, waning days, with both Merivel and Charles realizing how short of their former promise their lives have fallen. Agent: Bill Clegg, William Morris Endeavor.

In a droll tone, Sean Barrett delivers the fictional autobiography of Robert Merivel, physician to kings, as he reflects on his life from the mid to the late 1600s. This second installment of a man who doesn't really do anything except mooch off aristocrats in England and France takes listeners from the court of Charles II of England to that of Louis XIV in France. There Merivel, dissolute and pitiful, hopes to serve as a secondary doctor to the Sun King. After a month without an audience in Versailles, Merivel, depressed and disillusioned, accepts the invitation of Louise, Madame de Flamanville, to be a guest in her home in Paris. As Barrett recounts the quotidian dealings and events of the doctor's life, his fluid performance draws the listener into Merivel's story despite its monotony. M.B.K. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine