This Western-inspired historical war novel deserves recognition alongside the works of
Patrick O'Brian and Hilary Mantel for its dynamic exploration of the depths of human depravity and compassion.
Toll tells this grand tale with the political insight of Founding Brothers and the narrative flair of
Patrick O'Brian.
Since the CNO-PRP was launched in 2006, featured books have included Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner,
Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander, and many other works of fiction.
Patrick O'Brian's Bodies at Sea: Sex, Drugs and the Physical Form in the Aubrey-Maturin Novels
My top writers are John le Carre, Raymond Chandler,
Patrick O'Brian. My next book is The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths.
(For British naval history buffs, it is analogous to the volume A Sea of Words that accompanies
Patrick O'Brian's novels about the fictional 18th century British naval officer Jack Aubrey, although written descriptively rather than lexically.)
In childhood, when
Patrick O'Brian was confined to bed by severe attacks of asthma, he found bound volumes of the Gentleman's Quarterly, to which Samuel Johnson had contributed many articles, and read through the entire series.
His father, a stern but not cruel Navy man whom Hitchens always refers to unironically as "The Commander," is straight out of postwar British central casting, interchangeable with characters from the Master and Commander novels by
Patrick O'Brian that Hitchens loved.
These novels from the past 60 years are by authors based outside Wales:
Patrick O'Brian's Testimonies (1952) and John Wain's A Winter in the Hills of 1970 ("differently powerful and distinguished"), as well as 2007's Booker-longlisted, Richard & Judy Bookclub-boosted The Welsh Girl.
Patrick O'Brian, a writer for whom I have a huge admiration, has written that 'the communal mind, even where the community is made up of unthinking and illiterate men, is very nearly infallible as a Council.
In our year or two of reading
Patrick O'Brian's books, we've circled the globe with Aubrey and his surgeon friend, Stephen Maturin.