Product Description

This title is presented with a new introduction by the author. Robert Merivel is a dissolute young medical student when an accident of fate leads him to the attention of King Charles II. Finding favour with the King, Merivel embarks on the time of his life, enthusiastically enjoying the luxury, women and wine of the vibrant royal court, until he is called upon to serve his monarch in an unusual role. However, when he fails at the one thing the King demands of him he is cast out from his new found paradise. Determined to be restored to the King's favour, Merivel begins a journey to self-knowledge that takes him to the depths of seventeenth-century society.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24144 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

About the Author
Rose Tremain lives in North London and Norwich, with the biographer Richard Holmes. Her books have won many prizes including the 2008 Orange Prize, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Prix Femina Etranger, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Angel Literary Award and the Sunday Express Book of the Year. Restoration was shortlisted for the Booker and made into a film; The Colour was shortlisted for the Orange and selected by the Daily Mail Reading Club. Her most recent collection, The Darkness of Wallis Simpson, was shortlisted for both the First National Short story Award and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Two of her books (The Colour and The Way I Found Her) are in development as films, and she is currently working on a TV screenplay to star Sir Ian McKellen.

Customer Reviews

Different but truly superb

I have read other books by Rose Tremain and found this very different. You have to stick with this book in the beginning but I found it a really absorbing and highly entertaining read once it got going. Her main character, Merivel is superbly characterized and on the surface quite loathsome but you end up feeling very fond of him because he knows his own weaknesses and is always trying to improve himself. I laughed out loud on several occassions because she vividly depicts the scenes so well. It is historical and she relates the lavish lives of the royal court in contrast to the extreme poverty on the streets with great skill - it is all done within Merivel's narration which I found captivating. Try it - I am sure you will enjoy this unusual journey.

One of the best...
If I finish a book and declare it to be one of the best I have ever read, I normally wait a few days before writing a review. If my opinion hasn't changed by the time I take up my pen, I restate the opinion. It doesn't happen often. Rose Tremain's Restoration remains one of the best books I have ever read.

It's a book with everything a good novel should have. There's a thoroughly endearing, involving and interesting central character. There's a wonderful backdrop in mid-seventeenth century England. There's intellectual pursuit, carnal knowledge, earthy lifestyle, religious revelation and a good deal of excellent cooking. There are complicated relationships, both unrequited and requited love, commissions from royalty, the proximity of madness and, to keep everything in perspective, a keen sense of the absurd. And, alongside all of that, we live through some great historical events in the restoration of the monarchy, the plague and a Great Fire.

But central to everything is the remarkable Robert Merivel. He's a talented individual who threatens to achieve but rarely does. He's never a success but manages to stumble upon a succession of remarkable achievements. He drops out of his studies as a physician, but practices as a doctor. He gets a special job from the king, but fluffs it. He lands a job that's a meal ticket for life and gets kicked out.

Through Merivel's eyes we experience the sounds, smells and lifestyle of London, the opulence of high society, courtesy of royal patronage and then the frugality of religious commitment. We also appreciate how knowledge and thus assumptions can change. We enter a world where Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood is still novel. When, as medical students, Merivel and his colleague Pearce discover a man with an open wound on the chest that allows his beating heart to be touched, the pair marvel at how the organ that is supposed to be the centre of all emotion has itself no feeling. In our rational age, of course, no-one refers to heart as having anything whatsoever to do with emotion... One wonders which of our currently unquestioned assumptions will be as quaintly absurd three hundred years from now.

Celia is one of the king's mistresses. As a cover for his continued liaisons with her, he suggests Merivel marry her in name only. It all goes wrong, of course, when our rather shaggy and unattractive hero, seen as something of a joke by his contemporaries, falls for her. He spins a yarn or two and is found out, but along the way we feel we have experienced what it is like to seek and receive patronage. We also feel the subsequent fall from favour.

When Merivel's life changes, we too are drawn into his new world, a world in which his unfinished and thus unconsummated study of medicine can be usefully employed. He becomes involved with his work, eventually too involved, and there is yet another fall from grace back into the company of the hoi polloi.

But in this era, everyone's life experience seems close to some edge or other. There's plague about, and disease of all kinds. Poverty both threatens and beckons, and yet daily the needs of flesh must be satisfied. And in this respect Merivel is both a success and a survivor. Despite being a figure of fun and an incompetent, he lives life to the full. Through him we taste, smell and sense his age and, in the end, we also understand it a little more than we did.

Restoration is strong on plot. What happens to Robert Merivel is as important as how it happens, so my review reveals little of the detail of the character's progress through life. But it is always an endearing and enlightening journey, and reveals aspects of humanity that are surely universal and eternal, as eternal perhaps as Merivel's own room at the top of his tower. Restoration remains one of the best books I have ever read.

Restorative Restoration
Having discovered Rose Tremain via her novel " The Road Home" I am working my way through her previous work. I have found each of the novels thoughtful and entertaining. Restoration is very satisfying; informative, beautifully written and, in the first half of the novel, very humerous.I shall continue adding to my library with Ms Tremain's remaining novels.