Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > O'Brian, Patrick - Barbara Everett (review date 4 September 1998)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

Barbara Everett (review date 4 September 1998)

SOURCE: “A Genuine Romancer,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4979, September 4, 1998, p. 10.

[In the following review, Everett offers a positive assessment of The Hundred Days.]

Manifestly successful at last, often described now as the greatest historical novelist of the century, and awarded prizes and honours as well as accolades, Patrick O'Brian still doesn't convince quite everybody. For some old admirers, the excitement has not survived a second reading; there are readers who call him second-rate on the first. What is lacking is real agreement as to what the writer is first- or second-rate at doing.

Part of the confusion may derive from uncertainty as to what fiction really is. The novel, though highly reputed, is a late development—merely an offshoot of Romance, the non-naturalistic form which dominated Europe for 1,000 years before Shakespeare and a hundred or two after....

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John Bayley (essay date 7 November 1991)
   2. Frank Stewart (review date 4 April 1993)
   3. Byron Rogers (review date 10 July 1993)
   4. Michael Dirda (review date August 1993)
   5. Patrick T. Reardon (review date 19 December 1993)
   6. Frederick Pratter (review date 31 December 1993)
   7. John Balzar (review date 2 January 1994)
   8. Thomas McGonigle (review date 2 January 1994)
   9. Elliott Abrams (review date 24 January 1994)
   10. James Hamilton-Paterson (review date 26 December 1994)
   11. Frederick Pratter (review date 2 May 1995)
   12. Katherine A. Powers (review date July 1995)
   13. Sam Pickering (review date Spring 1996)
   14. Thomas R. Edwards (essay date Summer 1996)
   15. John Balzar (review date 20 October 1996)
   16. Edward T. Wheeler (review date 8 November 1996)
   17. Christopher Clausen (review date 16 December 1996)
   18. James Teacher (review date 4 January 1997)
   19. John Mullan (review date 10 January 1997)
   20. Books Magazine (review date October 1997)
   21. Molly Finn (essay date 19 June 1998)
   22. Alan Judd (review date 22 August 1998)
   23. Barbara Everett (review date 4 September 1998)
   24. Martin Jacques (review date 6 September 1998)
   25. Christopher Hitchens (essay date 9 March 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright