Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > O'Brian, Patrick - Katherine A. Powers (review date July 1995)

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Katherine A. Powers (review date July 1995)

SOURCE: “An Eighteenth-Century Voice,” in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 276, July, 1995, pp. 92–96.

[In the following mixed review, Powers argues that The Commodore is not as impressive as the earlier books in the Aubrey/Maturin series, but the novel is still better than most contemporary fiction.]

The noise accompanying the publication this spring of The Commodore, the seventeenth novel in Patrick O'Brian's Napoleonic naval-war series, demonstrates that this ancient Irishman, long the object of reverence for a small, fanatically devoted sect, is now the center of a booming industry. And yet there remain cautious readers who would not consider taking up one of these volumes, believing them to be no more than deep-dish costume dramas.

“What I hadn't understood, when I began these things,” O'Brian says, “was what a depraved genre it is in the general mind. It had never...

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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