About book Martha Peake: A Novel Of The Revolution (2002)
This book is less about the main character, Martha Peake, that it is about what time and human imagination do to alter a person's legacy. Ambrose Tree tries to piece together Martha's life from his uncle William's tainted (or so Ambrose believes) memories and the few fragments of Martha's letters in his uncle possession. Is Martha really a hero of the Revolutionary War and her father a drunken monster. Is Uncle William complicit in a plot to reduce her crippled and deformed father into a scientific freak exhibit in Lord Drogo collection? Does Lord Drogo still roam his vast mansion, his heavy footfalls plainly audible in the halls, yet their existence denied by William and his servant Percy?As Uncle William slowly recounts the tragic story of Harry Peake, and his daughter Martha. Ambrose imagines that he is shading the true for his own purposes. Ambrose put these memories down on paper, adding his own interpretations of how Martha's childhood and eventual flight to the colonies of America unfolded. Harry's drunkenness and poor judgement causes both his wife's death and his own crippling spinal injuries. Of all his children, only Martha remains with him. To make money, he markets himself as a poet and freak, lampooning the English aristocracy. Sadly, his tenuous sobriety does not last. Drunk again, he becomes violent toward Martha, who flees to the comparative safety of Drogo Hall. This is not the end of Harry's abuse. Martha, after another horrific attack, is forced to flee to America to live with her aunt Maddy Rind. Pregnant and with few other options, she marries a cousin and, as tensions between England and the colonies, fires the shot that will make her a martyr to the Revolution. Through all the plot's twists, she maintains her unique strength and spirit, which makes her eventual end all the more tragic. Unfortunately, in my opinion, there really isn't as much about Revolutionary era America as there might have been. I would have liked to have more of Martha's 'real' life in the colonies and her involvement in the war. Most of the book is taken up with her early history, then getting her to America. Harry Peake's eventual end is somewhat satisfying. The author portrays him in a much more sympathetic light than he really deserves. In sum, this was a very good novel. The amount of historical detail McGrath puts into the narrative is fascinating, which was the main reason I kept going with this book even though the plot was frustrating at times.
I listened to a nicely read version of this. McGrath is a superb writer, without question, and unlike so many popular scribes these days, can craft impressive sentences. He comes under (and perhaps exemplifies) the contemporary literary gothic genre, and is very much in the tradition of Poe. He brings to his tales an awareness of psychology, as well as a fair amount of irony and a dark wit. This novel demonstrates another side of McGrath, but is still very much in line with his other writings."Martha Peake" finds the author setting a tale two centuries in the past, and altering his writing style to fit the conventions of that period. A young man finds himself laid up at his old uncle's manor house (Drogo Hall), and the two of them while away the hours by recalling, and speculating upon, the tale of a local man, Harry Peake, and his daughter, Martha. Harry, a robust young smuggler, is badly injured in a fire, and left with a badly humped and misshapen spine. His spirited daughter is deeply devoted to him, and they eek out a living among the poor of London. Harry has an artistic temperament, and along with writing some fine poetry, is prone to bouts of serious boozing. Following some painful developments, the girl goes off to New England to make a new life, and finds herself in the middle of the growing fervor of the revolution. Some of both Martha and Harry's actions make them look quite a bit less than heroic. But this must have partly been the point - the life that McGrath portrays here is not a sanitized one, but has its share of unsaintly behavior - sex, drunkenness, et cetera. It is not a colonial era soap opera, however, and neither is it a supernatural chiller, although it contains elements of both.Martha ultimately finds redemption in an act of heroism, but by that point the astute reader has become aware that he has fallen under the spell of an unreliable narrator. Young Ambrose Tree, who is telling the tale, has been neurotically fantasizing and embellishing quite a bit, and the truth, when it is finally, but less than completely revealed, is not as gothic and grotesque as he imagined it. MP is a fine read, but I am more partial to McGrath's writings that set his visions in the contemporary world, or closer to it. Somehow they seem more dark and real (and amusing) than this story does.
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The story kept me wanting to get to the next chapter to find out how Martha Peake's story continued. The narrator's premise changed from hearing his aged uncle tell about his role in the heroine's story vs. the narrator imagining what happened in a novel he was writing to capture the facts available and fill in the missing pieces. I read this book quickly as each chapter ended at a critical point and I cared enough about Martha to want to know what happened next. This is my first book by this author and being intrigued by his background (father was employed at psychiatric hospital)I want to know more about his other books. Plan on reading other novels from this author.
—Susan
This is both a very typical McGrath book, for its untrustworthy narrator and flights of addiction and depravity, and a rather non-typical McGrath book for its more upbeat conclusion. I refrain from saying "happy ending", but it is far from the sad or even psychotically depressing end most of his books contain.Set during the early days of the American Revolution, it is the story of Martha Peake's flight from England and from her deformed, both morally and physically, father. As with all McGrath, much reading can be done between the lines to determine the true motives of the characters, as well as much of the truth of the plot itself. And though the predominant sentiment can be seen as cynicism, there is more hope here than initially catches the casual observer. Usually the narrator presents himself to be an idealist or "good" person and is proven to be of questionable sanity, ill informed, and/or immoral. Here, McGrath puts a new spin on his formula with a moral but ill informed narrator inadvertently twisting the tale to his own conclusions, in the hopes of subverting an ostensibly cynical uncle's opinion of the American Revolution, only to be awakened to his error before the book's conclusion.As always, the plot takes most of the book to unfold, reading like three hundred pages of exposition for a twenty page pay off. But what a pay off! Never give up on a McGrath is a notion I always bear in mind when reading this author, as his stories often take very unexpected turns. However, if you are after just a taste of this writer, I can not over estimate the worth of Spider, with Asylum coming in a close second. Martha Peake is, perhaps, McGrath for McGrath fans.
—Sid Redlin
I'm a big Patrick McGrath fan. This is a twisty -- and twisted -- tale of a young British girl who ends up in America during the Revolution. His characters are interesting because they aren't always good or likeable but they're almost always cunning. The stories are suspenseful and creepy but always feel like they cold be real life. I liked Martha Peake -- the details were vivid and seemed true to me. I really felt that he wrote a believable female character -- strong and willful but limited in what her life could be. And he as able to make the character strong without making her seem too modern in her sensibilities as some times happens in historical novels. This is a good intro to McGrath if you haven't read his stuff.
—Stephanie
