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Title: A Man of Genius
Author: Janet Todd
Narrator: Miriam Margolyes
Format: Unabridged
Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-16-16
Publisher: Craftsman Audio Books
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Publisher's Summary:
Set in the bustling society of Regency England and decaying Venice, A Man of Genius portrays a psychological journey from safety into secrecy and obsession.
After a troubled childhood, Ann St Clair achieves independence by earning her living as an author of cheap Gothic novels. Within a group of male writers, she meets and is enthralled by the supposed poetic genius, Robert James. They become uneasy lovers.
Ann and Robert James travel from London through a Europe exhausted by the long Napoleonic wars. They arrive in a Venice of spies and intrigue, where their relationship becomes tortuous and Robert descends into near madness. Forced to flee with a stranger, Ann delves into her past, to be jolted by a series of revelations about her lover, her parentage, the stranger and herself.
Members Reviews:
More than a journey to hell and back
This fine book is like a midnight express to hell. As one drawn to literatures of angst, trouble, and tragedy, and the gothic tradition, I found the journey both interesting and worthwhile. Happily, Todd provides a return ticket from perdition, and in coming back, I discovered another level of interpretation that enhances this satisfying novel with a significant creative achievement. While plainly itself as a harrowing story of a woman writer in the early 19th century, the novel may also be read as a compressed social history of gender identity, fiercely dramatized through contrasts. This perception made the book for me a "page turner" and standout artistic achievement. Janet Todd is an eminent scholar and biographer of 18th and 19th century English women writers. Now she makes a striking first offering as a writer of fiction herself.
Genius and Madness
This is a very unusual book, a total immersion in the near-Regency period, not a sentimental romance but a Gothic novel about a Gothic novelist. Following her obsessive love for what she believes to be "a man of genius" from London to the back alleys of Venice, she encounters realistic privation, modern violence, delirium and ultimately.....I'm not going to give away the ending. I am not sure the author gives away the ending. The historical details are impeccable. The characters are fascinating. It's hard to believe it is a first novel.
A brilliantly written Gothic tale of obsession, madness and mystery
Many years ago I read Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, a short, slightly overripe novel published in 1764. In it, we are gripped by events such as a bleeding statue, a praying skeleton and a castle of horror, amongst other chilling marvels. Otranto was the very first Gothic novel, inaugurating a new genre that - along with its offshoot, Horror - has become a mainstay of both publishing and films. If you've never read Walpole's brilliant foray into darkness, I strongly recommend it.
Since reading Otranto, I've searched for years for another novel whose sense of oppressive secrecy and malevolent evil disguised as Byronic magnetism would equal Walpole's uncanny tale of the darkly romantic Manfred of Otranto castle. Janet Todd has written a novel that features a similarly charismatic Gothic hero - Robert James - whose flamboyant genius attracts the obsessive attentions of Ann, a successful writer of Gothic novels in post-Napoleonic 1819 Europe. The novel shifts between Regency London and an occupied Venice with all of its decadent history intact.
