Precipice

 

Precipice – Robert Harris

If we’re honest, when we fall in love - I mean hard in love – we tend to do stupid things.  Something about romantic obsession with another human being makes our brains turn to mush and we can unintentionally behave in ways that are awfully embarrassing for everybody to see.  Many times we can’t sleep, we can’t eat, we can’t even think clearly.  Sometimes I think that my GPA back in college could have been an entire point higher had I not been so romantically stupid during certain points in my youth. But I really don’t want to even go there.

Oh well. At least I wasn’t the Prime Minister of England going through such feelings at the outbreak of World War I.  Yes, author Robert Harris suggests that this just may have been the case.  The Prime Minister in 1914 was Henry Asquith.  He was about 60, married, yet he fell for a woman less than half his age. For a while, the feelings were reciprocal. Her name was Venetia Stanley and came from a family with gobs of money, so she was part of the aristocracy.

In “real life”, we actually have the surviving correspondence from the Prime Minister.  The author imagines what the other half was writing, and we have a bizarre improper love story on our hands.

The problem, as I’ve alluded to, is that the year is 1914, and the country of England is on the brink of entering the War to End All Wars.  With such an event on the horizon, the powers that be need to have a clear head.  Not so with Asquith. He’s completely loopy in love, and can’t seem to function with any level of normalcy when his country needs him the most.  This was the saddest, yet most intriguing part of this novel.  To be honest, not much really happened in the “action” department, but the reward for the reader is seeing this improbable relationship, and just how smitten and brain warped the PM actually was.

As we should expect with a 26-year-old having an adulterous affair with a man more than twice her age, she eventually loses interest somewhat.  I mean, there is a war going on, and even though she’s part of the elite aristocracy, she wants to prove herself and be useful, electing to go in the much-needed field of nursing.  Asquith can’t understand such nonsense.  Can’t she just stay at home and wait for the rare occurrences when he can sneak away and have a quick fling?

The story is told through the eyes of a (fictitious) detective, Paul Deemer.  Deemer has his own typical issues, and in many ways, this is his story as much as the two tabloid subjects.  The problem (one of many) when you’re so highly infatuated as the Prime Minister, is that you just might accidentally divulge state secrets to your lover. Not a good idea considering the times. And not a good idea when a detective stumbles across a lot of what is going on.

Another thing I enjoyed about this book is that it served as a decent primer to how and why the first World War started, and why England had to get involved.  It was quite the sad tale since hindsight tell us just how horrible the conflict would be after four years of what was essentially a grueling stalemate.  If one doesn’t particularly like the romantic story presented here, they may enjoy the book for its history.

Robert Harris is quietly becoming one of my favorite authors. Any author who writes well on the subject of history is going to be favorable in my book, and apart from his wonderful “what-if” debut Fatherland, his novels have been rich with history; some imagined but rich with emotion and detail.  I would recommend this book along with the others of his that I have read. As of this writing, I’m committing myself to try to read his complete works.  Will I continue to enjoy these thrillers?  We’ll see.