I was this past Christmas damned to spend endless weekends and late nights reading book after book about events of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. My daughter-in-law gave me the first in this series of 20 historical novels, and after reading it I was, so-to-speak, unable to not proceed to purchase the other 19 1/2 books in the series and displace many other books awaiting my attention.
The roman-fleuve (French, literally "river-novel") refers to an extended sequence of novels of which the whole acts as a commentary for a society or an epoch, and which continually deals with a central character, community or a saga within a family. The river metaphor implies a steady, broad dynamic lending itself to a perspective. Each volume makes up a complete novel by itself, but the entire cycle exhibits unifying characteristics.
Such is Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Each of these books starts and finishes with two friends, English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician/naturalist/intelligence operative Stephen Maturin, who when not eating, drinking, or playing their violin and chello take part in historically accurate accounts of British Naval actions. The 20-novel series is a well-researched and highly detailed portrayal of early 19th century life, in particular life related to the Royal Navy, with authentic and evocative language and, I might add, occasional examples of early 19th century European medicine.
Throughout the series, the author-narrator employs the same idioms and vocabulary as the characters would have used during their times, and his characters probably would have conversed easily with those of Jane Austin. In addition to this period language, O'Brian tends to use naval jargon with no translation for the reader. This combination of the historical-voice narration and naval terms is daunting at first (at least to me); but it seems that this "total immersion" effect takes hold quickly. Sometimes, O'Brian explains (to we nautical and historical neophyte readers) these terms by having Mautrin tutored in these matters either by Jack Aubrey or some other seasoned seaman.
There is no "last book" that wraps everything up and ends the series. A partially-finished twenty-first novel in the series was published posthumously as a thin hardback with facing pages of handwriting and typescript. In "The Nutmeg of Consolation" (about book #13 or so) Maturin and Aubrey actually discuss the merits of a novel that does not have a real ending, a "final" chapter and conclusion, and I wonder if O'Brien was writing this with a foresight that the series would end only with his death. His final, partial novel ends in the middle of a story, but that is OK . . . I can imagine that Stephen and Aubry will go on and on, living forever their unique friendship and sailing the oceans for Britian, Ireland, Catalan Spain and for science.
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