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Jan. 22nd, 2022 06:04 pmI just got out of our book group conversation for Emmanuel Dongala's Bridgetower Sonata, a book I had purchased during one of my stress-relief-book-buying stints last year in a sudden powerful desire to discover a new-to-me Big Dense Dramatic Historical Fiction Epic a la Dunnett or Mantel.
This book is not that, though it is indeed stuffed full of historical detail. The focus of the story is George Bridgetower, a violin prodigy of African and Polish descent who had a brief but intense friendship with Beethoven and was the original dedicatee of his Violin Sonata No. 9.
However, the Bridgetower-Beethoven dynamic only comes into play in the last third or less of the book; for most of the story, George is nine and we're experiencing the world through the eyes of his father, John Frederick de Augustus Bridgetower, a freedman from Barbados posing as an African prince as he shepherds his baby prodigy son through European high society of 1789 in an attempt to make their fortunes. Lots of rich dramatic character and narrative potential here! The book is really not anywhere near as interested in that dramatic character and narrative potential as it is in introducing Frederick to every other relevant historical figure running around Paris on the eve of the French Revolution! For example, over the course of one night and sixty pages, Frederick meets the Chevalier de St. George, General Alex Dumas (Sr.), the Marquise de Montesson, Rodolphe Kreutzer, Louise-Francoise de Keralio, Etta Palm, Olympe de Gouges, General Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson, Camille Desmoulins, Madame Roland, Pierre Rode, Pierre Baillot, Antoine Lavoisier, and the Marquis de Condorcet -- and these are only the ones he has opinions about, I'm leaving out about a half-dozen other famous names.
None of these people are relevant to Frederick or George's later life in any way (with the possible and oblique exception of Kreutzer) but they are important for scene-setting the various complexities, contradictions, and hypocrisies of Enlightenment attitudes towards race and slavery, which is really the thing that Dongala is most interested in writing about. I respect the project! These are all really interesting people! I, too, would be absolutely unable to resist cameo-ing Alex Dumas in a novel if I had any opportunity to do so! However, I do think the reading experience of the novel would have been more satisfying to me if more of the focus was on Frederick and George as specific people with narrative arcs of their own, rather than as lenses through which to explore the period.
This does change a bit once George grows up -- he still doesn't have a ton of individuality in the final section, tbh, but the dynamic with Beethoven provides a solid thread on which to hang a narrative (as well as a shipping manifesto enthusiastically delivered by one book group member, who made a compelling argument by performing a dramatic reading of the various passages describing homoerotically-charged duets.) We also agreed that it would make a great film starring an actor who could infuse the mildly gormless George with personality through the power of facial acting. My personal pitch would be Alfie Enoch.
As a sidenote, this is a book in translation from French and![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti has opinions about the translation choices, which are heavily foreignized to capture French Sentence Vibes and a bit distancing as a result.
This book is not that, though it is indeed stuffed full of historical detail. The focus of the story is George Bridgetower, a violin prodigy of African and Polish descent who had a brief but intense friendship with Beethoven and was the original dedicatee of his Violin Sonata No. 9.
However, the Bridgetower-Beethoven dynamic only comes into play in the last third or less of the book; for most of the story, George is nine and we're experiencing the world through the eyes of his father, John Frederick de Augustus Bridgetower, a freedman from Barbados posing as an African prince as he shepherds his baby prodigy son through European high society of 1789 in an attempt to make their fortunes. Lots of rich dramatic character and narrative potential here! The book is really not anywhere near as interested in that dramatic character and narrative potential as it is in introducing Frederick to every other relevant historical figure running around Paris on the eve of the French Revolution! For example, over the course of one night and sixty pages, Frederick meets the Chevalier de St. George, General Alex Dumas (Sr.), the Marquise de Montesson, Rodolphe Kreutzer, Louise-Francoise de Keralio, Etta Palm, Olympe de Gouges, General Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson, Camille Desmoulins, Madame Roland, Pierre Rode, Pierre Baillot, Antoine Lavoisier, and the Marquis de Condorcet -- and these are only the ones he has opinions about, I'm leaving out about a half-dozen other famous names.
None of these people are relevant to Frederick or George's later life in any way (with the possible and oblique exception of Kreutzer) but they are important for scene-setting the various complexities, contradictions, and hypocrisies of Enlightenment attitudes towards race and slavery, which is really the thing that Dongala is most interested in writing about. I respect the project! These are all really interesting people! I, too, would be absolutely unable to resist cameo-ing Alex Dumas in a novel if I had any opportunity to do so! However, I do think the reading experience of the novel would have been more satisfying to me if more of the focus was on Frederick and George as specific people with narrative arcs of their own, rather than as lenses through which to explore the period.
This does change a bit once George grows up -- he still doesn't have a ton of individuality in the final section, tbh, but the dynamic with Beethoven provides a solid thread on which to hang a narrative (as well as a shipping manifesto enthusiastically delivered by one book group member, who made a compelling argument by performing a dramatic reading of the various passages describing homoerotically-charged duets.) We also agreed that it would make a great film starring an actor who could infuse the mildly gormless George with personality through the power of facial acting. My personal pitch would be Alfie Enoch.
As a sidenote, this is a book in translation from French and
genarti has opinions about the translation choices, which are heavily foreignized to capture French Sentence Vibes and a bit distancing as a result.
