One Man's View

by Leonard Merrick

“The mood of One Man’s View is that of one utterly familiar with the ways of the world high and low, skeptical of miracles, wise to shams, yet still capable of a certain amount of empathy, compassion, and hope...”
—The Neglected Books Page

Marriage and divorce; art and failure; a quest for fame on the stage. These are some of the themes of this neglected classic from a great neglected writer.

Genres: Fiction

Kindle Edition

First published May 27, 2009

About the author

Leonard Merrick was an English novelist. Although largely forgotten today, he was widely admired by his peers, J. M. Barrie called Merrick the "novelist's novelist."

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the third of seven planned Merrick titles. And my least favorite so far. Not a good sign to have book one a four star, book two a three star, and now book three just two stars. But for me this book was less that it seemed to want to be, if that makes any sense.

The first couple of chapters, setting up the story, were the best. We meet a successful British barrister on holiday. He has seen a lovely young woman on the balcony of a boarding house and has fanciful ideas that he would like to meet her. Maybe he could change his rooms for one in that house?

But that is not necessary, since an old friend shows up. An old friend who just happens to be the lovely young lady's father. He thinks the barrister could help his daughter gain a toehold in the world of drama. She wants to be an actress! Does Our Man Heriot know anyone who could give her a start in her dream career?

No, Unfortunately he does not. But he stays in touch with the young lady after Father returns to America and she is living with an aunt. Our barrister has fallen madly in love with her but cannot convince her to marry him, she wants her career.

Will she become a superstar? Will his love ever be returned? What does the future hold for our star-crossed couple?

There were only fourteen chapters in this book, and I have to confess I skimmed the final two. I had gone from intrigued to somewhat bored fairly quickly. The characters here never caught my attention the way the people of The Man Who Was Good and even Cynthia did. It was simply a regular run of the mill story this time around, but maybe in the next one on the list Merrick will get back to the standard he set for me in TMWWG. That 'next one' is the book that was the most popular in his day, Conrad In Search Of His Youth.

But I am going to wait a bit and read some other Gutenberg book before I meet Conrad. I want the disappointment of One Man's View to fade away a bit first.

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘One Man’s View’ is a frustrating book, and yet in some ways it presents Merrick at his best and most interesting, and it probably demonstrates why his books never ‘sold’; why he had a reptation for ‘gloominess’ even though he avoided unhappy endings.

The book has the hallmarks of a ‘Madame Bovary’ style tragedy – the suburban tragedy of a failed actress and adulteress – and yet it refuses to be ‘tragic’. It has a ‘happy ending’, of sorts, which is curiously sad. It raises the expectations of both tragedy and romance, and undercuts them. Life simply goes on. If the book were not so patently sincere and compassionate, it might almost be a satire.

Merrick was the poet of failed expectations. There is a certain ‘greyness’ about his books, but it is the subtle and beautiful greyness of a Whistler painting. The main source of colour comes from his characters’ dreams of the theatre – so vividly and achingly portrayed as to take on an almost ‘spiritual’ quality in his disillusioned universe. And of course, theatre as a metaphor for spiritual yearning fits Merrick’s purposes perfectly – perhaps that is why he never seems entirely happy when he is not writing about it – for theatre, as he well knew, is a fraud...

[Vincent Liu]

A rather interesting account of a Marine veteran's experience