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Resolution
Wilson's powerful new novel explores the life and times of one of the greatest British explorers, Captain Cook, and the golden age of Britain's period of expansion and exploration. Wilson's protagonist, witness to Cook's brilliance and wisdom, is George Forster, who travelled with Cook as botanist on board the HMS Resolution, on Cook's second expedition to the southern hemisphere, and penned a famous account of the journey. Resolution moves back and forth across time, to depict Forster's time with Cook, and his extraordinary later life, which ended with his death in Paris, during the French Revolution. Wilson once again demonstrates his great powers as a master craftsman of the historical and the human in this richly evoked novel, which brings to life the real and the extraordinary, brilliantly drawing together a remarkable cast of characters in order to look at human endeavour, ingenuity and valour.
278 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
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172 people want to read
About the author
A.N. Wilson
117 books242 followersAndrew Norman Wilson is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views. He is an occasional columnist for the Daily Mail and former columnist for the London Evening Standard, and has been an occasional contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Observer.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 23, 2016
From a prolific author of both fiction and nonfiction, a meticulously researched novel about George Forster, one of the naturalists on Captain Cook’s second voyage. Rather than giving a simple chronological account of the journey and its aftermath, Wilson employs a sophisticated structure that alternates vignettes from the voyage with scenes from about 10 years later, when George is unhappily married to Therese and struggling to find suitable work. This is the second novel I’ve read by Wilson, after The Potter’s Hand. I find his fiction to be thoroughly convincing as well as engaging. This reminded me most of
Measuring the World
by Daniel Kehlmann, another rip-roaring tale of exploration with prose emulating the more detached narrative style of the eighteenth century. Recommended to any readers of historical fiction and adventure stories.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
See my full review at The Bookbag.
January 30, 2017
A good introduction to the era of exploration and the famous Captain but I found it difficult to keep track of time and place. This is more about the botanist than Captain Cook. The narrative doesn't flow easily and I became frustrated about what point in time I was reading. That said, I learnt a great deal about how ships were operated and the various places discovered by Cook. It's a historical period I know little about and I am keen to read more accounts.
February 20, 2017
This is more a novel of the man George Forster, with flashbacks to his history.
I was really hoping for more of the Adventure and Discovery aspects of the South Pacific. My review reflects unmet expectations.
I was really hoping for more of the Adventure and Discovery aspects of the South Pacific. My review reflects unmet expectations.
November 6, 2017
A very interesting read, but I was expecting a lot more from his actual exploration exploits. Rather dull in places.
February 27, 2019
The story takes place on Captain Cook's second expedition, but is less about travel and exploration and more about the impact such a journey has on the mind of a teenager. George Forster was a historical person and he got to travel to Antarctica, Polynesia and New Zealand - uncharted and unknown parts of the Globe to Europeans. And it determined the course of the rest of his life, for better and for worse.
George Forster's family is of English descent, but he grows up in Germany with his extremely intellectual father who is a parson and unrecognised scholar and botanist. His father is rather isolated in the country side (apparently farmers are not always super keen to discuss Coptic dialects when the harvest is impending) so from his son is a toddler he trains the child to be his scientific colleague. The boy is not allowed to play with other children, not even his siblings, and must spend all his time with his father. By the time George is a teenager, he speaks several languages fluently, is a gifted artist, scholar, botanist and linguist. It might be a successful parenting method for giving your child an intellectual advantage, but it does give George a very solitary childhood and gives him some serious daddy-issues. By sheer luck the Forsters get a place onboard Captain Cook's second expedition. George is only seventeen years old when he goes on this trip! What he sees and learns on this journey will make him a member of the Royal Society at the age of 23 and the founder of modern ethnography. He also made some lovely drawings from his journey.
The book switches between following the Resolution and George as an adult. Later in life, George is a famous author, scholar and family man. He loves his children but his marriage is a massive failure. It crashes and burns quicker than the Hindenburg! From the very beginning, he and his wife Therese hate being together. He does not acknowledge her formidable intellect and, early on, tries to rape her. She cannot forgive him for not giving her the life of exploration that she really craves and his emotional distance. Wilson seems to think much of George's failed private life can be traced to his teenage adventures; for months, he never saw a woman and when the crew went a shore, in Tahiti or New Zealand, boy was not allowed, by his father, to have the most basic interaction with the opposite sex. Therese and George are both aware of marrying in order to escape their controlling fathers, but it seems that they bring with them every psychological scar from their childhood into their relationship. They are like a worse version of their parents' marriages. George does not really encounter what love truly is until towards the end of his life; he was never loved by Therese, never really loved by his father and his relationship to his other father figure, Cook, was rather complicated. There was one person that loved him early on, but George did not see it.
It is a very short book and can be read in only a couple of hours. It is a bit difficult to place in terms of genre; it is a narrative story with dialogue, but sometimes it sidesteps away from being a novel into a non-fiction biography. It is as if we detach from George, his father and Therese's view of events and sort of float above them to consider their lives from our modern perspective. It is an interesting way to read about a life.
George seems to me the embodiment of the Enlightenment. Science, philosophy and the idealistic politics - he grappled with them all. Not only did he live for science and philosophy, he also corresponded with some of the most important thinkers of his time (Kant, Humboldt, Goethe) and he participated in the French Revolution. What seems to be emphasised about him on the internet, is how he is largely forgotten today. But his life certainly makes for a good read.
George Forster's family is of English descent, but he grows up in Germany with his extremely intellectual father who is a parson and unrecognised scholar and botanist. His father is rather isolated in the country side (apparently farmers are not always super keen to discuss Coptic dialects when the harvest is impending) so from his son is a toddler he trains the child to be his scientific colleague. The boy is not allowed to play with other children, not even his siblings, and must spend all his time with his father. By the time George is a teenager, he speaks several languages fluently, is a gifted artist, scholar, botanist and linguist. It might be a successful parenting method for giving your child an intellectual advantage, but it does give George a very solitary childhood and gives him some serious daddy-issues. By sheer luck the Forsters get a place onboard Captain Cook's second expedition. George is only seventeen years old when he goes on this trip! What he sees and learns on this journey will make him a member of the Royal Society at the age of 23 and the founder of modern ethnography. He also made some lovely drawings from his journey.
The book switches between following the Resolution and George as an adult. Later in life, George is a famous author, scholar and family man. He loves his children but his marriage is a massive failure. It crashes and burns quicker than the Hindenburg! From the very beginning, he and his wife Therese hate being together. He does not acknowledge her formidable intellect and, early on, tries to rape her. She cannot forgive him for not giving her the life of exploration that she really craves and his emotional distance. Wilson seems to think much of George's failed private life can be traced to his teenage adventures; for months, he never saw a woman and when the crew went a shore, in Tahiti or New Zealand, boy was not allowed, by his father, to have the most basic interaction with the opposite sex. Therese and George are both aware of marrying in order to escape their controlling fathers, but it seems that they bring with them every psychological scar from their childhood into their relationship. They are like a worse version of their parents' marriages. George does not really encounter what love truly is until towards the end of his life; he was never loved by Therese, never really loved by his father and his relationship to his other father figure, Cook, was rather complicated. There was one person that loved him early on, but George did not see it.
It is a very short book and can be read in only a couple of hours. It is a bit difficult to place in terms of genre; it is a narrative story with dialogue, but sometimes it sidesteps away from being a novel into a non-fiction biography. It is as if we detach from George, his father and Therese's view of events and sort of float above them to consider their lives from our modern perspective. It is an interesting way to read about a life.
George seems to me the embodiment of the Enlightenment. Science, philosophy and the idealistic politics - he grappled with them all. Not only did he live for science and philosophy, he also corresponded with some of the most important thinkers of his time (Kant, Humboldt, Goethe) and he participated in the French Revolution. What seems to be emphasised about him on the internet, is how he is largely forgotten today. But his life certainly makes for a good read.
December 6, 2021
The blurb makes this book sound like an epic of voyaging with Captain Cook and discovering things, but I found it to be disjointed and muddled, like it's trying to be 3 different books at once, in less than 300 pages. And the sections that *do* take place during Cook's voyages are weirdly obsessed with the main character George Forster's habits of... playing around with himself (to put it politely). Voyages are reduced to short summaries of the odd storm and finding islands full of "natives" who are portrayed as stereotypical cannibals and naked women. It feels like the author is regurgitating very basic accounts of such expeditions, rather than having personally done any in-depth research beyond Wikipedia.
It feels like a weird mish-mash of a book, as if the author is borrowing bits from other authors of the genre and trying to mash them together into something Meaningful. There's one bit of dialogue that appears to have been lifted (with paraphrasing) from Patrick O'Brian and/or the Master and Commander film, as if he's attempting some sort of homage, but hasn't got the skill or patience to construct a story on PO'B's level.
The disjointed feeling is not helped by the jumping around between decades, which doesn't seem to serve any real purpose in terms of the story. The sections about George's domestic life are not particularly interesting or fun to read - and often seem to be a way for the author to cram in as many notable scientific and literary figures of the era, as if the author is more concerned with showing off who he's been reading about rather than constructing an engaging story. Therese is presented as a frustrated intellectual, and ought to be someone we can sympathise with, but we don't spend enough time with her for any sympathy to actually develop. George feels much the same - could have been an interesting character, but the author seems to focus more on his father than the son who is supposed to be the main character.
And then there's the sheer amount of summary. Lots of telling us and summarising entire chunks of plot instead of letting conversations (punctuated with dashes - instead of actual speech marks) play out. Lots of rushing through family histories which only vaguely contribute to the main plot. And the French Revolution section feels like the author is trying to construct some sort of Theory about Life, Beliefs and other Important topics, but by that point, I was mostly skim-reading to get through it.
I'm disappointed with this book. With a bit more patience, revision and research from the author, it could have been really good, but instead it's a muddle of stereotypes, flat characters and a weird fixation with Forster's alleged personal habits. I thought about giving this book 2 stars, but I think that would be generous. It's sadly not the sea-faring, philosophical epic that the author presumably was hoping it might be.
It feels like a weird mish-mash of a book, as if the author is borrowing bits from other authors of the genre and trying to mash them together into something Meaningful. There's one bit of dialogue that appears to have been lifted (with paraphrasing) from Patrick O'Brian and/or the Master and Commander film, as if he's attempting some sort of homage, but hasn't got the skill or patience to construct a story on PO'B's level.
The disjointed feeling is not helped by the jumping around between decades, which doesn't seem to serve any real purpose in terms of the story. The sections about George's domestic life are not particularly interesting or fun to read - and often seem to be a way for the author to cram in as many notable scientific and literary figures of the era, as if the author is more concerned with showing off who he's been reading about rather than constructing an engaging story. Therese is presented as a frustrated intellectual, and ought to be someone we can sympathise with, but we don't spend enough time with her for any sympathy to actually develop. George feels much the same - could have been an interesting character, but the author seems to focus more on his father than the son who is supposed to be the main character.
And then there's the sheer amount of summary. Lots of telling us and summarising entire chunks of plot instead of letting conversations (punctuated with dashes - instead of actual speech marks) play out. Lots of rushing through family histories which only vaguely contribute to the main plot. And the French Revolution section feels like the author is trying to construct some sort of Theory about Life, Beliefs and other Important topics, but by that point, I was mostly skim-reading to get through it.
I'm disappointed with this book. With a bit more patience, revision and research from the author, it could have been really good, but instead it's a muddle of stereotypes, flat characters and a weird fixation with Forster's alleged personal habits. I thought about giving this book 2 stars, but I think that would be generous. It's sadly not the sea-faring, philosophical epic that the author presumably was hoping it might be.
August 17, 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed this very well researched novel. Writing this story of George Forster's life as a novel (rather than biography) allowed Wilson to bring a whole range of characters to life. The central character, George, is a prodigiously talented young man who engages the sympathy of the reader. Through his eyes we learn of his father, also immensely talented, but pompous and insensitive, his wife Therese, his valet and friend Nally, as well as gaining insights into Cook, Goethe and a whole range of other historic personages. Not only do we learn about Cooks second voyage on the Resolution to find the southern continent, and the challenges and discoveries made during this epic voyage, but there are also insights into other aspects of eighteenth century life, such as the growth of science, attitudes to slavery, the spread of ideas about democracy and much more. This is an absorbing read, beautifully written - I recommend it highly.
May 22, 2019
It’s too bad that the description of this book (that led me to buy it) was so wrong. It said something about a boy’s adventures at sea with Captain Cook. I expected a swashbuckling adventure tale through Polynesia. A) This book is not about a boy. He’s, at youngest, 17 - and in the 1700s that is 100% adult age. B) It’s more drama than adventure.
The description on Goodreads is much more accurate and still would have made me want to read it, but maybe at a different time with a different mindset. (The story of a person who explored with Cook AND was neck deep in the French Revolution is fascinating!)
I would have given it ⭐️⭐️⭐️ but the author clearly dislikes everyone associated with George (the “protagonist”) and I tend to dislike stories from that POV.
The description on Goodreads is much more accurate and still would have made me want to read it, but maybe at a different time with a different mindset. (The story of a person who explored with Cook AND was neck deep in the French Revolution is fascinating!)
I would have given it ⭐️⭐️⭐️ but the author clearly dislikes everyone associated with George (the “protagonist”) and I tend to dislike stories from that POV.
July 19, 2023
A sad tale of a young man dominated by a self-opinionated father. George Forster was taken along with his father to be the naturalist on Cook’s second voyage to the Southern Hemisphere. Cook was trying to find the southern continent and three times subjected his ship to the ice and gales of the southern ocean. George got scurvy which permanently affected his skin and he eventually lost all his teeth. He made a disastrous marriage to a woman who cheated on him and took his beloved children away from him. He died of pneumonia in the middle of the guillotine deaths in Paris.
It was difficult to read - especially at first, where the time-line, even within one chapter, jumped around. Subsequent chapters alternated between the voyage on the Resolution and his marriage.
It was difficult to read - especially at first, where the time-line, even within one chapter, jumped around. Subsequent chapters alternated between the voyage on the Resolution and his marriage.
September 7, 2018
Excellent novel, and far more than a seafaring story, which the cover and subtitle would lead you to believe. Anyone interested in history and/or great characters should enjoy this. It's rich with ideas and is also very humorous.
February 25, 2021
Disappointing as I thought there would be a lot more about travels with Cook - that’s what the picture and cover description implies...... more about sad life and sad marriage later. Interesting bits about French Revolution and mention of Goethe. Odd style- not clear when and who was speaking. Left me cold.
April 26, 2024
Reading novels should be a pleasurable pastime.
This wasn't.
Difficult to follow, odd characters, more about French resolution and English stuffyness, than Cook's explorations. the few bits set in the boat were mostly disjointed and murky about what was really going on.
This wasn't.
Difficult to follow, odd characters, more about French resolution and English stuffyness, than Cook's explorations. the few bits set in the boat were mostly disjointed and murky about what was really going on.
December 16, 2022
A sad and intriguing story about a genius yet lost person. I was interested in the connection with Christ's Hospital and would love to see George Forster's sketches in the British Museum.
July 13, 2024
A good yarn
April 26, 2017
This book has a lot of similarities to one of my favourite books of all time This Thing of Darkness: based on real life people, a long sea voyage of discovery, the more famous people are secondary characters, takes place over a long period of the protagonist's lifetime. Unfortunately, where This Thing of Darkness makes you feel like cheering for the hero even when you know he's in the wrong, pity was what I felt for the lead of Resolution.
The formatting of this book made it difficult to get into. Instead of using quotes around dialogue (like every other book in the English language), he used a long em dash in front of dialogue, with context providing who was speaking. As I got used to it, it was OK, but very weird to start with.
The author also had the habit of using phrases in other languages such as Latin, French and German in order to make some profound statement, but then didn't translate it. Unfortunately I don't speak as many languages as George does in the book. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that "Vati" wasn't actually another character, but German for "dad". All that needed to be done was move the mention of the midshipmen's nickname for Reinhold to the first chapter and it would have clarified it.
The story of this book had a few compelling moments, but mostly I just felt sorry for George.
I did enjoy the cameo from Alexander von Humboldt and his brother (if you haven't read Humboldt's biography The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World, do it now!).
The formatting of this book made it difficult to get into. Instead of using quotes around dialogue (like every other book in the English language), he used a long em dash in front of dialogue, with context providing who was speaking. As I got used to it, it was OK, but very weird to start with.
The author also had the habit of using phrases in other languages such as Latin, French and German in order to make some profound statement, but then didn't translate it. Unfortunately I don't speak as many languages as George does in the book. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that "Vati" wasn't actually another character, but German for "dad". All that needed to be done was move the mention of the midshipmen's nickname for Reinhold to the first chapter and it would have clarified it.
The story of this book had a few compelling moments, but mostly I just felt sorry for George.
I did enjoy the cameo from Alexander von Humboldt and his brother (if you haven't read Humboldt's biography The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World, do it now!).
October 7, 2016
This is a marvellous book. The reader dives into the extraordinary lives of men who joined Captain Cook on his journey to Antartic on the good ship Resolution. Facing dangers, scurvy and the wiles of island women, the crew and gentleman passengers journey to unknown parts of the world. Our main protagonist, George Forster, a botanist with his father Reinholdt, discovers and draws flora that have not previously been identified. We accompany George back to Europe and his unhappy marriage to live through a tumultuous time in Germany and later France, culminating in his visit to Paris where the French Revolution is tearing the times apart. This book would be a marvellous gift for anyone interested in history and the human drive to understand.
November 16, 2016
Really enjoying this book about a father and son who sailed with Captain Cook on his successful second voyage of exploration. Both brilliant but the father is deeply flawed by conceit and the son, employed as a botanical artist, has a difficult relationship with his father and consequently others as well.
October 20, 2016
I see it gets more stars than I give it, but I found it a bit fragmented.
Interesting portrait of Cook & I liked the grounded, real feeling of it. Details such as the midshipmen mimicking Cook and Rheingold made the story seem vivid and as if it was happening now. The characters seemed to be alive now, we weren't looking back at them.
Interesting portrait of Cook & I liked the grounded, real feeling of it. Details such as the midshipmen mimicking Cook and Rheingold made the story seem vivid and as if it was happening now. The characters seemed to be alive now, we weren't looking back at them.
August 4, 2020
I'm so glad I finished this book. That's all I can say. I didn't enjoy it all and it was completely different to what I was expecting. Nevertheless, if reading philosophical discussions on revolutions, colonialism and dissolute botanists, and dealing with a lot of in your face racism and violence against women, then go for it. It's just not my thing at all.
February 12, 2017
Rather an unusual book. With vitually all the characters from real life, Wilson has made a pacy story that works very well until it hits the French Revolution. Maybe the events then did all happen as he writes, but there is a rushed feeling, which is not present in the rest of the book.
July 8, 2018
Good book to read during a heat wave!
A biography that reads like a novel. Or is it a novel that reads like a biography? Captain Cook seems to be the man of the hour but never heard of the Forsters. They evidently met up with interesting people and lived in interesting times.
A biography that reads like a novel. Or is it a novel that reads like a biography? Captain Cook seems to be the man of the hour but never heard of the Forsters. They evidently met up with interesting people and lived in interesting times.
January 6, 2017
Fascinating history about something i knew nothing about - Captain Cook and the amazing life of his on board scientist. Not so sure about ias a novel - but still well worth reading
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews