Flashman

Until I read Flashman, I'd never met an endearing rapist. I later moved on to Lolita, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.

The Flashman papers verge on being potboilers or formula writings, but for all that, they are very enjoyable. I haven't researched how accurate MacDonald Frasier's historic setting is, but it seems to correlate with what little I've been taught.

It isn't the plot or the significance of the setting that is the major draw here, though, but the narrator himself. MacDonald Frasier has succeeded in doing something that I am normally quite suspicious of: transplanting an existing character or scenario into a new canon. Flashman is the villain-bully of Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes. Removed from the microcosmic politics of a public (private) school, Flashman comes into his own as he shags, lies, whimpers and bluffs his way from London to India and back again. Despite, or perhaps because of, his monumental flaws - most of which he fully admits to - I grew quite attached to the erstwhile poltroon.

The narrative style is suitably blustery and self-reflexive, but due to Flashman's innately shallow kind of selfishness, we are never mired in angst or navel-gazing. Frasier' Flashman is not completely lacking in humanity, although this development isn't so visible in the earliest volume of his adventures.

This book, and the ensuing series, is basically a light riot. It isn't by any means a heavy read, nor a particularly profound one, but it's worth a go, just for the sake of living a few hours in the mind of a red-faced braggart.