David Jack's Reviews > Robert Falconer

Robert Falconer is an impressive tome of a novel, numbering 444 pages in this edition, to be precise. It's a story of redemption and rehabilitation, both of the titular hero's father, and of the conception of God in the mind of that hero himself. Such redemption seems unlikely on both scores from the outset-Robert being brought up by a grandmother who is in thrall to a gloomy Calvinistic outlook on life after her son, Robert's father, succumbed to the 'demon drink' several years before. Robert, who we are told in the opening sentences, thinks he has no memory of ever having seen his father, makes it is life's mission to find him, at one point even discrediting what seems a faithful report of his father's death, and on the way struggles to break free from what appear to him the unworthy notions held by his grannie about his HEAVENLY father, without whose help the power and motivation to find his earthly one would evaporate.

Robert encounters boyish scrapes and adventures, forms lasting friendships with a curious assemblage of people- the waif Shargar, the brilliant but inwardly-tormented Eric Ericson, two musicians (the beautiful Miss St John and the less prepossessing drunken cobbler 'Dooble Sanny') and a surrogate father in the form of Dr Anderson who supports him financially, having plenty of money at his disposal and seeing no better way to lay it out than upon this precocious and noble boy, fast growing into the man who will carry all before him as he throws off the shackles of his early indoctrination and finds, alone amongst the Swiss mountains, with only his New Testament for company, the true love of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

I will not anticipate what happens in the second half of the novel, but will only say that unlike Mark Twain (who loved the beginning and middle but derided the conclusion) I think it matches, and even surpasses the excellent first half. Another reviewer has compared RF to David Copperfield, and that comparison had occurred to me too-not only in this being a 'coming of age' story, but in both heroes experiencing tragedy and going to the continent to regroup and recruit their strength, then coming back at a turning point in the story. The difference is that there is much more action left upon his return for Robert than for David, and while the latter is upheld by an angelic woman in the form of Agnes Wickfield, Robert's strength and inspiration, as mentioned above, is the same as that of Christ-namely, utter dependence upon God and his goodness.