J. Meade Falkner Books

Not the greatest story ever, but for fans of Moonfleet who wish to see another facet of John Meade Falkner mind, it is well worth reading.
It is a strange, sometimes eerie story, which will keep your attention until the very end.

John Meade Falkner did not seem to consider novel-writing the most important thing in his life; he wrote three novels in a matter of less than ten years, and spend the rest of his life as an antiquarian, a librarian, and the top executive of a major munitions manufacturing firm. But the three Gothic novels he wrote are all one of a kind and were written with an incredible sense of surety and deftness. THE LOST STRADIVARIUS is a beautifully constructed ghost story, concerning a Victorian Oxford student and music aficionado who discovers an eighteenth-century Italian musical suite; when he plays a certain section of it with his friend in his rooms in Magdalen Hall, a presence seems to stir around them. This only starts the tale, which manages to synthesize a fantastic array of fin-de-siecle concerns, including homoeroticism (as Tom Paulin suggests in his brief foreword to this nice little Hesperus edition, the figure of Oscar Wilde surely haunts this work as much as the fictional ghost of Adrian Temple), decadence, anti-Catholicism, and Paterian aestheticism. The great pleasures of Falkner's fiction are his striking ability to convey atmosphere and his precocious gift for showing and not telling when it comes to character and suspense.

The ghost story is by & large ideally realized as a short story or at most novella -- the greatest masters, such as M. R. James, never even attempted the novel form; & those who did both short stories and novels, such as E. F. Benson, only the short stories are of outstanding merit. At novel length they tend to bog down considerably or else descend into tedious gothicisms & inessential asides. But Falkner's THE LOST STRADIVARIUS is a perfect gem of a novel, a timeless tale of weird & awe inspiring ghostliness, easily in the top ten of Victorian ghost novels, in an unfailingly elegant style.

-Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Violet Books

Moonfleet is a well written book once you get past the long- winded introduction. I'm sure this book would have been very popular during the 19th centuary, but as i am only 12 i found it very hard to understand some of the words, and personnally i do not enjoy reading a book with a dictionary near by at all times. When the book begins John trenchard (the main character)is 15 and lives with his aunt in the village of moonfleet, a village with many tales of smugglers and pirates, including the worst of them all - the legendary blackbeard. the story is about john and his adventures, all related to the treasure belonging to blackbeard. If you enjoy long hard words with a book that tells an ok tale then this book is for you but i really wouldn't recomend it to children.

One of the most beloved of boys' books in the UK in the early 20th century, MOONFLEET remains the best known of the three short novels by John meade Falkner, and certainly has his most engaging characters, particularly in the young hero, John Trenchard, and his substitute father-figure, the kindly smuggler Elzevir Block. The novel has all of Falkner's characteristics: his gorgeous mellifluous prose, his predilection for Gothic settings, his obsession with aristocratic ancestry and heraldry, a healthy dose of homoeroticism, and above all his ability to evoke striking visual scenes. The plot moves slowly at first and then becomes quite exciting, as John and his mentor search for a lost fabulous diamond and attempt to avoid the price put on their head by revenuers who accuse them of murder; things get a bit awkward at the end, as ten years of forced hard labor are glossed over in a few paragraphs, but then they pick up once again. The influences of Wilkie Collins and, particularly, Robert Louis Stevenson, weigh heavily on the text, but Falkner's gift for evoking a haunting visual picture is something all his own.

MOONFLEET IS A FAIRLY INTERESTING BOOK IT IS A UNIQUE BOOK WITH ORIGINAL STYLE AND A ONE-OF -A- KIND -STORY.the story is about a 15 year old boy called john trenchard who goes on extraordinary adventures on his quest to find blackbeards treasure he soon becomes trapped in avault and finds out a bit more than he bargained for a little bit startled he soon gets locked in and becomes hungry and thirsty he drinks the smuggled alchole he finaly gets rescued but his life changes forever an exeptionally fantastic story with laughter,sadness,romance,pain,rejection and a family classic........

Like many, I loved old adventures such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped when I first read them as a child. Several years ago, Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda named this as being of the same caliber, so I finally sought out a copy to fall into. Written at the turn of the 20th century, the story is set in a small village on the Dorset coast (allegedly based on East Fleet), circa the 1750s. There lives John Trenchard, a classic adventure hero: age 15, orphaned and living with a nasty (though not cruel) aunt, and pining for the beautiful daughter of the local lord. The village of Moonfleet has two intriguing aspects to it. One is a legend relating to a massive -- and possibly cursed -- diamond purportedly owned by the former lord of the manor and possibly hidden somewhere in the vicinity. The other is the village's long history of illicit trade with smugglers bringing in untaxed spirits from France and other contraband. Their main contact in town is the tavern-owner, Elsevir, who is the true hero of the story.

As in Treasure Island, things really start rolling when John gets entangled with Elsevir and the smugglers and more or less joins their gang. When the local lord tries to ambush them one dawn, blood is drawn and Elsevir and John are forced to flee and take to ground for some months. The fugitives then embark on a quest to locate the missing diamond and so make their fortune. John is especially keen on being able to return to Moonfleet a wealthy man, so that he may secure the hand of his fair lady. Of course, events don't transpire so easily, and further adventures take them to Holland, where events take a turn for the worse before a semi-triumphal homecoming.

All of this is fine -- but not that great. The story and characters definitely feel somewhat derivative, and some of the elements feel quite clumsy. For example, the lord of the manor is a nasty, mean character, but there's no indication as to why this is so. Similarly, the prim stern aunt is a stereotype of the type, and a jewel dealer who plays a key role is instinctively venal without reason. Near the end, the heroes face calamity due to circumstances of their own exceedingly unlikely making. The cagey smuggler Elsevir exhibits naivitee that beggars belief. Which is not to suggest that the book is terrible, merely that it's not that amazing. Finally, I should point out that despite the words of many reviewers the story does not involve pirates at all. (Inexplicably, the cover of one edition even goes so far as to reproduce a painting of a boarding scene, complete with cutlasses, pistols, and scurvy seadogs.) The book was made into a rather forgettable 1955 film directed by the great Fritz Lang.

When I began reading this book, a friend of mine took one look at the cover and started naming off what he thought the aspects of the plot were. He named all of the traditional pirate story cliches (sometimes platitudes): orphaned boy, evil pirate, hidden treasure, etc. By looking at the cover, I thought that was what it would be too, and I looked forward to the classic adventure story (I've always loved swashbucklers). As it was, Moonfleet is a very original novel that doesn't follow of the conventions. Surely, some of those elements are there--the orphaned boy and treasure--but they are twisted in different ways. Moonfleet is somewhat darker than other swashbucklers such as Treasure Island, and there are actually no pirates at all. There is also a little bit more depth of characterization as John Trenchard and Elziver Block have a long and meaningful friendship. Moonfleet is certainly a superior adventure novel, complete with exciting escapes (a lot of them), lost treasure, and some actual characterization. It's well worth reading.