Earrings: Baden-Baden, 1883
In attempting to create a novel around the experience his jeweller grandfather had in Baden-Baden, the author embellishes the historical account. He would have done better to stick to the facts rather than trying to have it both ways, and illustrating his novel with photographs, family trees, sketches, and correspondence.
The result is a regurgitation of Napoleonic history and family biography straight out of the Almanach de Gotha. A waterfall of facts and genealogy spews forth from poorly delineated characters in endless passages of dialogue. The flow is broken by the over-used device of one character posing a leading question to another, or commenting on what an excellent memory the other has. The reader, overwhelmed by detailed information, cares very little about the provenance of the earrings of the title, worn by Empress Josephine at Napoleon’s coronation, or their fate after being stolen from the Duchess of Hamilton. Awkwardly written and tediously dense, it is unlikely to appeal to serious historians in search of information, or readers seeking entertainment from their historical fiction.
