That Deplorable Boy
This is the second volume in the Miremont trilogy, set in Belle Époque France, which began with The Second Footman.
Max Fabien is installed at the Hôtel de Miremont, ostensibly as Armand de Miremont’s secretary, but secretly his lover. Max, although fond of “the old boy”, is tempted by casual encounters, and Armand is beset by jealousy as his love verges on the obsessive. Then Armand’s long-estranged wife descends upon the household, bringing with her their youngest daughter, 18-year-old Juliette – for what father could deny his beloved child her Paris season? Can Armand and Max’s relationship survive the ensuing crisis? And who, exactly, is Max Fabien?
The two men are complex and contradictory characters, both of them flawed and both capable of great tenderness, but also of insensitivity to each other as the strains of concealing their relationship begin to tell.
The story is written in a precise imitation of a 19th-century novel, with lavish descriptive sequences and long passages of introspection as we follow the thoughts and observations of, principally, Max and Armand.
I think it would have helped to have read The Second Footman to get a full understanding of the characters’ backgrounds and motives – and to have had a dramatis personae in order the establish who was who in the large cast!
The backstory hints at duplicity and fraud, and at the men who exploited and abused the younger Max. The crucial information, which may explain Max’s true history, and the deception he has planned, is “too much at once” and confuses almost as much as it enlightens. Overall, the narrative is richly textured, evoking both the glamorous high society of 1880s Paris as well as the world of both the urban poor and the rural poor on the Miremont country estate.
