First the book . . .

This story is about Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) meeting a man on a castle tour and the man knew everything about the castle. Later, Twain meets the man and they talk a while about how this man, Hank Morgan new so much about the castle. Hank didn’t tell a story, but left Twain with a book, or better yet a diary of Hank falling asleep and waking thirteen hundred years earlier.

Hank Morgan’s father was a blacksmith and his uncle a horse doctor. Hank ran a gun factory, starting at the bottom and learning everything, to quote:

 

“ I could make anything a body wanted- anything in the world, it didn’t make a difference what; and if there wasn’t any quick newfangled way to make a thing, I could invent one – and do it as easy as rolling off a log.”

So Hanks diary becomes the book “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”.

Well if you’ve read the book, Clemens attacks a lot of issues of his day, our day too. Religion, not really religion but when it is organized so well that it attacks the way a person lives his life. Slavery. He hated it and it even haunted him. Most of what he wrote about slavery were his own feelings. Other things like monarchy, nepotism, politics, and poverty. He even made fun of ad campaigns like soap ads. He brought up some things that even strikes today, which is when he came across was people that would take things as fact if it was said. No evidence of proof, and if evidence was there, it was forgotten as soon as the words were spoken.  He made fun of himself.

With the inventiveness of Morgan, he tells a story about how he overcomes these obstacles or at least the obstacles he chooses with modern tools and skillfulness he can create. And then he told of he destructing every advancement he made.

About the narrator . . .

Nick Offerman has this mid-western accent that does well with the book. It’s probably not an easy to perform, being as dated as it is but he does a good job of it. To me, he started off slow, not very into it but this could have been by design. By the end of the book, he was really going strong. This could also be to Twain having modernized the language of the book as Hank modernized the culture. Maybe not award worthy but Offerman did a good narrative.

My thoughts on the book . . .

As I said before I started the book, the biggest reason I choose this was the narrator. The book is good, but dated and sometimes hard to keep up with the dated sayings of that time. I am reading the book along with the audio-book and it does give me footnotes to help and some insight on what Clemons/Twain was thinking, or at least what somebody else thought what he was thinking. I would love to see what Clemons would write if he were alive today. I would think he would have a field day mocking both sides of the aisle. With that said, please don’t take this as something I am trying to politicize. I do not participate in political debates of today. It’s like teaching a pig to sing. You will only annoy the pig.

I know I'm in the minority with this book and most reviewers are praising it highly. I can't find it in my heart to offer it any praise at all. In fact, I found it to be quite offensive. I certainly don't believe in putting famous people on a pedestal or imagine in any regard that they aren't human with all of mankind's failings. But this book, at least to me, reduced the last years of Samuel Clemens's life to a Harlequin romance

I thought the premise of the book sounded so interesting. Why would Clemens have turned on a secretary who had seemingly been only faithful and true to him? And to do it in such a brutal way has caused much speculation. The author states that she gleaned most of the facts of this book from Isabel Lyon's own diary. But was Isabel Lyon a reliable narrator? I've read that Lyon's diary was heavily edited by her with pages ripped out. She even hand wrote a second edited new edition of her 1906 daily reminder which must raise a question as to the validity of anything written by her. What she wrote is just one side of the story.  I've read in other books that Lyons stole from Clemens and took advantage of him. Who knows exactly what happened?  These people are long gone from our world and can't defend themselves. They can't say, oh, no, that's not what happened at all. The plot of this book needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The offense that I found in this book was that Clemens and his family were painted in such a completely negative way, as were others.

If there's one person that I truly admire in the history of the world, it's Helen Keller. The unkind things said about her in this book angered me no end. Her "honking voice". She sniffed the air like "a rabbit". Why hadn't anyone taught her to hide her feelings that were plainly shown all over her face? Those comments did not shed any light into her life but only angered me. She, too, was portrayed in a very negative one-sided way, as was Anne Sullivan. Again, the meetings with Clemens, Keller, Sullivan and John Macy (Sullivan's husband) and the "looks" between them were mostly taken from Lyon's diaries. At one point, Macy says something about Keller and "our" dogs and Lyon makes a point of derogatorily insinuating in a sexual context that these three people might be sharing everything in the house they lived in. If Keller lived in the house as part of their household and family, Macy may naturally have felt the dogs belonged to her, too. Or he may have just been referring to "our dogs" as his and Anne's and wasn't including Helen in that statement at all. Again, this was a comment taken out of context and slanted in a negative way.

Even if I read this book without the main characters being actual people, I wouldn't have liked it. There was so much bitterness and distrust and jealous behavior throughout that I found it very unpleasant to read. Reading about these women and their daily fighting for the attention of The King (Clemens) was just plain boring. I didn't find Isabel Lyon to be a sympathetic character at all. She was a mature educated woman who knew what she was doing and what she was getting into. 

I've read plenty of historical novels and understand that they're fictional accounts based on some facts but I've enjoyed them. This one I found to be far too negative and cannot recommend it. I'll continue to respect Samuel Clemens, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan for the wonderful accomplishments that they achieved in their lives and leave their private moments to be just that - private. This book will be pushing me away from historical novels for some time to come. I wish I could think of something positive to say about this book but it really did hit me the wrong way. I usually tend to veer towards the positive side when writing reviews as I do respect the hard work undertaken by authors. My apologies to the publisher for not being able to do so in this instance.  I don't recall ever having given a 1-star rating before.  However, the reviews I give to others need to be honest and as I see it, not as others see it.

This book was given to me by the publisher through Edelweiss and NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Now that-a-there is some great story tellin'!!