Derby Day [Paperback]

This is a sprawling novel that takes place in approximately 1870 and culminates in the Epson Derby. The writing is an approximation of that employed in Victorian novels, and the structure of the book, along with the characters and plot, would not be out of place in a serialized novel of the time.

This is risky for a novelist to attempt, and I'm not certain whether such a concept will prove popular in the United States, but I found it generally successful. The caveat to that is that I read and reread a large number of Victorian novels, and have great patience for their length.

The pacing of the book is languid, particularly at the beginning, but the various tentacles of the plot finally come together for the Derby. Actually the main plot strands come together around the race, but there is a non-Victorian epilogue that tells us what happened to other characters.

The main character, Mr. Happerton, has many of the characteristics admired by Victorian novelists and readers. A self-made man who, while clearly only interested in his own monetary advancement, is pleasant, diligent and farsighted. But we soon learn he is an amoral cad, and in no sense a gentleman. All keen readers of Victorian fiction know the eventual destiny of such persons. The only suspense in the book (and by this I mean Dickens' suspense, not Wilkie Collins' mystery) is who will win the Derby.

The book is great fun, filled with minor Victorian wit (sitting longer than Gladstone, endless dissenter quips) and a reasonably good ear for Victorian prose. But the entirety of the book is a tad thin, and none of the characters, or scenes, live up to the standards of fine Victorian literature. After finishing this I reread Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds. Rebecca Happerton is an insecure, repressed woman who would benefit from some mentoring from Lizzie Eustace.

Derby Day, D.J. Taylor- An homage to the Victorian novel. Taylor deftly conjures the genre, although only a few characters resonate. He defies any period in his portrayal of Rebecca, the central female figure. She is the epitome of enigmatic evil. Delicious. More Hardy than Thackeray, Taylor paints bleak Lincolnshire countryside mist or decrepit Fitzrovia alley blight with a finer brush than Belgrave Square's West End Society. ****

Carol Colitti Levine The Side Trek

This is a crime story set around the Epsom Derby race in the late 19th century that is more of trudge through a muddy field than a dash round one of the world's most famous racecourses.

I'm not sure if it is meant to be a pastiche of writers like Trollope or Thackeray but it makes painful reading.

The characters have no depth, the plot is full of holes, the writing all over the place - particularly the descriptions of Derby Day* - and the end is a tortuous attempt to wind everything up as though the reader cares what happened to Evie, Mr Glenister, the Honourable Major Stebbings, Miss Kimble etc.

If you like this kind of cliché version of Victorian England, with its class snobbery and characters ranging from safe crackers, bookies, jockeys, down at heel retired army officers to country squires, lawyers and police detectives then it might be your cup of tea.

Otherwise, give it a miss and choose something a bit more authentic like Dickens or a better writer. John Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman", for example, is set in the same period and is far superior to this work.

*Here is an example of the author's desperate prose: "A riot of colour. Colour everywhere. The horses are of every imaginable hue: black, bay, chestnut, grey, a multidudedof shades in between. The jockeys' silks - scarlet, magenta, carmine, green-and-white, quartered blues and yellow - rustle in the breeze."