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    The Reverse of the Medal: Aubrey & Maturin
    Unavailable
    The Reverse of the Medal: Aubrey & Maturin
    Unavailable
    The Reverse of the Medal: Aubrey & Maturin
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    The Reverse of the Medal: Aubrey & Maturin

    Written by Patrick O'Brian

    Narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The 11th installment in the Aubrey/Maturin series.

    Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., ashore after a successful cruise, is persuaded by a casual acquaintance to make certain investments in the City.  This innocent decision ensnares him in the London criminal underground and in government espionage--the province of his friend Stephen Maturin.  Is Aubrey's humiliation and the threatened ruin of his career a deliberate plot?  This dark tale is a fitting backdrop to the brilliant characterization and sparkling dialogue which O'Brian readers and listeners have come to expect.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 5, 2000
    ISBN9780375419553
    Unavailable
    The Reverse of the Medal: Aubrey & Maturin
    Author

    Patrick O'Brian

    Patrick O’Brian (1914-2000), born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist, biographer and translator from French. His translations include Henri Charrière’s Papillon, Jean Lacouture’s biography of Charles de Gaulle and many of Simone de Beauvoir’s later works, including Les Belles Images, All Said and Done and A Very Easy Death.

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    Reviews for The Reverse of the Medal

    4/5

    438 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The Reverse of the Medal, Patrick O’Brian’s eleventh book in his Aubrey-Maturin series, picks up shortly after the events of The Far Side of The World, with Captain Jack Aubrey returning the HMS Surprise to England, where the aging ship will be sold out of the service and possibly reduced to scrap. A sense of melancholy overhangs the events of this novel, both with the impending loss of the Surprise and other events.Aubrey must reconcile his own sense of the passage of time and a cruel world, as he encounters both his bastard son, Samuel Panda, and must participate in a courts martial in which the various accused are certain of a guilty verdict. When the crew return home, they find things similarly bleak ashore. Dr. Stephen Maturin learns that his wife, Diana, has abandoned him over a perceived slight during his time in the Mediterranean. Jack, meanwhile, receives what seems a lucky stock tip that results in his arrest for fraud on the Stock Exchange, further complicating his naïve notions of justice. O’Brian is in full force in this novel as he captures the sense of melancholy through Jack’s observations, writing, “Jack observed with regret that the fine coloured coats of his youth were losing more and more ground to black, which, though well enough in particular cases, gave the far pavement a mourning air. To be sure, bottle-green, claret-coloured and bright blue did appear now and then, but the far side of the street was not the flower-garden that once it had been. And pantaloons were almost universal among the young” (pg. 110). Though the trial would seem outlandish, O’Brian’s careful attention to historical detail ensure that it is accurate, as he based the culminating events of the novel on James Beresford Atlay’s account of the trial and conviction of Lord Cochrane before Lord Ellenborough at the Guildhall for a fraud on the Stock Exchange Like the previous four novels, The Reverse of the Medal exists outside the normal flow of time – this novel being the fifth of twelve to exist in what O’Brian described as an extended 1812, with these dozen books taking place between the beginning of June 1813 and November 1813. Like his previous novels, O’Brian perfectly recreates the world of the Napoleonic War in 1812, using Aubrey and Stephen’s melancholy to reflect their awareness of the rapid changes occurring in this era and the passage of time in the series’ internal chronology. This Folio Society edition reprints the original text with insets containing historical portraits and sketches to illustrate some of the scenes.
    • 4/5
      In which, the Surprise has perhaps one final opportunity to demonstrate her honour, before sold into salvage. Aubrey meets ashore an emissary to France for His Majesty, bearing news and a rare opportunity; Maturin devises with Blaine a trap for the suspected mole, leaving marked currency with Wray & Barrow. Both scenarios play into bigger schemes than are expected.//Mowett's poetry has found a publisher, though Stephen suspects a swindle. Martin publishes a pamphlet on immorality in the navy, effectively ending his career as naval chaplain; apparently never thought to consult Stephen on it, knowing he'd agree with the moral sentiments. Duhamel returns the Blue Peter, and fingers Palmer, Wray, and "Smith" as agents of Lucan, in return for passage to Canada aboard HMS Eurydice, courtesy of Henneage Dundas.Stephen's godfather provides a means of rescue for dear Surprise. Stephen himself wipes the nose of a petty bureaucrat, and avoids the snares of one Madame de La Feullade. Mentions a "lost page" from Gibbon's Decline and Fall, pulled at page-proof stage to avoid offending friends at bar & bench. Much less botanising this time round.At tale's open, Jack meets for the first time Samuel Panda, his son by Sally Mputa, the woman whom he kept aboard HMS Resolution, and for which he was disrated. At the close, he sits in Marshalsea awaiting trial for Stock Exchange fraud (an incidental victim of a Tory plot against Gen Aubrey and the Radicals). Sentenced to be pilloried but saved from public abuse with the roused indignation of seamen and naval officers.//In effect Part One of a miniseries-within-a-series, comprising with the next volume a fulcrum in Jack's and Stephen's joint career: formally dismissed the service, and though still very much involved in Admiralty plans (both naval and intelligence) the lost status is crucial. Stephen's inheritance leads to him purchasing Surprise, and getting from Blaine letters of marque and reprisal against several nations, in advance of a proposed intelligence mission to Chile and Peru. No interior map in this installment, the endpapers are of London and the Thames: Jack's and Stephen's private clubs off Piccadilly, the Royal Society and Liberties, Parliament and the Admiralty, King's Bench and Marshalsea prisons.
    • 4/5
      Captain Jack Aubrey and his particular friend, Dr. Steven Maturin, return to England. Within days of his arrival, Jack's credulous nature (at least on land) and kind heart put him in the crosshairs of a political scandal. While he withstands imprisonment and trial, Steven tries to figure out the truth of the matter.

      Another beautifully written novel from O'Brian.
    • 4/5
      Another good 'un from O'Brian, this volume with a little bit of everything: espionage, conspiracies, sea battles, natural history ... it's so easy to just sit down with one of these books and lose a few hours; I recommend it highly.
    • 5/5
      Jack just can't get a break! He's too naive for his own good when it comes to living on shore and he pays for it on a large scale when he gets caught up in political maneuvering. A majority of the action happens on shore, which is a nice change. I loved the scene where Jack and his crew undertake to make Ashford Cottage shipshape. I can just imagine the scene! And I wish I had my own crew to come do the same to mine!
    • 5/5
      This is the first review I have written for a Patrick O'Brian novel, having read the prior Aubrey-Maturin books before getting into LibraryThing, so this is in some ways a review of the whole series. This makes it even harder to put into words quite how staggeringly brilliant these books are; a sense heightened by the Reverse of the Medal, as its final pages bring a crescendo of emotion and meaning which can only be appreciated once you have the first ten novels under your belt. That such careful, (impeccably) mannered prose can move you so much is testament to the deep bond that you, as reader, share with the characters, who are sketched in with such deftness that their every movement and thought are utterly believable, consistent, and thus a pleasure.I can't really do justice to the depth and subtlety of this work, so I'm just going to gibber for a bit.