The Gentleman by Forrest Leo

Published by Penguin Press on August 16, 2016

If I had to sum up The Gentleman in one word, I would be hard pressed to choose between “hilarious” and “whacky.” Lionel Savage, a poet of moderate fame, married for money rather than love, only to discover that he had lost the ability to write (not that Lionel was much of a writer before he lost his muse). After a year of marriage to Vivien, the woman he could not live without has become woman he cannot live with. Lionel is contemplating suicide as the novel begins.

Lionel believes Vivien is vapid. When she is not inexplicably weeping, she is attending (or throwing) fancy dress parties. Lionel’s torment is compounded by the discovery that his 16-year-old sister is not the innocent child he believed her to be. But is it, in fact, his wife that makes him so unhappy? Is she really responsible for his writer’s block?

As Lionel hides in his study to avoid another of his wife’s fancy dress parties, a partygoer wanders in who proclaims himself to be the devil. He is not “a wicked stealer of souls and ravisher of virgins — he is, rather, a melancholy man … who stammers slightly and enjoys books and wishes himself better liked.” Lionel loans this sympathetic fellow a book of Tennyson’s poetry after explaining the source of his anguish. When Lionel discovers that Vivien suddenly vanished from the party, he comes to understand that he inadvertently sold his wife to the devil.

With that setup, Forrest Leo kicks off a freewheeling story that brings together an eccentric cast of characters, including Lionel’s impetuous sister, his wife’s adventurous brother, an inventor, and Lionel’s imperturbable butler. Lionel embarks on a series of madcap adventures with the goal of rescuing his wife, if he can only discover the route to hell.

Lionel learns something about himself after Vivien disappears. He also learns some things about Vivien, including the fact that she is a better poet than he (although he cannot fathom how anyone can write in free verse instead of following the solid British tradition of iambic pentameter). But poets cannot write without love, and The Gentleman is ultimately a romantic comedy as Lionel learns the truth about love — and about poetry.

As is the nature of romantic comedy, the ending is predictable but satisfying. The story calls for the suspension of disbelief on several occasions, but that’s easy to do in a story that isn’t meant to be taken seriously. Since the novel is a spoof of Victorian literature, true fans of Victorian literature might be put off by it, but I suspect that Vic lit fans who have a sense of humor will enjoy it. A novel like The Gentleman succeeds if it leaves the reader smiling, and I was grinning from the first page to the last.

RECOMMENDED