Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed

Having been a rabid fan of O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, and then joyfully discovering his two earlier sea novels, I encouraged every friends and family member I thought would be interested to read those wonderful books. Though biographies are not a favorite genre of mine, I was presented with this book as a gift because it was well-known among my loved ones that O'Brian's work had meant so much to me over the years. I had no idea of O'Brian's persona. Dean King is to be commended for putting together a very well constructed biography of an extremely difficult subject. O'Brian deliberately obfuscated his past, distorted facts and outright lied to even close friends throughout his entire life. His attempt to hide his own past must have been a terrible obstacle to writing this biography, but King did a wonderful job. Ultimately, I realized that I would have keenly disliked O'Brian had I known him personally, and I'm glad that never happened. Instead, I can simply enjoy the fruits of his marvelous creativity. Dean King is to be commended for his hard work and meticulous research; he is honest at those points when he doesn't have all the facts so presents what he feels is the "most likely" scenario. In summary, being neither iconoclastic nor apologist, King's unbiased and frank account of Patrick O'Brian's strange life and how it translated into the nuances of his novels is perceptive and engaging.

In what is presumably his final companion to Patrick O'Brian's work, Dean King details the experiences and emotions that drove and shaped O'Brian's literature. King's research is meticulous and often stunning, as when he describes O'Brian's brief and less-than-heroic RAF stint. The level of detail in this biography is remarkable, considering O'Brian's desire for privacy and his active deceit of journalists more gullible than King. King's book examines a man tortured by paired gifts of insight into human nature and a crippling inability to forgive. O'Brian was perhaps least of all able to forgive his own shortcomings, his discomfort with the past spurring his pains to keep his personal history out of the public eye. Regarding this kind of speculation, King reins himself in, drawing reasonable conclusions but leaving the true enigmas of O'Brian's behavior to the reader's consideration. King's book is a thorough and perceptive companion to the literature of Patrick O'Brian.

This would have been an outstanding biography even had its subject, Patrick O'Brian, cooperated completely, opened a cache of diaries and papers, and welcomed Dean King to have a go. "A Life Revealed" is well-written, detailed, fast-moving and as entertaining as it is informative, positive in portraying O'Brian's great talent yet honest in confronting his shortcomings; in short, it is everything you could want in a biography. The fact that O'Brian not only did not cooperate, but lived a life veiled in layer after layer of secrecy, makes what Dean King has achieved here nothing short of astonishing. Every detail in this book, from the momentous events surrounding Russ/O'Brian's identity change to minor but telling details about his childhood and domestic life, is the result of dogged, painstaking legwork. One certainly expects that Dean King will get his critical and popular due for having produced the first serious biography of a cherished writer. But the biggest winner to emerge here is O'Brian himself. O'Brian, who died recently, could not have hoped for a more just treatment of his life, nor a more thoughtful consideration of his work. For all of O'Brian's prickly insistence on keeping his life a secret, this biography can only add to the depth of understanding and enjoyment that O'Brian's millions of fans get from his novels.

This is a book about the life of a writer: about his formative years, about his tumultuous family, about his persistence as a writer, and about his very late and final success and recognition for having authored the Aubrey-Matutin series. It is a well researched work, with author Dean King obviously taking delight in the thoroughness and lavishness he invested in this work (Patrick's brother Mike, if you must know, was the navigator of a Lancaster bomber that was shot down over Germany in WW II. He is buried in the Reichwald Forest Cemetery, Plot 3, row A, grave 6).Patrick O'Brian was the son of a physician and a gentle and beautiful woman who died when he was six. By age 15 he had written and published his first novel. Thereafter he devoted himself to writing, generally with good critical success. In 1945, for reasons unknown, he changed his legal name from Russ to O'Brien and started to allow new acquaintances to think of him as being from Ireland.In his 30's at that time, he had been married and divorced and was the father of a boy and a girl with spina bifida, who died at age three. One of the dark and disturbing spots in his life was the abandonment of that family. He eventually settled in the south of France, where his wrote the Aubrey-Maturin series.O'Brian's success did not rush at him; on the contrary, for years he eked out a living by doing French translations (such as the works of Simone de Beauvoir and the novel Papillon) and by taking on literary assignments of one sort or another. It was one of these assignments ("try your hand at another sea novel") that led to the publication of the first of the Aubrey-Maturin novels ("Master and Commander") in 1967. The book and those that followed were well received but read only by a relatively small group of aficionados. In 23 years he had written 13 novels of the series series, all of superb quality, when at last in 1990, at age 75, he became famous practically overnight. A British critic called the intelligentsia's failure to recognize his talents any sooner "as baffling as the Inca inability to invent the wheeel."I could not put the book down. It is a rich, complex, detailed, balanced, and above all, fair biography. Its subject was a secretive and private individual who was entirely non-cooperative on the theme of his own biography. He obviusly abhorred the idea of the violations of privacy inherent in such a work. Ironically, O'Brian had unflinchingly done to Pablo Picasso (another non-cooperating, private subject) precisely what Don King has done to him: written about his life ("Pablo Ruiz Picasso: A Biography). Patrick O'Brian died a couple of months ago (January 2000), and therefore is not around to be aggravated by this work. I am glad about that part, for now one can read his biography with pleasure, umarred by mental images of an angry and resentful Mr. O'Brian fuming about the book in the south of France.

This book would stand as an outstanding biography even had its subject cooperated fully. It is well-written, exhaustively detailed, sensitive to the subject yet unsparingly honest in detailing his shortcomings -- in short, it is everything you could ask for in a biography. But the fact the subject, Patrick O'Brian, was not merely uncooperative, but lived a life veiled in layer after layer of secrecy, makes what Dean King has accomplished here nothing short of astonishing. Each detail, from O'Brian's momentous identity change to minor but telling glimpses of his childhood and domestic life, is the result of dogged, tireless legwork. Amassing enough details for a magazine profile would have been difficult enough. Yet here is a big, hefty book crammed with choice details, seamless and complete.While one certainly expects that King will get his critical and popular due for producing the first serious biography of a cherished writer, it is O'Brian who emerges as the big winner here. For all his flinty evasions and prickly protestations, O'Brian, who died recently, could not have asked for a more fair or just portrait of his life, nor a more thoughtful analysis of his works. This book will only add to the enjoyment and understanding that O'Brian's millions of admirers get from the novels.