Mr American

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Mr American
OCLC
35134967

Mr American is a 1980 novel by George MacDonald Fraser, who described it as longer and more "conventional" than his usual work.[1]

Plot summary

Mark Franklin arrives at the

Shakespeare's works, an old Mexican charro saddle and two Remington pistols in his battered luggage. A tall and softly-spoken American prospector, who made his fortune in a silver strike in Nevada
, he is visiting the 'old country' to see his roots.

He goes to

King Edward VII
, and the beginning of an enmity with a neighbour (Frank, Lord Lacy) which lasts throughout the book.

Through playing bridge with Edward and his mistress Alice Keppel, Franklin elevates himself greatly in the king's estimation through his easy manners.

When the king invites him to

Flashman, from Fraser's well-known historical fiction series. Flashman is in his late 80s at the start of the book (as he says, "I'm eighty-eight next May, and I attribute my longevity to an almost total abstinence from tea"), and an important sub-plot involves his grandniece, Lady Helen Cessford, a suffragette
.

An old partner in crime,

manservant
Samson. They bury the body in a field.

He falls in love with, and marries, another neighbour, Peggy Clayton. Her brother is an officer in the British Army and is involved in running guns to Ireland during the

Curragh Mutiny
, using Franklin's money obtained by Peggy from him by deception.

Over the years, Franklin gradually grows apart from his young wife, at first due to the breach of trust over the money, and then when he discovers her sexual infidelity. The novel ends with the outbreak of war in 1914, and Franklin deciding to return to the US, leaving the bulk of his fortune in England for his wife and her family. At the last moment, he changes his mind, and the reader is left unsure whether he intends to return to his unfaithful wife, to possibly accompany Samson who plans to serve in the Legion of Frontiersmen under Frederick Selous, or something else entirely.

Reception

The Guardian said the book "bulges with period research but without the familiar knockabout uplift. Flashy makes an appearance, a ghost of his old reprobate self, and if this is the last of him, I salute him but not, I fear, his successor."[2]

Proposed adaptation

In 1983

Sir Lew Grade announced he would make the book as an eight-hour miniseries.[3]
No miniseries has resulted.

References

  1. ^ George MacDonald Fraser, The Light's On at Signpost, HarperCollins 2002 p311
  2. ^ "Scenes of rural life". The Guardian. 13 November 1980. p. 16.
  3. ^ MOVIES: LORD GRADE: AT 76, BACK AT THE HELM Mann, Roderick. Los Angeles Times 15 May 1983: t26.
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