Charlie Connelly - Gilbert

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A decent read

I enjoyed this book but I did have reservations about it. 

Gilbert is a fictionalised account of the later years of W.G. Grace, beginning around his 50^th birthday in 1898 and concluding with his death in 1915.  It is episodic and written more as a novel than a biography, so we get vignettes from the significant events of his later life, plus a lot of Grace reminiscing  internally about earlier triumphs and losses.  What the book does well, I think, is to give a good portrait of the man, his character and his attitudes.  It begins excellently, showing Grace in a County match allegedly intimidating the umpire into giving him not out twice (once caught, once lbw) before Charlie Kortright clean bowled him and made the famous remark "Surely you're not leaving us, Doctor? There's one stump still standing!"  This made Grace furious and resentful, yet shortly afterward he showed great and sincere support and graciousness to Kortright as they played together for the Gentlemen because he thought that Kortright had played well and bravely.  Grace was plainly a complex man who was hard to fathom, but I think Charlie Connelly paints a believable portrait of him.

I was less happy about some of the style.  There is an awful lot of Grace strolling out into the evening, taking a breath of air into his lungs and thinking long, detailed thoughts – all of which, of course, Connelly has simply made up.  This is true of a good deal of the dialogue, too, and even with good will toward the book, it began to get a bit much.  This, coupled with some rather uninteresting events in places did make the book rather hard going in places.  (And the account of Grace's death, with his dead daughter appearing to him and opening the gate for him to walk onto the Celestial Playing Area really did try my patience very badly.)

Nonetheless, this is generally a decent read and I've ended up with a much better understanding of a near-legendary figure, for which I'm grateful.  It's not a great book by any means, but Gilbert is well worth a read for any lover of cricket.