The Commodore

Having survived a long and desperate adventure in the Great South Sea, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return to England to very different circumstances. For Jack it is a happy homecoming, at least initially, but for Stephen it is disastrous: his little daughter appears to be autistic, incapable of speech or contact, while his wife, Diana, unable to bear this situation, has disappeared, her house being looked after by the widowed Clarissa Oakes.

Much of The Commodore takes place on land, in sitting rooms and in drafty castles, but the roar of the great guns is never far from our hearing. Aubrey and Maturin are sent on a bizarre decoy mission to the fever-ridden lagoons of the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade. But their ultimate destination is Ireland, where the French are mounting an invasion that will test Aubrey's seamanship and Maturin's resourcefulness as a secret intelligence agent.

The subtle interweaving of these disparate themes is an achievement of pure storytelling by one of our greatest living novelists.


Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 04/17/1995
ISBN: 9780393037609
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.90w x 1.10d

Review Citations: Booklist 03/01/1995 pg. 1139
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/1994 pg. 76
Publishers Weekly 02/27/1995 pg. 87
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/1995 pg. 175