'Flashman And Tiger' Spins Seductive Tales
19th-Century Soldier Describes Romantic Adventures
"Flashman and the Tiger" by George MacDonald Fraser reads like a long conversation with a worldly, dirty old Englishman.
The conversation is one-sided: the Englishman rambles on about his generation (the late 19th century) and his adventures. It often doesn't seem to make sense to a modern American listener. He occasionally becomes long-winded and boring. Still, the narrative remains engaging.
The premise of the Flashman Papers is that Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., a "celebrated Victorian soldier" had written his memoirs in the early 20th century. Fraser pretends to simply be editing these manuscripts for publication.
"Flashman and the Tiger" is the 11th volume of the Flashman papers where the hero describes three adventures in novella form. The first and longest section of the book is an action-packed account of Flashman intervening in a European crisis and postponing the outbreak of World War I.
In the second section, Flashman investigates a card game gone wrong where the Prince of Wales had to testify about cheating while gambling.
The third section, which the book is titled after, has Flashman fighting the evil Tiger Jack in South Africa.
The narrative in "Flashman and the Tiger" often flows into stream-of-consciousness. The characters seem borrowed at times, and Fraser relies on prototypes -- the princess, the spy, the reporter and the soldier. Underneath the entertaining and deceptively surface-oriented narrative lies a detailed and accurate history.
The book reads much like a James Bond movie, with Flashman as a 60-something 007. Fraser also wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film "Octopussy."
The narrative in "Flashman And The Tiger" heightens to describe action or seduction. The reader is invited into a world of intrigue where Flashman indulgently describes "rogering" royalty on the Orient express and drinking Schnapps for breakfast.
Fraser succeeds in making historical fiction fluid. This genre has attracted a lot of attention recently with Edmund Morris' recent "Dutch: A Memoir Of Ronald Reagan" where the writer created himself as a fictional character, and blurred the distinctions between fiction and history.
Fraser handles this same intersection seamlessly. He writes a highly entertaining historical fiction piece that both embellishes and teaches. In the footnotes and appendices, Fraser pays great attention to the historical background and clearly delineates what is true and what is his story.
"Flashman and the Tiger" assumes a significant knowledge of European 19th-century history and the previous works in the series. This leaves an ignorant reader a bit lost, but Fraser continues to keep up the interest level with amusing anecdotes and honest descriptions.
Flashman rambles on about "the usual exaggerated Froggy vapouring" and just when attention might start to drift the narrator brings you back by either "clambering aboard" some vixen or throwing out a wise one-liner like "show me melodrama and I'll show you truth, every time."
If the stories in "Flashman And The Tiger" had been told over lunch the listener would never have a moment to speak, the neighboring table would start listening, and everyone would emerge saturated with wild memories and a little tired from Flashman's ramblings.
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