THE TEMPLE OF OPTIMISM
(Published by Jonathan Cape in September 2000, and in paperback by Vintage in 2001.)
Synopsis:
Readers’ comments are always interesting. The person in this book whom people instantly love is Nat Horne, the father of the hero. Chapter One is his, from the opening words, “Grey bolsters of cloud rolled across the sky, their bellies tinged with pink. Like elephants, he thought…’ to the point at which he reflects to his long-suffering wife that of all the pleasures of bachelordom, the freedom to lie diagonally across the bed is the greatest. However, it is his son, Edward, who concerns us: Edward and his neighbour, Anthony Apreece, and that man’s wife, Daisy. Apreece covets Edward’s land: Edward covets Apreece’s wife: Daisy covets freedom from Apreece’s tyranny. A triangle, but one with a difference, for Daisy is ten years older than Edward.
The setting is Buxton and the hills of Derbyshire. The period is the l780s. Apreece has the insanity of a man who’s been insufficiently thwarted in his life. In order to engineer Edward Horne’s bankruptcy, he plots a run on the Bank of Buxton, where Edward keeps his funds…
Meanwhile Daisy is eyeing Edward. Here she’s sitting with Apreece in the village church. Edward strides up the aisle: -
“She smiled at him with the corners of her mouth as he passed and sprang nimbly into his pew. He inclined his head, also with a slight smile, and repeated the gesture to Anthony. He knelt to pray and sat back, spreading out his coat. She watched him lean forward and try the scent from the small vase of flowers that someone, probably one of the Chiddlestone ladies, had placed on his psalter shelf. His nostrils dilated. He stretched his arms along the back of the pew and gazed about him. She saw his dawn-coloured eyes roam inquisitively round the church. His fingers drummed a pensive tattoo as Chiddlestone shuffled through the markers in his prayerbook. Again he bent to smell the posy. Again he smiled to himself. Then abruptly he looked across and directly at her. Not rudely or courteously, neither in meditation nor enquiringly, neither with or without humour – but directly. Into her skull, her thoughts and her secret world. She quickly knelt and shielded her face with her hands.”
People laugh out loud when reading The Temple of Optimism: the minor characters are sharp, the repartee swift and the language taut. I like that laughter. Shostakovich said the same about people laughing during performances of his music. People who are laughing don’t get up and leave. But of course the ultimate question is completely serious, the one that makes the world revolve: will love conquer evil? To be particular, will Daisy get her man?
The Reviewers reviews:
September 10 2000, David Robson -: “Brilliant first novels, supposedly, are the work of precocious young talents. Preferably in their early twenties, they burst on to the literary scene as if they had been writing all their lives…James Fleming, memorably, bucks that trend. He was born during the Second World War and the only remotely sexy thing on his CV is the fact that he is related to Ian Fleming. Yet he has produced a first novel of quite exhilarating brilliance. No precocious 20-year-old, fresh from a creative writing course, could have written The Temple of Optimism. There is a ripeness, both in the writing and in the characterisation, that could only have come with experience. It is as richly absorbing a debut as I have read in years…The descriptions of nature are inch-perfect: not a sight or sound escapes Fleming, who has a wonderful feeling for the English countryside. But the descriptions of the villagers are, if anything, even better. Their pillow talk, their gossiping, their bickering, their wisecracking, their post-prandial philosophising, all ring thrillingly true…One detects the hand of a master.”
Weekend Express,
September 23 2000 -: “This enjoyable tale of greed, love, lust, power and treachery…A lot of fun.”
September 2000. Sue Gaisford -: “It is magnificent…it grasps your attention immediately and steadily tightens its grip until you will cancel dinner and a night’s sleep to finish it – and then feel bereft when it’s over. It tells a complicated, exciting story; it is extremely funny; it tackles important issues such as the purpose of convention and the freedom of the individual; and it is superbly written. There are no coy concessions to the 21st century: the language, concerns, and customs of the 1770s are assumed to be perfectly comprehensible, as indeed they are…I will read it again, slowly. And I hope that Fleming writes a sequel.”
September 12 2000: “The fact that historical novels often lack the spark of originality heightens the achievement of James Fleming, whose first novel, The Temple of Optimism, gives him an honourable place in the Fleming literary tradition…Brilliant powers of description bring these characters and their bucolic surroundings (for there are shades of Thomas Hardy here, too) to life for readers, who will enjoy the exceptional quality of writing and plotting.”
August 25, 2000. Charlotte Mosley -: “ His vigorous and poetic prose, flawless dialogue, rich and comical cast of characters and his exquisite observations of period detail make this a feast of a novel.”
David Robson -: apropos the 2000 Booker prize, for which The Temple of Optimism was long-listed: “The irony is that, while 2000 has been a lean year for fiction generally, it has seen some outstanding first novels, none better than The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra and The Temple of Optimism by James Fleming. Either of them would have graced a list conspicuously lacking in sparkle.”
[The prize was won by Margaret Atwood with The Blind Assassin.]
