Name: Restoration
Rating: 3.8 (5 reviews)
ISBN: 9780099582090

Rose Tremain

Restoration is a dazzling romp through 17th-century England. The main character Robert Merivel not only embodies the contradictions of his era, but ours as well. He is trapped between the longing for wealth and power and the realization that the pursuit of these trappings can leave one's life rather empty.

Restoration

Robert Merivel abandons his medical studies for the vibrant Court of Charles II, where he finds unexpected favour with the King and serves as a 'paper groom' to the youngest of the royal mistresses. But by falling in love with her, Merivel violates the one rule that will cast him out from his new found paradise. Driven to work in a Quaker Bedlam, he must endure a yet more painful fall from grace before he can achieve spiritual and social restoration.

Tim Pendry

<br />An entertaining and well written novel that reconstructs Restoration England to tell the story of a rather dim and weak courtier with an appalling tendency to worship his King. The only weakness is that bane of 'literature' which is the inconclusive and obscure ending.<br /><br />Other than this caveat, there is much to love about this book which, whether a true and fair representation of life in the 1660s or not, creates sufficient illusion of it being so to satisfy any fair-minded reader. And that's about it! <br />

Restoration 

Jemima Scott

In seventeenth-century England, the King ensures his mistress's safety by having Robert Merivel, son of a glovemaker, marry her, but Merivel falls in love with his wife, is cast out of courtly life, and finds refuge working with the insane at New Bedlam

Restoration

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