Title: A Very English Agent
Author: Julian Rathbone
Date of First Publication: 2002
Place of Publication: Little, Brown
Type: Novel
Characters: Lord Byron; Percy Shelley
Themes: BYRONIC HERO; RACE/POLITICS; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER
Critical Summary: In A Very English Agent, Charlie Boylan is arrested and put into Pentonville Prison for barging into a government building with a loaded pistol, demanding his pension from the spy agency he used to work for. He then narrates his story of espionage to Thomas Cargill, a government worker who has been tasked with verifying if Charlie, if that was really his name, has done everything he claimed to do. Charlie begins his tale of espionage with the battle scene from Waterloo: he was fifteen, and not a soldier, but was with a farmer’s teenage daughter in a ditch. Before the two left the ditch, the girl was killed by a stray cannonball, and Charlie escaped unharmed. At first it seemed like he had been around for a long time, as if he were an immortal being. His descriptions of the battlefield, and the various strategic maneuvers the soldiers made, gave the reader the impression of an experienced and strategic person, and not what a fifteen year old would notice. Later, the reader realizes that Charlie looked at the scenes of his life, as he told it, through a spy’s eyes. After surviving the battle, and stealing a dead soldier’s uniform, Charlie was hired by one of the officers to be a servant in his house. He was later kicked out when the officer found out Charlie slept with the officer’s older sister. Since the sister invited Charlie in her room though, and Charlie later told the officer this, the officer did a favor for Charlie by getting him employed in a spy agency, partly to keep Charlie from blackmailing him. The government worker, Cargill, is dubious of the stories Charlie tells, especially when it involves major historic events, such as the Peterloo Massacre or Percy Shelley’s drowning. The reader is left wondering too, because Charlie gives off the impression of an imposter. The connection this book has to Frankenstein is because all the spy work Charlie did was for the nobles and lords who wanted to keep the common people from rioting and revolting. One scene that has vivid images of the connection to Frankenstein was when the lords read Shelley’s poem on the Peterloo Massacre, Mask of Anarchy, in which he urged the people to get what was rightfully theirs. To keep the people from fomenting revolution, Charlie was ordered to assassinate Shelley by making his death look like an accident: Charlie shot Shelley with a gun that had tiny bullets, causing Shelley to fall overboard and drown. This story cleverly weaves one man’s claims of being a spy, and thereby causing havoc throughout history and keeping things in line.
Our spy is a Byronic Hero, whose action connect directly to Politics and history. He is nearly a dwarf, and uncanny, lending his narration the Sympathetic Monster theme as well.
Administrative Notes: Olga Podlisetskaya CSUF