6/16/2018

Book Review: Mr. Chartwell by by Rebecca Hunt, Susan Duerden (Narrator)

I listened to the audiobook edition of Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt. As is my habit, I added it to my library list of books that are available in the audio format way before I got the audiobook from the library. I only wish I could remember how this book came to my attention. In my opinion, the most important component of an audiobook is the reader (performer, narrator). Mr. Chartwell was read by Susan Duerden and she had the perfect clipped British accent. She made each character an individual with her voice and articulation. I always seem to prefer books read by British performers. It adds an appreciated charm aspect. I came to the book knowing that it was somehow about Prime Minister Winston Churchill. I soon learned that Chartwell was the name of Sir Winston Churchill's home, where he lived along with his wife, Clementine, who, as it happens, was Winston’s emotional rock and most trusted confidante. What I did not know was that Churchill suffered from depression. 

The book opens in July 1964, where Winston Churchill wakes at dawn in his bed chamber at the  Chartwell House. There’s a dark, mute “presence” in the room that focuses on him with rapt attention. That this presence is a dog slides slowly into my consciousness  Soon after, in London, Esther Hammerhans, a librarian at the House of Commons, widowed for two years, decides to rent her late husband’s study. When she goes to answer the door to her new lodger, "through the glass she sees a vast silhouette the size of a mattress". His name is Mr. Chartwell and though Esther is astounded to see what seems to be a huge dog, standing there, it all becomes quickly, if not completely, plausible to Esther and to the reader. Though many reviewers begin with the all too real metaphor of Mr. Chartwell, to be known as Black Pat as the book moves on, as a physical representation of the blackness of living with depression, this reader initially had no idea. I think my cluelessness worked to my advantage. It allowed me to be put smack into the story from the very beginning and pretty much stay there to the end with my eyes and ears open and accepting. Mr. Chartwell, the dog, was written from the first with such wit and impudence, charm and repulsion, appeal and disgust, intelligence and fatuousness, that I not only accepted him, I relished in him. As the book proceeds, Sir Winston Churchill, Esther Hammerhans and Mr. Chartwell's stories intertwine, coming together in a very satisfying way.

At some point, even this, slightly dense reader began to understand the metaphor working in Mr. Chartwell and that Churchill had lived with the black dog of depression for many, if not most of his years. As for Esther Hammerhans, Mr. Chartwell has come to her as well because the loss of her husband has left her depressed and feeling empty, but not nearly to the extent of Churchill. The fact that Winston Churchill was hounded (no pun intended) by the "black dog of depression" became the conceit for Rebecca Hunt's novel and from it she wove a tale that for me was more than entertaining. It was one of the most gratifying and captivating books that I have read in a very long time. And, while you never forget that depression is serious, she made it possible to laugh as you dry away the tears.

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