Outside of a Dog: Kate Nepveu's Book Log

A quote from The Last Hot Time sent me browsing through the Yale Library catalog the other day: "[Danny] got a book from the library, a Rafael Sabatini swashbuckler with brave, kind heroes and the certain promise of a happy ending." I only recognized two titles in the catalog, and picked Scaramouche over The Marquis de Carabas mostly at random. Since I still felt like reading about buckling of swashes, this seemed a natural choice.

I can't really say I would consider Scaramouche a comfort book. A tale of revenge during the French Revolution (yeah, there's a happy setup), it features a protagonist who, we are told in the first line, "was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." That laughter tends to be rather cynical, or else affected; André-Louis is an instinctive actor, and though he certainly has feelings, he is almost always playing a role, even after almost an entire book's worth of upheaval:

When understanding came at last André-Louis' first impulse was to cry out. But he possessed himself, and played the Stoic. He must ever be playing something. That was his nature. And he was true to his nature even in this supreme moment. He continued silent until, obeying that queer histrionic instinct, he could trust himself to speak without emotion.

I tend not to find people like this very good company, at least if they remain this way over the whole book, and it's the company I keep that makes a comfort book for me. I can see why this book was and is popular, but it wasn't really what I was looking for.