In this imaginative story the author uses the voices of her fictional character Nell Golightly, a housemaid at the Orchard Tea Rooms (where the poet lodges) and Rupert Brooke to create a very effectively executed dual narrative. Brooke, an extremely complex, not very likeable person, who often treated women badly, was confused about his sexuality and worried about his sanity, was portrayed with great sensitivity and insight. Nell's more grounded, passionate, yet innocent personality, afforded a powerful and engaging balance to the story. I found that the two voices remained distinct and convincing throughout, but that each added depth to the character development of the other. Consequently, as a literary device it worked well for me.
Jill Dawson's writing vividly conjured up a compelling sense of time and place, and her descriptions of Fenland pursuits , such as eel-catching, bee-keeping and fen-skating, were powerfully evocative. She captured well the contrasting lives of the privileged and the working classes, as well as the sense of a society on the verge of massive social change.
I enjoyed the construction of the novel: it begins with a letter from Brooke's illegitimate, now adult, daughter in Tahiti, who is requesting information about her father. Eventually this letter reaches Nell, now an elderly widow, still living in the area; it reminds her of her relationship with the poet and, observing that most biographers set too much store by facts, and not enough by feelings, she responds. The heart of the novel is then an account of her and Brooke's life during the period 1909-1915. The final section includes a letter from Brooke, laying out his last wishes in the event of his death, as well as his poem "The Great Lover", which he wrote whilst living in the South Seas.
The fact that the author had researched her subject so comprehensively enabled her to blend extracts of contemporary correspondence (from, to and about the poet) with her imaginative portrayal of him, in a consistent and generally convincing way.
For anyone who delights in the poetic use of language, who enjoys a well-crafted story - and who is prepared to envisage a "warts and all" Brooke- this is a book to savour. ( )

The Great Lover is a fictional novel based upon the life and loves of the WWI poet Rupert Brooke.

Brooke was part of the influential artistic circles of the day, mixing with the likes of Virginia Stephen (Woolf) and Lytton Strachey, and ringleader of his own influential group of socialites at Cambridge - many of them members of the Fabian Society - who became known as the Neo-Pagans. Renowned for his good looks and boyish charm (W. B. Yeats famously referred to him as "the handsomest young man in England") Jill Dawson has weaved a fabulous fictional novel around his love interests and search for self.

Whilst the Cambridge friends and lovers are all based on factual research, in this novel Dawson creates a fictional love interest with a maid Nell who works at the Orchard Tea Rooms in Grantchester where Brooke stayed and spent a lot of his time over a number of years. She uses Nell and Brooke's voices to narrate the story, and whilst their part of the story is purely fictional, they are an instrument to tell an imagined account of many of the real aspects of Brooke's friendships and love interests, some of which is taken from actual letters Brooke sent around this time.

I've mostly found Jill Dawson to be a strong writer who excels in weaving great fictional stories out of nuggets of factual stories from the past, and The Great Lover was another very enjoyable read. Rupert Brooke is the out and out star of the show in this novel; Dawson conveys a very vivid picture of his magnetic attractiveness mixed with geniality and boyish good humour, of his pull and popularity amongst the Cambridge set, and his dark doubts and insecurities around his literary talent, sexuality and understanding of love.

Having finished the novel I almost feel like I'm going to miss being in his company - for me that's great writing.

It's not a perfect novel - despite only being 300 pages long I found it slow to engage me for a while, but once I became immersed in Brooke's world and social circles I wanted to stay there longer as a fly on the wall.

4 stars - closer to 3.5 for the first part of the novel, and much nearer to 4.5 by the end. Jill Dawson remains on my list of unsung modern favourites. ( )

A novel that features poet Rupert Brooke and a relationship with a fictional maid, Nell, during his time near Cambridge. This is a novel of green and pleasant England, long hot summers and carefree picnics on the lawn and swimming on the river. It is a story of love but not in a romantic sense. Politics of the time are slipped in. The narrative switches between Rupert and Nell, two very different voices and this works well. In soem ways this is a historical romance and in others something deeper. ( )

This was a Reading Group choice, so with an open mind I read the first 100 pages and decided that I couldn't continue.
Not knowing anything about Rupert Brooke, other than his proffesion, his tortured mind about his sexuality, made uncomfortable reading. The rest of his entries were entertaining, when he teases Nell, but parts I really didn't understand.
Nell's entries seemed much more straight forward, and I wanted to read her entries only, but that is not the way to finish.
A shame reallly, because it could have been so much more. Not the book for me. ( )

Review for the unabridged audio version.

This is a difficult book to review, given that it is based on the life of a poet who lived early last century (1887 - 1915). It is therefore a bit pointless to bemoan the fact that he appeared entierly self-centred and sexually obsessed, presumably that is how he was, but it didn't make for enjoyable listening. This is another audiobook that I may well have abandoned if it had been a regular book.

Rupert Brooke lived a relatively brief life, dying from septacemia from a mosquito bite while on active duty in WWI, hardly a triumphant death. He was not a particularly prolific poet but is probably best known for his highly charged war poems.
This narrative is largely told from the point of view of Nell, a ficttional character, who cares for him while he is living at The Orchard, Granchester. It is a flippant time, with Rupert and his fellow Cambridge students, wealthy and without a care beyond boating and sex. It's not all of the heterosexual variety either. Nell becomes just another of his potential conquests, though there does appear to be something meaningful lurking there, if he could ever have a meaningful relationship?
The story is pulled together by a letter sent from Tahiti, supposedly written by Rupert's daughter from his relationship with a Tahitian beauty, Taatamata, wanting to know more of the father she had never met. The letter finds its way into the hands of Nell, one of the many who had fallen in love with Rupert during his brief life. Nell thus narrates what she knew of him and Rupert's own voice fills in the parts she could not have known.

Jill Dawson's prose was faultless, I think my reservations with the book revolve around the behaviour and character of Ruper Brooke himself; his endless self-questioning and search for sexual understanding became quite tiresome.
The narration of this audio version was excellent, with Patience Tomlinson reading Nell's passages and William Rycroft, those of Rupert. Unfortunately there are some parts where the female narrator reads Rupert's voice and this did not ring true.

I would read another book by Jill Dawson but would not recomend this one unless you are a great fan of Rupert Brooks' writing. ( )