Ross Poldark by Winston Graham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
(Juliana has been recommending this forever; bought it while at Pinewoods July 2011, and finished it October 2011.)
I'm pretty sure this is the Last Book I Finished before our wedding, so it's as good a place to start as any. I picked Ross Poldark up on the recommendation of a dancing friend. I reacted to it so differently from her that I'm almost not sure we read the same book, but I did like it very much.
It's got the classic problem of modern historical fiction -- I can't figure out whether or not Ross Poldark's way of thinking is that of an Authentic Person of His Time, or whether his dogged independence is more of a twentieth-century veneer. If the former, it's odd that he's chosen his own view of the right and proper with no reference to duty; but maybe that's exactly the point, and what little we know of his past has certainly prepared him with intelligence, strength, and bitter experience. If the latter, it's a much more skillful conflation than usual; Ross's every thought and action are shaped just as you'd expect a well-traveled, complex 18th-century gentleman to do things, if he were ever going to do exactly these things. Even if it is pasted together, I loved both the world-building and the characters.
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