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Summary: Don Jaime, where are you now?
Review: Arturo Perez-Reverte makes me wish I could read Spanish. That is - possibly - the only way his works could get any better. I've read all of his novels that have been translated into English, and "The Fencing Master" is the one that grabbed me by the lapels, so to speak, and dragged me into 19th-century Madrid. I must say I was not inclined to put up much resistance.The story centers around Don Jaime, an antiquated fencing master, one of the last of a dying breed in an age where the pistol is gaining popularity as the means civilized men use to kill each other. Don Jaime lives his life according to a personal sense of reality, one that revolves entirely around the concept of honor. He realizes that he is a fossil, and that others may look at him as an aging dandy, but he does not mind. In fact, he hardly notices the outside world at all. Until one day he is summoned to the house of a beautiful young woman, who demands to know the secret of the unstoppable thrust (Don Jaime's personal invention). And nothing in the fencing master's world is ever the same again. To give the story away would be criminal, but rest assured intrigue, politics, and mystery abound. Mr. Perez-Reverte has done his usual prodigious amount of homework, and Madrid in the late 1860's springs to life from the page. I probably know even less about fencing than the average person (my information comes solely from period-piece movies), and the sword fights described kept me awake long into the night. Even week nights. The final bout is a masterpiece of suspense and beauty, an illustration of the age-old struggle between good and evil, hope and despair. My only niggling question is, how did the beautiful young woman acquire that enigmatic little scar at the corner of her mouth? In short, a fantastic read.
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Summary: Fencing for Passion and Honor
Review: Here is a tale of an aging fencing master in mid-19th century Spain, a man out of sync with his times, barely aware of the political turmoil swirling around him or of the changing fashions and world in which he lives. Devoted to his arcane medieval art of swordsmanship, in an age of pistols and crass commerce, he lives in a museum-like apartment, sustaining himself by teaching fencing to a few less-than-promising students, the sons of the lesser nobility. Himself a commoner, he is the picture of the faded gentleman, a man more suited to the nobility than many of those who are his social superiors and to whom he must defer. Without family or real friends (excluding a few local cafe acquaintances with whom he has little in common save loneliness and a sense of marginalization), the fencing master observes his own slow physical decline and is acutely aware that his best years are behind him . . . his future but one thing: the inevitable loss of bodily strength and skill with the blade (which, alone, sustains him materially and spiritually). At the end of his lonely trail lies a sojourn in a hostel for the aged, attended by the nuns, until he breathes his last. Forseeing his own inevitable decline, he is no less aware that the art he espouses, no longer esteemed in the society in which he lives, will fade, like him, to a shadow of its former self, the more so as men of his ilk pass inexorably from the scene. And so, the old "maestro" devotes himself, in these fading days, to a book he is composing, a master work on the art he loves, and to developing the one thing that will, in his estimation, leave a real mark and make that work worthwhile, setting it apart from hundreds of other fencing treatises: the description of his hoped for grail, the "unstoppable thrust". But this, the ultimate fencing technique he longs to discover and document, eludes him, as it has throughout the preceding 30 years of his life. One day, as he struggles with his few students and his manuscript, a mysterious young woman, new to Madrid, summmons him to her apartments and presents an unorthodox request . . . that the maestro take her, a woman, on as his student. Astonished and confused, as much by the alluring charm of his petitioner as by the inappropriateness of her request in a still conservative Spain, the maestro wavers . . . drawn to a youthful and mysterious beauty that awakens in him old dreams and remembrances. And yet he bridles at this proposed violation of those venerable traditions that are the one consoling constant in his life. But the lady isn't quite what she seems and her purpose in soliciting the special lessons is hidden from him because of the confusion her raven black hair, smooth skin and brightly blue eyes stir in his heart. And so he is charmed enough to entertain the idea . . . a step that will have seismic repercussions on the small and carefully ordered world of his life. This tale, of a noble soul on the edge of that abyss which awaits us all, is moving and perceptive. As the old maestro succumbs to a brief revival of his youthful spirit, he is sucked into a vortex of intrigue and murder and will face what will prove to be the most dangerous duel of his professional life. In this he loses and finds himself again. Although the second half of the book bogged down a bit with the details of a somewhat cryptic correspondence, the power of the book's insight into a man's final and most deadly challenge more than offset this apparent loss of dramatic focus. I have read few books as good as this one. I almost feel honor bound, myself, to move a whole slew of other books I have reviewed here down a notch in my estimation just to make room for this one. SWM
Rating:
Summary: A Most Excellent Book
Review: I was riveted by this story from beginning to end.
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Summary: Touche!
Review: A brilliant work of fiction, though hard to pigeonhole. Is it a crime mystery? A love affair? An exciting historical intrigue? Hmm... If Athos in The Three Musketeers had been a poet, this is the type of story he would have written. The protagonist is a romantic older Spaniard (Shades of Quixote!) once renowned as the best swordsman in Europe. Time has passed him by. In the 1860's swordsmanship is becoming a quaint relic. In fact, it's turning into a sport. This is anathema to the master, a former duelist, who is a purist to the core. In some ways he is a Christlike figure, in this world but not of it. A bloody revolution threatens the country, but what has that to do with his art? Like Cyrano, he is incapable of being pragmatic: "Among the many vices I am proud to say I do not have is common sense." All of which have brought their logical consequences. As the story unfolds, he is teaching a small group of students, barely making ends meet. He has neither family or friends, and fears the inevitable decay which time will bring him , now that his last hope has dwindled, to die "properly" in battle. He treasures the lingering memory of at love affair,long past and the joy of his art, but it is not much to keep him going, not much of a life. The master is not embittered, merely resigned to his fate and settled in his ways. This is the set-up to the story Then SHE enters. The beautiful and enigmatic young woman, who appears to be quite deadly with the blade herself. She seek instruction. Or so she says . . . The plot accelerates exponentially with a fury through all manner of twists and turns. Yet Reverte manages to keep the bittersweet and poetic tone throughout the novel. Here, as in "The Seville Communion" , he is at the top of his form. A good, good story.
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Summary: An old man returns to two battlefields
Review: The skill he has mastered, fencing, has been replaced by the gun and his code of honor has led him only to a life interrupted by flight. He enters old age, fit and healthy, but prepared for a life of genteel poverty, a magician with a sword searching for the secret of the unstoppable thrust. This dry remnant of a life is remade when a beautiful young woman wants to know his best move, the move that marks the highwater of his accomplishment. Against a background of imminent revolution, in a world that know longer understands or accepts the code he was raised to defend, The Fencing Master solves several mysteries, including some about himself in this stunning brief thriller. A marvelously executed book. As someone else has noted a diagram of the fencing terminology would have permitted us to follow the sword fights easier, but that didn't interfere with my enjoyment.
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Summary: Predates his much better other books
Review: Although this is the fourth of Pérez-Reverte's book to appear in English, it actually predates The Flanders Panel, The Club Dumas, and The Seville Communion. Originally published in 1988, this earlier book is an entirely historical thriller set in Madrid in 1868 amidst Spain's September Revolution, which apparently heralds the end of the monarchy as plots abound and the Bourbon Queen Isabella II is rapidly losing control and influence. One of the novel's flaws is that this period of turmoil is so chaotic and confusing that, although the reader knows the political machinations and plots will somehow prove integral, it's presented rather tediously and is hard to follow. On the whole, the prose is not nearly as rich and accomplished as in his other books. The story follows an aging fencing instructor, Don Jamie, whose personal code of honor defines him as he attempts to live outside the "real" world around him. He is a rigid and exacting "maestro" to the few remaining pupils he has (guns have all but supplanted swords), and an amusingly old-fashioned expert to the wealthy nobleman he spars with every day. His only other human contact is with a group of yammering men who gather every day in a café to argue politics-and whose main function is to deliver the political background the reader requires to understand the rest of the story (although as indicated above, their arguments are not very effective in this). Don Jamie is a portrait of a faded gentleman, with all his best experiences behind him, he almost revels in his self-constructed persona of a man of honor (and little else). When a beautiful woman comes to his door and demands instruction in the male-only art of fencing, it catapults him into a dark intrigue. It's another flaw of this early Pérez-Reverte work that readers will see what's coming almost from the moment she first steps onto the page, and only the details need to be revealed. Indeed, those who have reader his intricately plotted other books, will likely be disappointed by the relative simplicity of the story. What is perhaps more intriguing are the timeless questions raised about honor and its role in a world where honor means little. Don Jamie's disengagement from the world around him has tragic consequences, so is he a failure for clinging to tattered ideals, or should he be lauded for his commitment? In that sense, this book has a more moral center than any of Pérez-Reverte's others. One other minor flaw is the lack of a fencing glossary or any diagrams. The terminology of fencing and its maneuvers are so integral to the story and so arcane to most modern readers that the publisher does both the book and the reader a major disservice by not providing any supplementary material. For those with access to a video store with a good selection of international titles, the book was made into a film in Spain called El Maestro de Escgrima.
Rating: 
Summary: A man who lived to long
Review: This book reminded me yet again why I enjoy Arturo Perez-Reverte. His creates memorable characters. Don Jaime the fencing master in question is a elderly man who has deliberately chosen to live by a code of honour and behaviour, which puts him at odds with the society and time in which he lives. In the words a character in the story "you did not die at the right time". The plot of the fencing master is simple in itself and is derivative of any one of half a dozen classic mysteries. But the plot is only the frame to allow the author to explore what happens when such a man such as Don Jaime is forced to interract with the world, that he has rejected a world that is dishonourable and full of intrigue. Can he remain true to himself and his code
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Summary: Great Antiquarian Thriller
Review: Jaime Astarloa, a middle-aged fencing master and walking anachronism serves as the pivot around which a web of political intrique is woven during tumultuous times in 1866 Madrid. The story features everything one could want from a good thriller - a beautiful woman, a noble protagonist, a few murders and a great scandal. Arturo Perez-Reverte's speciality in my book is spinning stories which weave beautifully antiquarian and esoteric details into him. However, unlike Umberto Eco, you will not need a Master's in Philosophy to really enjoy his work. This novel ought to appeal to a variety of interests - Latin culture fans, historians, fencers, or just those looking for a good murder mystery. Buy the book and en garde!
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Summary: Conversational Review
Review: I really liked the ending of the book. It was a satisfying ending - especially with its 'hero/good guy' being the one who comes out alive and victorious. I own another book by the same author, The Club Dumas, but I haven't read it yet. I hope when I do get around to reading it that the same vivid, full descriptions are used. At the conclusion of the book that I read, I felt if I closed my eyes I could see the very scene that was being described for me. Further, the parts of the book that deal with the hero (the fencing Master), and his extraordinary student (who is a female) prove the author to be a very subtle and keen man. He easily catches the moments and miniscule feelings that truly show how such a man as the Master would have reacted. Indeed, how many of us men would react. I laugh as I write that. Many women will immediately add their comments that 'Yep, we know how men will act!' But the charm of the Master is that he is an older man - in his fifties. He is also chivalrous and convinced of the life that he leads. He speaks disdainfully of guns (a new thing during the time this novel takes place) because they are for cowards. He refers to fencing as a beautiful art - but a martial art. He rebels against the tendency to study fencing to be graceful or as a hobby. The novel runs through many politics at the time, not necessarily true to history. I didn't "get" much of what was being said with that. Mainly, because it isn't my area of interest, I guess. And it doesn't matter that I didn't, because our dear fencing Master has a solid disinterest in the politics and newspapers of his country as well.
Rating:
Summary: Not his best book
Review: I have read three of Arturo Perez-Reverte's books: this one, "The Club Dumas," and "The Flanders Panel." I was somewhat disappointed in this one. Don't get me wrong, he still has his old style: great description of characters, nice prose, etc., but this story just didn't get my interest as quickly as "The Club Dumas" or "The Flanders Panel." It was a very fast read, which could be either a bad thing or a good thing. The other two books had some sort of "hook," but this one didn't. I must say I was slightly disappointed, but I will continue to read this author. If you've never read this author before, read the other books first, then read this one.
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