Molly & the Captain: 'A gripping mystery' Observer

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Margaret "Molly" Brown, circa 1900. / Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [reproduction number LC-DIG-ggbain-07754] // Public Domain Rosetta McMillan ( Cleo King), also known as "Nana", is Carl's maternal grandmother. She apparently raised Carl since his childhood, and Carl still lives in her house. She is very traditional and has professed that Carl is a very special part of her life, but she is outwardly annoyed by his immature behavior. She has a big heart and is very friendly toward Mike, who calls her "Nana". She has been known to treat Mike as if he were also her grandson, and Mike frequently goes to Rosetta for advice about his relationship with Molly, rather than to his own mother. Despite her advancing age, she is shown to have a large sexual appetite, including an ongoing relationship with the preacher from her church. (Being only seven years older than Reno Wilson in real life, King wears a wig and makeup to appear older.) Nana is a singer; she leads the choir at church, and the presence of gold records on the wall of her house indicates she had a career as a recording artist or session vocalist. I enjoyed the last section the most the characters here for me were more easy to identify with .I loved the character descriptions here which were well defined and interesting .There was also more of a story line in this section and it moved along faster keeping my attention The Molly Brown House in Denver, Colorado. / Onetwo1 at the English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0 It’s Maggie who first spots an unattributed Regency portrait at auction. Might this be a lost work by William Merrymount himself? “To those in the business of buying and selling it matters very much whose hand it’s by”, but eventually the painting – along with its true creator – is once again dismissed as “not sufficiently splendid to be from the Master’s hand […] and much too fine to be from his daughter’s”.

That is, Molly Pitcher wasn’t one single woman, but rather a representation of the women who fought in the American Revolution. After all, thousands of women traveled with the Continental Army. Many, like Mary Ludwig Hays, Magaret Corbin, and Deborah Sampson, saw action. Unlike Hays, Corbin decided to start dressing like a man when she joined her husband in the Battle of Fort Washington in 1776. There, her husband was killed — and Corbin took over his cannon. In the heat of battle, other soldiers admired“Captain Molly’s” steady aim. Three timelines, three studies of artist families. ‘Molly & the Captain’ by Anthony Quinn is the story of one painting via three families across three centuries. It starts in Georgian Bath with the artist William Merrymount and his two daughters. His portrait of the two girls, ‘Molly & the Captain,’ intrigues through the centuries and ends up in North London in the current time. In his ninth novel, Anthony Quinn takes inspiration from the portraits painted by Thomas Gainsborough. The title, Molly and the Captain, is that of a painting by the celebrated fictitious Georgian artist, William Merrymount of his two daughters. This is an elegant, finely tuned story, telling the life and fate of the painting. It is also about the different ways of love and loss and their repercussions. Ultimately, it explores the importance of family traits and how they can resonate through the centuries. The book is divided into three sections 18th, 19th and 20th century stories, each interlinked in Quinn’s inimitable style.My favourite part was the second one, with its evocation of a 19th century artistic milieu and a delightful love story. The third part, set in 1983, fell a little flat for me. Robbie simply wasn’t a credible character and Billie really grated on me — entirely self-centred, and remarkably immature for a 38-year-old. The plot twists didn’t work for me and as for the ending, can I just say that the contraceptive pill was widely available in 1983. Anthony Quinn writes a delightful and compelling novel spanning 3 centuries with 3 stories in different time periods, all connected by art, family, and featuring the well known painter William Merrymount and his famous painting Molly and the Captain, depicting his 2 daughters, Laura and Molly, as children. It's a painting he refuses to sell, despite the ridiculous amounts offered for it, insisting on keeping it as a legacy for his girls, a painting that will go on to echo through time in its connections with so many lives. It begins in 1785, with Laura's journal, relating her close relationship with her father, William, a painter herself, but doomed to never be recognised, partly because she was a woman, and partly through the inevitable comparisons with her father. Her love life is a difficult affair as she faces betrayal, although as we go on to learn that this might have been a blessing in disguise. The first section largely is written in the form of diary writings .I park liked the way that archaic language was used subtly here,this added to the authenticity of these sections .The story is slow moving particularly in the middle section . One infamous story that was later interpreted as being about McCauley comes from Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Plumb Martin’s 1830 book, A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier. Martin’s description of a woman at Monmouth is quite remarkable:

Hichens was reluctant to return to search for survivors, although there was plenty of room on the boat. “He told us we had no chance,” she recalled to the Times. “After he had explained that we had no food, no water, and no compass[,] I told him to be still or he would go overboard.” Today, that myth is well known. But maybe it’s time history started recognizing figures like Mary Ludwig Hays, Margaret Corbin, and Deborah Sampson.Years after the war, Hays applied for a pension from the state of Pennsylvania as the widow of a war veteran. Significantly, her pension was given “for services rendered.” In the 20th century, and with a writer’s sleight of hand, Quinn cleverly re- introduces the youthful film star, Billie Cantrip. She was one of the characters of an earlier novel, Eureka. Here, she comes across as self-centred and manipulative. Then there is her sister ,Tash, who has an outlandish taste in clothes and is politically active. Nell, their mother, is a well-known artist. A television documentary on her is just about to be aired and she has a retrospective exhibition at a well-known gallery. Passionate, single, middle-aged – small wonder that she has an affair. And the painting? Quinn is uncompromising with his plot. There are hints along the way but with typical aplomb he keeps us guessing to the end. This is a captivating and superbly crafted novel. Roberts, Cokie. Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2004. Victoria Flynn ( Katy Mixon) is Molly's dimwitted but kind, party girl sister who is often high on marijuana. (Policemen Mike and Carl take a "don't tell, we won't ask" attitude about her drug use.) She is employed as a beautician at a funeral home. She likes to have fun and sleeps around, frequently with married men, and her combination of not being particularly bright and being a pothead leads to her often losing or misplacing major items like her car. Harry has an almost obsessive crush on her, and she has on occasion gone on dates with him just to be nice. In Season 3, she starts to realize that Harry is the only man who's ever truly cared for her, and she finally kisses him. In an odd turn of events, he then announces he's gay. As of the end of Season 4, she is in a relationship with Carl, which lasts until the penultimate episode of Season 5 when they have a bitter break up. In the series finale, it's revealed that they're sleeping together, but it is hinted that there is the possibility of it becoming more serious.

Brother Heywood ( Reginald VelJohnson) is the preacher at Carl and Rosetta's church. It is strongly hinted (and later openly revealed) that he and Rosetta are in a sexual relationship. He officiated at Mike and Molly's wedding, after Molly was too honest with the priest at Mike's Catholic church and the two were forced to look elsewhere. Firstly the diaries and letter of Laura Merrymount recount events mainly in the 1780s. Whilst Merrymount is imaginary (inspired by Thomas Gainsborough), the voice of Laura is utterly convincing as she describes her own career as an artist, an unfortunate marital rivalry with Molly and then a period of caring for her, as spinsters together in Kentish Town. The style is impeccably 18 th-century epistolary.

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Molly & the Captain is a story about time and art and love. Through the prism of a single painting it examines the mysteries of creativity, and the ambiguous nature of success. With period subtlety, intricate characterisation and storytelling verve, Anthony Quinn melds three families and three centuries into a single vision of human frailty and longing. The most impressive thing about the book is the way the author effortlessly evokes three different time periods. The clearest example is the first section set in the 1780s in which the story is related in the form of the journal of Laura (the ‘Captain’ of the book’s title), daughter of the famous but fictional painter, William Merrymount, and her letters to her cousin, Susan. The prose has the idiosyncracies of style of that period, exemplified in this passage from the opening chapter. ‘Mr Lowther called at the house again. He stayed for an hour & behaved with a Civility I had thought beyond him…. Molly & I later prevail’d on him to accompany Ma on the piano forte.’ Moving between Bath and London we witness how Laura’s desire for recognition of her artistic talent is thwarted by circumstances and social conventions. De Pauw suggests that many of the “Molly Pitchers” of the world followed their husbands to war, learned how to fire cannons, and stood ready to take their husband’s place, should he fall. At the end of their itinerary, they might have gotten a sense of how Molly Pitcher, the beloved freedom fighter who joined the Battle of Monmouth upon seeing her slain husband, contributed to the American Revolution, but in reality, they were just chasing a figment of the American imagination. But after the war, as detailed by Linda Kerber, a historian who studies the history of women in America, individual stories of female bravery no longer fit with a greater national dialogue. Women were encouraged to be at home.