A Gentleman Tutor by Harper Fox

Narrated by Callum Hale

Harper Fox’s A Gentleman Tutor is a standalone historical romance with a gothic tinge; a poor tutor goes to work at a grand house (although this one is in Kensington and not on the wild and windy moors!) and is caught up in a battle for the heart and soul of his tutee. I have it in print but – (you guessed it!) – haven’t got around to reading it yet, so I jumped at the chance to listen to and review the audio version. Narrator Callum Hale is new to me, and although it took me a little while to get used to him, he acquits himself well and I’d certainly listen to him again.

Impoverished schoolteacher Frank Harte is facing a cold and difficult winter. A leg wound sustained during military service in India has left him with a severe limp (and other problems) and proves a bar to finding a better-paid position, so he works two jobs, teaching at a boys’ school in Shoreditch during the day and teaching dockhands to read and write three nights a week. He is barely keeping body and soul together, having to make continual trade-offs as to what essentials he can afford. Until recently, his long-time best friend Cyril was in similar circumstances, but he inherited a fortune on the recent death of his father, money that is now allowing him to move in higher circles than previously, and when the book opens, he’s sought Frank out to tell him that he’s recommended his services to the Earl of Gracewater, who is looking for a tutor to prepare his twenty-one-year-old son for Cambridge.

Frank is reluctant. For one thing, he has never done any private tutoring, and for another, at twenty-six, he’s only five years older than the viscount – will he be able to command the young man’s respect given their closeness in age? But Cyril assures him the “lad is bright as a button”, if a bit wild, and that Frank will be able to manage him perfectly well – and the prospect of a well-furnished, well-heated room and a soft bed eventually wins Frank round. A week or so later, he presents himself at the Earl’s imposing Kensington mansion and is offered the job on the spot. When he meets the young viscount -– whose nickname “Gracie” is a diminution of “scapegrace” (as well as of “Gracewater” – and here I have to point out the fact that it’s surely not likely that the Earl of Gracewater’s son would bear the same courtesy title – Gracewater – as his father) – it doesn’t take Frank long to work out that there’s something… odd going on and that Gracie seems to be in thrall to his best friend, Arthur Dixon (Dixie), who is clearly a very bad influence. Frank realises he’s got his work cut out for him if he’s going to attempt to sever the connection between the pair and remove Gracie from whatever hold his friend has over him.

A Gentleman Tutor gets off to a great start. The author skilfully mirrors the desperation and bleakness of Frank’s life in the chill of the icy Edwardian-era winter, and she creates a palpable mood of unease and creepiness at the Gracewater mansion that builds slowly as the dark goings-on at the house are revealed. Frank is a sweet character, a thoroughly decent man who has been through a lot and is trying to put the pieces of his life back together. He wants to do the right thing by Gracie and tries hard to be the detached instructor, but can’t help being drawn to the gorgeous young man who is – when not in Dixie’s company – so amiable and eager to learn.

But the book falls down when it comes to the romance, which just didn’t work for me. The story takes place over a period of about two weeks, and I couldn’t buy the insta-connection between Frank and Gracie, or that Frank somehow manages to help Gracie overcome years of emotional and physical abuse in such a short space of time. That Frank is able to decide right away that Dixie is an evil little shit and Gracie is the sweet, charming but wronged party in their friendship when all he has seen of both young men is them behaving in similarly unpleasant ways and displaying a similarly unpleasant attitude seems overly contrived, as does Frank and Gracie’s super-fast arrival at a state of fondness and familiarity when they hardly know each other. It’s hard to believe, too, that Gracie is only five years younger than Frank; Frank may be a bit old before his time, it’s true, but Gracie is so much more immature in so many ways that he feels like a young teen rather than a young man on the verge of his majority. He does make several gestures that show his support and love for Frank near the end, but he never seems like an equal partner in their relationship. And looking back, there were a number of inconsistencies in the plotline that didn’t add up once I really thought about them.

Callum Hale appears to be relatively new to audiobook narration (there are only a handful of titles attributed to him at Audible), but his voice and manner of delivery are an excellent fit for the material, and his narration is well-paced and clearly differentiated. I’m not quite sure why it took me a chapter (or thereabouts) to get used to him – perhaps it was just down to the fact that I wasn’t familiar with the way he sounds – but once I was, I was able to settle in and enjoy his performance. The story is told entirely through Frank’s eyes, and I liked Mr. Hale’s portrayal of him – he’s a bit world-weary, but still capable of joy and wonder when he falls for Gracie. Dixie is given a kind of “puffy” sneer that fits him very well, Gracie sounds like the wide-eyed ingénue he (sort of) is, and the Earl is all jowly gravel. The cast is mostly male, but the couple of female characters are appropriately voiced and the performance is well-nuanced throughout. On the downside, I noticed a small number of mispronunciations, and there were occasions when Frank and Cyril sounded too alike.

So A Gentleman Tutor was a bit of a mixed bag. The story had real potential, but in the end felt as though it was badly in need of fleshing out. The writing is great – Harper Fox is a master at creating atmospheric tension – Frank is a sympathetic and engaging protagonist, and I enjoyed what we saw of his friendship with Cyril. But the romance falls flat and ultimately, there are just too many moving parts for a story of this length (200 pages in print, under six hours in audio) and whole thing is a bit of a mess. But at least I’ve discovered a new narrator to look out for.

Caz