The contrast between Charles and Colonel Clay and the witty schemes make An African Millionaire an entertaining read.
-Imran
-Imran
Grant Allen
doesn’t seem to be as well-known as other authors from his era but his talents
show in An African Millionaire. It
follows the story of Sir Charles Vandrift, a shrewd millionaire who’s made his
fortune in the diamond mines of Africa and now spends his time in Europe doing
what rich people do. Millionaire is
told as a collection of short stories narrated by Charles’s brother-in-law and
secretary, Seymour, that together form an overarching narrative about Charles’s
battle with a con artist.
In the first
chapter, Charles is swindled out of £5000 by a seer who claims to be able to
see the future. The ‘seer’ turns out to be the infamous Colonel Clay, a thief
renowned for his many disguises and his penchant for robbing rich people and
never getting caught. From then on, it’s one misadventure after another with
Charles going on with his excessively decadent life (usually going on holiday
or buying expensive things) and running into one of Colonel Clay’s schemes.
Over the course of the story, Clay develops something of a fascination with
Charles and promises to swindle him over and over again. His personality comes
across strongly in their encounters and in the insulting letters he sends right
after he’s managed to con Charles out of yet another large sum of money.
While
Colonel Clay is technically a villain and a thief, it’s hard not to root for
him. He comes across as a man of class and his schemes are so ingenious that at
the end of every chapter, you’re left shaking your head at how it’s all managed
to come together. Clay comes in all manner of disguises and, between him and
his partner, it’s difficult to work out who he is in each chapter until quite
late in the book. As for Charles and Seymour, they start to develop an
instinctive mistrust of anyone new they meet for fear that he might be the
Colonel. This leads to some really comical mishaps and there are some truly
laugh out loud moments in the book.
But beneath
the humour there’s a certain genius to the whole story. Each chapter is
something of a mini mystery that reads like a chess game between Charles and
Clay and the book plays as much with the reader as it does with Charles. That,
and I suppose there’s also some kind of guilty pleasure in reading about an
amoral and overconfident rich ass get swindled left, right and centre. The
story does become a bit more serious in the end and tries to make something of
a statement but, in my opinion, the last two chapters were the weakest. Maybe
it’s because I enjoyed the preceding ones so much and I didn’t want the book to
end but I found the conclusion to be quite unsatisfactory. Other than that, I
have little cause for complaint.
The contrast
between Charles and Colonel Clay and the witty schemes make An African Millionaire an entertaining read.
See you next
week
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