Sharpe's Company, by Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Company

Bernard Cornwell

Once again, if you saw the movie, Sharpe's Comapny, you missed most of what happens in the novel.    Sean Bean and Daragh O'Malley aside, the novel is so much better you will be astounded.

Sharpe's Company  begins with the siege of Cuidad Rodrigo where Sharpe's colonnel is badly wounded.  A new guy, Colonel Windham, is his replacement and poof goes Our Hero's gazette as a captain.  The renewed Lieutenant Sharpe loses his comapny and, worse, has to watch his men bullied by an old nemisis of his, Sgt. Obadiah Hakeswell, the man who cannot be killed, or so he believes since a hanging when he was twelve failed to off him.  If you have read the novels set in India, you will know that Sharpe failed to kill him too, hard as he tried.  The man is a predator and more than a little bats.  He steals from everyone and puts the blame on Harper who must endure a vicious flogging.  In the meantime the massively welll defended city of Badajoz is resisting Wellingfton's efforts to breach its walls.  Sharpe, wanting to be a captain again, begs to be allowed to lead the Forlorn Hope, the first attackers into a breach and almost always die.  But he has gooked up with Theresa again, learned he has a daughter, and wants to live.  While the movie makes the breach and British victory relatively straightforward, in the novel  Cornwell describes the whole complex and daunting siege.  He also tries to explain how the degradation and destruction of a besieged city happens.

I have one great big complaint about Sharpe's Company.  At the beginning you learn that it is a year after the last novel, Sharpe's Battle, and in the meantime Sharpe and Harper have been in England and Sharpe has met and fallen for Jane Gibbons.  Now wait just one cotton-pickin' minute!  I saw that movie.. and it happens a lot later.. and there is no equivalent novel.   Something that significant and the introduction of a couple other characters seems to be to be worth depicting.  Perhaps Cornwell is keeping that plot for another novel.  All this going back and filling in gets rather confusing.

Otherwise, Sharpe's Comapny  is a detailed and compelling depiction of one of the most amazing of Wellington's many and amazing victories in the Pennsular War.  As I mentioned, it was a far more elaborate battle than the one depicted in the movie.  Hakeswell is a satisfying villain to hate.  You get to see Harper  on his own a bit.  His own love interest, not called Ramona here, but rather Isabella, shows up in this novel.  We het to attend SDharpe's wedding to Teresa and see his joy at being a father.  And we get to see him being impulsive and a rogue and uncompromising and clever.  What's not to love?

We purchased this copy of Sharpe's Company  which my gusband and I read together.