As Meat Loves Salt

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This amuses me, because although there are certainly women in the book, this cover completely fails to convey any of the story’s spirit or major themes. The reader is immediately drawn into the world of Jacob Cullen, a darkly charismatic former servant turned soldier whose sincere cravings for love and understanding are too often marred by his jealous and suspicious nature which creates a mystery the reader discovers in well-timed increments. Troubled by his past crimes and always inclined to act first and consider later, he’s a dangerous man on a shortening fuse.

However, he is also passionate, vulnerable and charming and is equally capable of being tender and loving.But the danger is there, hanging, lynching, burning – all of them a very real dange, even though even then, they knew that proof would have been needed. He has that trait where he's drawn to save people, and there can be hubris in that, as well as goodness. Also, while Jacob and Farris were, as you say, both married men and not strictly speaking, GAY, Jacob had to have Caro’s interest in him pointed out to him by his brother Izzy, HE WAS SO GAY HE DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS HOT FOR HIM, and Ferris’s marriage was not really love but Farris’s quest for honor and rightous behaviour.

He is dark, brooding, troubled and prone to bouts of anger and jealousy which often spill over into acts of violence and cruelty. At his most basic he is without a doubt a man controlled by his wrath and pride and one who, worse still, bears a grudge for feeling that he has been forced to live below his station.it is curious to read reviewer responses to this character because many seem to hold him at a distance, to view him as an Other, to talk about him in terms of his villainy or his potential schizophrenia. Second, the painting originally contained Courbet’s lover, but after the affair ended badly, Courbet just… deleted her. Jacob Cullen, a man of hasty temper and with an unstable temperment is forced, for reasons I won’t divulge, to flee the manor where he serves with his wife and his brother.

It's completely addictive, heartbreaking, wonderfully written, with characters who creep under your skin and refuse to move. You long for Jacob to find some peace, even as you watch him unwittingly driving away what chance of happiness he has. At other times the target is missed in terms of tone - when the Diggers' colony becomes troublesome, Jacob looks back to a time "when the colony was but a maggot in my friend's head".Jacob, who destroys what he loves with the rapacity of his desire, is as compelling as he is appalling…Most impressively, the writing here is flawless. Although written in first person, which so many people tend to be biased against because it has been lamentably done so many times, this author does it well. Reading the book, though, you know everything is doomed from the start (believe me, this is not a spoiler), which makes it both hard to read and impossible to put down.