All for Love

Book Review

Dan Jacobson

In All for Love, Dan Jacobson takes a true story, documented in two autobiographies by the participants, and invents his own fictional account of the tale.

Princess Louise was the daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium , and a cousin to Queen Victoria of England . She was indulged and spoiled, and unsurprisingly, when she grew older and married, soon grew bored and restless with her husband, whom she dubbed, “Fatso.”

When Louise met Geza Mettanich, it was instant and magnetic, their attraction. She soon began an audacious affair with him, going so far as to install him as a member of her household, demanding enormous favors of “Fatso,” and risking proper decorum by allowing herself to be seen going into a hotel room alone with her lover.

The King reached the limits of his royal patience, and summoned Louise to hear his verdict – she was to be banished from her home and from royal life. Louise seemed to think that this was a huge joke, and with Mettanich swept restlessly across the continent, setting up glamorous residences in Paris and Vienna , shopping exorbitantly and expecting “Fatso” to pick up the tab. This story is the thoughtless and scandalous remains of Louise and Geza's tattered love affair.

Dan Jacobson was reading a non-fiction book when he heard of this story, and wondered what it might be like to fictionalize the tale of two real-life people, especially ones who had written their own autobiographies. He embarked on the project.

While the writing in All for Love is exceptional, and at times transcendent, the reader becomes all too aware of how the lines between fiction and non-fiction blur. Jacobson's writing, in fact, suggests that he is merely reporting the facts, rather than imagining a long-past story. The novel is laden with footnotes, attributing quotes to various books that Jacobson used in his research, contributing to the impression that this, in fact, is a work of non-fiction. Jacobson veers back and forth between narrating a historical tale and addressing the reader in a conscious aside that references such modern technology as laser-guided missiles, television, and modern-day supermarkets. The effect is disjointed, often detracting from the narrative flow of the novel.

“Imagine the lovers aware of themselves as figures in a real-life drama of their own invention. Speaking for effect (not least to each other), reordering their view of the past, manipulating their hopes for the future, changing the roles they play as their circumstances change. Now go on to imagine something that is more difficult to hold firmly in mind. Imagine that to them there is nothing ‘period' or outlandish about the world they live in: the clothes they wear, the expectations they have about how other people are likely to behave, the carriages they ride in, the candles and gas-lamps that light their rooms and streets. They are unconscious of the contrivances they lack: antibiotics, combine harvesters, heart-lung machines, laser-guided missiles, radio, television, supermarkets. Nor do they miss the innumerable noises that those who come after them will regard as commonplace: cars changing gear, aeroplanes overhead, pneumatic drills, the nut-like rattle of computer keyboards, zips opening or closing with their distinctive little mew. Since they know nothing of these things, the absence of them does not make them feel underprivileged. On the contrary, they are proud of what they do have and what their parents and grandparents lacked: a European-wide network of railways and electric telegraphy, electric trams in some of their cities, automobiles (of a kind), aeroplanes (also of a kind), the earliest cinematographic pictures, machine-manufactured goods of all varieties. Machine-guns too.”