The Secret Ministry of Frost

The Secret Ministry of Frost tells the story of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s tragic relationship with his son Hartley, a fascinating but little-known family drama of addiction, estrangement and poetic expression. Beginning with Hartley’s expulsion as a Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford, for chronic drunkenness, and his father’s failed attempts to rescue him, the novel traces their strained relationship through Hartley’s shame and refusal to see Coleridge for the last 12 years of the poet’s life. Hartley could never live up to his father’s expectations for his son, set out in Coleridge’s brilliant conversation poem Frost at Midnight when Hartley was only 17 months old. The novel delves into the mystery of their distressed relationship via imagined scenes, letters and diaries involving family and friends, as well as authentic poems by the two Coleridges and William Wordsworth. John Banville, the Man Booker Prize winner for The Sea, had this to say about Berkman’s previous novel, The Product of Woollett, a sequel to The Ambassadors by Henry James: I’m greatly enjoying and admiring your book…I very like the fluent, fluid style and the intricacy of plotting of Product of Woollett - a slyly witty title, by the way. I’m particularly charmed by the way you manoeuvre James’s tale and his characters into an aesthetically pleasing sequel to The Ambassadors. My congratulations. Those who enjoy A.S. Byatt’s Possession will enjoy the Secret Ministry of Frost.