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Tag Archives: architecture

For Whose Glory?: Cathedral

21 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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Alsace, anti-Semitism, architecture, artisanship, artistic revolution, Ben Hopkins, book review, cathedrals, challenge to aristocracy, guilds, historical detail, historical fiction, literary fiction, moneylenders, religious mysticism, Renaissance, rise of banking, serfdom, thirteenth century

Review: Cathedral, by Ben Hopkins
Europa, 2021. 618 pp. $28

In 1229, nineteen-year-old Reichard Schäffer’s father dies, leaving him the head of the family in a quiet, out-of-the-way sheep herding village. Deciding that serfdom and sheep no longer suit him, the boy, known as Rettich, leaves his village with his younger brother, Emmerich, for Hagenburg, the (fictional) Alsatian town that gleams like a marvel in their eyes. It’s anything but, of course, but both boys will understand its depths and complexities in time, though from very different perspectives.

Right off, Rettich seeks to buy their freedom so that they may remain city-dwellers, a reminder that in thirteenth-century Europe, birth determines not only who you are and what profession you may follow, but where you may live. What Rettich desires is nothing less than revolutionary, and people who hear his plan shake their heads. But one person who listens is Meir Rosenheim, the Jewish moneylender, to whom the Schäffers appeal for the ready coin they need. Serfs normally wouldn’t prove worthy debtors, but Meir perceives something in them that decides him to take a chance, and besides, Emmerich’s remarkable capacity to calculate intrigues him. Rettich gets his money; the boys buy their freedom; and Emmerich has a job with the house of Rosenheim.

Théophile Schuler’s reimagining, in 1850, of the construction of the western wall of the Strasbourg cathedral, late thirteenth century (courtesy Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg, Cabinet des Estampes et des Dessins, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

From such small beginnings great things emerge. Rettich, a gifted woodcarver, earns an apprenticeship to the stonecutters working on the Hagenburg Cathedral, very much in its infancy. Emmerich learns how to handle money and proves himself an astute businessman. From them, and the many characters that come in contact with them, spins a beautifully imagined tale of greed, politics, skullduggery, sex, bigotry, and piety, often in mystical terms. As this order of importance implies, for most of Hagenburg, building a cathedral is a religious enterprise in name only. Rettich is an exception.

But he can’t say so, at least not in the way he would like, because nobody would listen. As an artist, he believes in reproducing figures from nature, a heretical notion, especially when it comes to cathedral artwork. He does find an outlet for discussion with an architect, a true visionary, whose views are equally controversial. But change is in the air. Witness Emmerich, who learns banking—though it’s not called that—and the power that money wields in politics, when noblemen are perennially short of cash. They fear and despise him but know he’s absolutely necessary.

Both brothers embody a strain of the coming Renaissance that no one foresees—and so does their sister, Grete. She marries up, to a struggling merchant in town, of whom she quickly proves the equal. Naturally, that makes him uncomfortable, but the results speak for themselves. And Grete thinks large. She works toward the day when money will allow people of her social class—her new, acquired social class–to have a say in how things get done, elbowing her way among the aristocracy. This avant-garde feminist attempts to break several barriers, and the manner in which she goes about it makes all three siblings’ stories compelling.

Inwardly, outwardly, and sometimes both, these characters and others act with great daring. Those among the large cast who can afford to—and a few who shouldn’t—speak their minds freely, which lends the narrative zest and fire. The novel’s resident cynic is Eugenius von Zabern, a church canon and the bishop’s secretary, who has the unenviable task of finding money to build the cathedral:

The world needs clerks and lawyers in the same way as it needs leprosy, plagues, earthquakes. Without them, life would be a colourless stroll toward death. But here they are, proliferating and multiplying over the face of our earth, and taking ever more prominent positions in the chambers of power. In the olden days, virtuous rulers would surround their thrones with the flower of chivalry, but today the leaders of our world are ringed by advisers, counsellors, clerks and Jews.
I should know. I am one of this new cursèd class of quill-scratching, shadow-skulking literati. . .

Reading such prose is one delight of Cathedral, and though there’s a lot of it, I find nothing extraneous. Scenes move smartly, and the dialogue clips along, perhaps testament to Hopkins’s career as a screenwriter and director. I also admire his grasp of historical detail. Whether describing Hagenburg (a character in itself), the glimmers of change and how people react to it, or endemic belief in conspiracy theories, especially about heretics or Jews, Hopkins renders time and place with complete authority. I defy anyone to start this book and put it down.

Cathedral is a masterpiece.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

The Other End of the Telescope: Mr. Mac and Me

18 Monday May 2015

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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architecture, artists, coast, coming-of-age story, England, Esther Freud, First World War, historical fiction, spy mania, Suffolk, twentieth century, Walter Scott Prize

Review: Mr. Mac and Me, by Esther Freud
Bloomsbury, 2014. 296 pp. $26

Most novels about the First World War, even those of the home front, portray the emotional and physical carnage, which warp everything they touch. But Mr. Mac and Me takes a gentler approach, setting a coming-of-age story within an unusual friendship between a thirteen-year-old boy and the Scottish artist and architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and his wife, Margaret. The war still penetrates daily life, of course, but remains a thing outside, like a beast scratching at the door. The setup feels vaguely threatening, all to the good, yet misshapen in its odd proportions, which ultimately undermines the novel.

Dunwich seafront, 2007 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Dunwich seafront, 2007 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

The beginning plods, as Freud introduces the Maggs family, which runs a struggling pub in Dunwich, a fishing village on the Sussex coast. But eventually, the story gets going. It’s early summer 1914, and Thomas, the young teenager, has two older sisters and six dead brothers, whose loss he feels keenly. The dead are practically his only company, since his brute drunk of a father is best avoided, and his mother carries too many burdens to pay attention to Tom, unless to cuff him for his misdemeanors. Tom befriends his dead siblings by visiting their graves and adopting a family of starlings as though they represented his brothers alive once more, an example of the sensitive, warm touch that Freud shows throughout.

However, he soon has someone else to occupy his vivid imagination. Mackintosh and his wife have taken up residence, and Mac casts a strange figure, striding about the headland and beaches, turning a spyglass on the seascape. At first, Tom thinks Mac must be a detective, for he reminds the boy of Sherlock Holmes. It’s not clear who befriends whom, but the reclusive, troubled architect takes to Tom and encourages his love of drawing–ships, because Tom dreams of going to sea. Margaret, a gifted artist herself, encourages him too and feeds him, having sensed, without ever putting words to it, that he’s neglected. As surrogate parents, they’re a godsend.

But come the war, Mac’s behavior creates suspicion in the village. His tramps around the headland, his spyglass, that he’s an outsider, an artist–a “foreigner,” in other words–all count against him. The coastal folk naturally assume that their plot of earth is the first place the Germans would invade, a fear they embrace with the inflated desire to feel important. Is Mac signaling to enemy ships? Tom himself isn’t so sure, because he’s seen Mac and Margaret’s pamphlets describing exhibitions of their works at Vienna, and the German words he can’t read sound ominous. He soon sees his mistake, though, only nobody else does, and his father is among those most strident in slandering Mac.

Meanwhile, the more compelling story is about Tom’s growing up. Freud’s Suffolk coast is a place where old ways are dying out, and even Tom’s job with a rope maker may fall to progress. His naivete about certain subjects yields to knowledge, though Freud is careful not to let him see too much. I like the skill with which she handles this, as with the village atmosphere and small moments. The passage of soldiers, billeting in town before shipping to France, teaches Tom a little, and his sister Ann even more, unfortunately. Tom has his first love and catches a glimpse of what the war means, beyond uniforms and patriotic back-slapping.

But Mr. Mac and Me never takes flight, mostly because Mac has no voice of his own and never fully emerges. Since he’s not about to tell a thirteen-year-old why he’s depressed–money troubles, career frustrations–Tom has to find this out by steaming open his letters, a betrayal that, disturbingly, hardly registers with the boy. It’s a clumsy authorial device, as with the expository dialogue that Mac spews when he’s particularly angry at the wrongs he’s suffered. The village suspicions, though they have consequences, neither drive the narrative nor resolve it, and the last twenty pages summarize events that deserve a more careful unraveling. Finally, I understand that Freud wanted to focus on the village, but when news comes that a Suffolk regiment has been decimated in battle, the tragedy hardly penetrates, a startling lapse.

Mac and Me was nominated for the Walter Scott Prize in historical fiction. The short list includes three books I’ve covered already: The Lie, by Helen Dunmore (October 27, 2014); The Thousand Things, by John Spurling (March 16); and The Wolf’s Mouth, by Adam Foulds (March 12). I’d be happy if Dunmore or Spurling won, but I still think The Lie–my first review on this site–is better.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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