Tag Archives: England

Who’s a Reliable Narrator?: An Instance of the Fingerpost

21 Monday Sep 2020

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Review: An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears
Berkeley, 1998. 704 pp. $20

As this captivating novel begins, Marco da Cola, a self-described “gentleman of Venice,” offers his account of his visit to England in 1663. Sent by his merchant father to see to business affairs that have gone wrong, da Cola also carries a letter of introduction to notable English scientists, for our Venetian gentleman has interests there too. Accordingly, he travels to Oxford, where he meets Robert Boyle, the famed physicist, among others, and discusses the proper approach to observation and reasoning concerning both accuracy and conformity to God’s laws. Right away, these principles are tested, through an unheard-of medical treatment, a murder, an investigation, and a punishment, in all of which da Cola plays an important role.

Robert Boyle, physicist, chemist, and philosopher, as painted in 1689 (courtesy Science History Institute, Philadelphia, via Wikimedia Commons)

What sounds simple is anything but. These are religious times, dangerous to those who pray or think in unapproved ways; and with Cromwell’s protectorate recently ended, and the Stuarts restored to the throne, suspicion and conspiracy abound. Heed ye these controversies well, gentle reader, for they shape not only what Signor da Cola witnesses, but how others view him, his manuscript, and the events he describes.

An Instance of the Fingerpost is a strongly feminist novel, but by demonstration, not by soapbox. The woman most central to the story possesses a breadth of mind and character surpassing those of anyone else, to which Pears never calls undue attention. Yet how she behaves arouses suspicion, which raises a crucial theme, how men perceive women through the lens of their own weaknesses.

During his sojourn in England, da Cola shows his kind heart, good-natured disposition, ready laugh, and — within the bounds of seventeenth-century attitudes — tolerant outlook. All that makes him a perfect foil for the disagreeable, smug, hidebound, and cruel Englishmen he meets (many of whom are historical figures). His narrative provides an often cheeky commentary, as when he sums up what he sees and judges it freely:

I discovered that, in only a brief space of time, the atmosphere of Oxford has settled on me, rendering me as melancholic as most of its inhabitants. There is something about the place; a dampness which is oppressive to the spirits, which bears down powerfully on the soul. I have for long had a theory about the weather which, if God spares me, I would like to develop one day. I do believe that the weather and grayness of the climate will forever preclude the English for making much of a stir in the world, unless they abandon their island for more sunny climes. Transport them to the Americas or the Indies, and their character is such that they could rule the world; leave them where they are, and they are doomed to sink in lassitude.

However, when da Cola’s narrative breaks off, other witnesses to the same events narrate their view and take great exception to his manuscript. I don’t mean their counterattacks on his character, which confirm their hatred of foreigners, their gloominess, and much else he remarked on. Rather, the Venetian gentleman seems not to have told the truth. The question is why.

The other voices respond to that and much else, recasting the murder by their own lights, as they justify themselves, often with a semblance of truth, but perhaps not. You don’t know whom to believe, or about what. Not only does the narrative framework recall the great Kurosawa film Rashomon, in which a presumably clear-cut criminal act becomes murky when viewed from different perspectives, Pears raises “no — and furthermore” to its most psychologically penetrating form. Just when you think you might grasp how the murder and investigation unfolded, you don’t — though maybe there’s a piece of evidence, viewed differently, that makes sense. And that one piece won’t go away.

Readers of Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose will recognize similarities here (as reviewers noted when Fingerpost came out). Crime and its repercussions become inseparable from the way people perceive good and evil, or what it means to think and observe, not to mention how ready they are to detest each other for petty differences in religious doctrine. Like Eco too, Pears renders political, social, and intellectual attitudes with such sureness that you don’t doubt him for a second.

An Instance of the Fingerpost is an enthralling mystery and a chilling exploration of the vicious potential of the human mind.

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

Shelf Death: The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne

10 Monday Aug 2020

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Review: The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne, by Elsa Hart
Minotaur, 2020. 341 pp. $27

Lady Cecily Kay doesn’t quite understand why her husband, consul in Smyrna for His Majesty James II, has dispatched her back to England, where she can cause no further trouble. After all, if Cecily didn’t point out the oddities in her husband’s financial ledgers, who would? And why wouldn’t he want the benefit of her sharp eyes?

But despite her humiliating departure from the conjugal nest, Lady Kay’s about to have more adventure than she ever could in Smyrna, and in much the same fashion, asking questions that men don’t wish to answer. (Since it’s 1699, London men expect women to listen like donkeys waiting to have their hind legs talked off, but the devil with that.) So when Cecily tours the famous, coveted collection of Sir Barnaby Mayne, a cornucopia of the natural and folkloric worlds, and someone knifes the collector to death, it’s incumbent on Lady Kay to act. Not only do curiosity and scientific rigor demand no less; justice must be served.

My favorite collector, Joseph Banks, as painted by Joshua Reynolds, 1773. President of the Royal Society for more than forty years, Banks established Kew Gardens as the leading botanical collection in the world (courtesy National Portrait Gallery, London, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States)

Dinley, Sir Barnaby’s assistant, has confessed to the killing and run away. But anyone with an open mind who’s met him for five minutes would believe he’s innocent. If ever there were a naturalist who cringed and blushed over the red-in-tooth-and-claw aspects of his passion, it would be Dinley—and besides, what motive could he have had? However, since Sir Barnaby was a gentleman of title and property, as are most of the visitors on the tour that day, whereas Dinley’s a nobody, a confession and flight are enough evidence to hang him.

Nobody takes kindly to Lady Kay’s inquiries as to the time of the murder, who was where in the house then, and what may be deduced from such observations. As we’ve seen, though, subtlety’s not her strong point. She does have one ally, however, a childhood friend from a lower social class, who’s temporarily residing in the Mayne manse, working as an illustrator for the collector’s intended catalog. But it takes a while for Cecily to trust Meacan, who, like Cecily, is less than forthcoming—a nice touch, there—and the two never do quite get over their competition to solve the mystery, another nice touch.

They also have different approaches, since Meacan, who’s gone through two husbands, isn’t above using flirtation to surmount an obstacle. I like that too, especially because Hart shows a light hand, not playing that too far. Unfortunately for the two sleuths, however, by the time they decide to let their hair down and join forces, Lady Mayne, the imperious, estranged widow, shows up. The investigation promptly hits a wall, namely, the prohibition to meddle in the constabulary’s business.

Hart constructs her mystery with consummate skill and, as you’ve probably guessed by now, deployed “no—and furthermore” to great advantage. There are many suspects, each with plausible secrets to protect, and the narrative openly reveals all the facts. But unless you’re a better detective than I, you won’t guess the killer’s identity or much else, which keeps the pages turning and offers a satisfying conclusion.

Along the way, Hart casts a keen eye on everything from late-seventeenth-century foppishness to attitudes toward the occult to collecting as blood sport to foodways — imagine, to eat any vegetable raw, especially a radish! Consider this description of Sir Barnaby himself:

Though age had made him frail, thinning his cheeks to translucence and carving furrows around his eyes, the authority projected over the space around him was unambiguous. His shoulders, encased in black velvet, appeared broader than they were, as if they were approaching breadth and volume from the darkness surrounding them. He wore a gray wig that rose high above his brow and fell in luxurious curls down his chest, framing the pristine lace that cascaded from his collar.

Another delight in these pages is the humor. For example, Hart offers us a would-be collector with more money than brains, a sycophant whom everyone quickly learns to avoid. Lady Mayne is a hoot, stiffer alive than her late husband dead, convinced, with barely repressed shudders, that collecting is a godless obsession. But my favorite is a Russian general, whose verbal duels with Lady Kay are hilarious, further evidence in her eyes of what blockheads men can be.

If I have one reservation about this novel, it’s the climactic scene, which invokes more than a couple tropes. But maybe it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek, which would fit. The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne is a delight.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book through my work for Historical Novels Review.

Our Natures, and That of Love: To Calais, in Ordinary Time

13 Monday Jul 2020

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Review: To Calais, in Ordinary Time, by James Meek
Canongate, 2019. 400 pp. $27

The summer of 1348, the quiet Cotswold village of Outen Green simmers with unexpected happenings. Lady Bernadine (Berna) Corbet, daughter of the manor, is due to wed a much older man she detests, while the groom’s own daughter will wed Sir Guy Corbet, Berna’s father. A loathsome arrangement, to be sure, but Sir Guy’s word is law. Berna hoped that her preferred suitor, Laurence Haket, would spirit her away — according to the chivalric Romance of the Rose, which she adores, he should have — but Laurence seems to love his dignity more than he does Berna.

Will Quate, a plowman and archer bonded to Sir Guy, has been recruited to join a troop of bowmen raised by Laurence to accompany him to Calais, where Laurence has a fiefdom. Will’s betrothed pleads with Will to stay and doesn’t understand why he refuses. She assumes that it’s because she had a stillborn child by another man, but that’s not why. Sir Guy has promised to release Will from his bond if he serves one year, and Will, no fool, has dared demand that promise in writing, even though he can’t read.

Unlettered though he is, however, he can imagine what freedom means, and not just in the sense that leaving Sir Guy’s lands without permission is a hanging offense. An unusual, fascinating character in historical fiction of the medieval era, Will dares hope for an as-yet undefined future, what his neighbors would never dream of—though when he hears the word possibility, he has to ask what it means, which is telling.

You sense that Will and Berna will drive parallel narratives, and that the nature of love will be a significant theme. As one wise character says, “Love is whatever remains once one has made an accommodation with fate.” Since the description of the plague rumored to have afflicted France (what the characters call “the qualm”) recalls the Black Death, which also fits the timing, you can guess that how people behave during a pandemic will matter here too. The novel, published last year, isn’t prescient, though it may seem so; rather, it’s that pandemics share certain qualities. But the similarities are striking and instructive, nonetheless.

The Battle of Calais, 1350, as it appeared in Jean Froissart’s chronicles, 1410 (courtesy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons)

With that as background, Meek’s folk hash out good and evil; the nature of gender; sin and redemption; the fear of, and violence toward, women; desire and obstacles to satisfaction; what knowledge and truth mean. Throw in sidelines like anti-Semitism and whether the English archers who destroyed the French nobility at the Battle of Crécy betrayed the social order, and you begin to see how rich and complex this novel is.

I love Meek’s characters; major or minor, they come through in full. One favorite is Thomas, a scholar who joins the expedition to Calais nominally as a churchman, though he has no power to perform the sacraments, which becomes an issue. But he serves admirably as a mediator amid the constant squabbles and moral dilemmas that arise, and he unsettles his companions — especially the archers, a rough lot — by defining and clarifying issues rather than offering solutions or justifying the behavior he’s been asked to judge. He’s a moral relativist, in other words, frightening to fourteenth-century minds. A later generation might think of him also as a therapist.

Except for the educated characters’ narration, Meek tells his story in archaic English, which he apparently culled from the OED, and which appears in unfamiliar rhythms. That takes getting used to, until the usages begin to make sense: for example, neb for nose, steven for voice, lolled for hanged. Consequently, Meek creates a language barrier between high-born and low, part of his exploration of social class. But it’s also beautiful prose poetry:

The priest said man’s lot wasn’t to choose his dreams, nor win of them, and dreams fell upon us, like wild deer in darkness, while we slept. Yet there were some folk who warded their dreams, as shepherds warded sheep, and kept them as easy by day as by night, and won of them, as of their herd shepherds won wool. These folk, he said were called writers, and they were close to the Fiend.

The cheeky humor typifies To Calais, which has its uproarious, bawdy moments. But if you’re thinking Chaucer, as I did at first, this narrative only partly resembles “The Miller’s Tale.” A great deal of casual violence occurs, and the circumstances of a gang-rape, which happened in the past, figure heavily in the narrative.

At times, I find Thomas the scholar’s moral reasoning too modern, satisfying though it is. There’s also a deathbed epiphany that strikes me as implausible. But To Calais, in Ordinary Time offers so many pleasures that flaws like these don’t get in the way. I highly recommend this novel.

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

Rough Work: The Molten City

29 Monday Jun 2020

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Review: The Molten City, by Chris Nickson
Severn, 2020. 224 pp. $29

When we last met Detective Inspector Tom Harper in these pages, in Gods of Gold, it was 1890. The young man from the Leeds slums worked a grim job in his gritty native city, splitting his energies between keeping watch over the impending violence from a gasworks strike and scrambling to search for a missing child. Harper sympathized with the strikers, but the law was the law and favored gentlemen of property, against which he was helpless; more immediately, he feared that if he didn’t find the child soon, she’d die. Not all was pain and suffering in his life, however. He worked with a devoted sergeant, Billy Reed, who became a friend. And Tom was about to marry a widow, Annabelle, of independent mind and income.

Now, it’s 1908, and Detective Superintendent Harper is the number-two man in the Leeds constabulary. Annabelle and he have a sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary, active in the woman’s suffrage movement, as is her mother. Billy Reed has died. Harper no longer hears as well as he used to, and his reflexes have slowed. But little else in his landscape has changed. Having arranged security for a royal visit — receiving a signed appreciation from His Majesty, Edward VII, no less — his reward is to protect Prime Minister Asquith when he gives a speech in Leeds.

Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith (date unknown), whose face, the historian George Dangerfield later wrote, was “bland and weary . . . in which frankness and reserve had long fought themselves to a stand-still.” (The Strange Death of Liberal England, p. 4; photo courtesy George Grantham Bain collection, Library of Congress; via Wikimedia Commons)

Where few Britons would dare shout insults or complaints at their king and queen, many would jump at the chance to throw brickbats at Mr. Asquith for his broken promises. Poor workingmen and suffragists are the most likely to riot—including Mary, perhaps, or so her parents fear. Meanwhile, Harper has stumbled over evidence that, fifteen years ago, two children were snatched from their parents, perhaps “purchased” to live in a wealthy home where the mistress of the house has been unable to bear her own.

Had I read the intervening volumes since City of Gold, The Molten City might seem like yet another entry in a familiar formula, what some series can devolve into after a while. (Incidentally, all the volumes bear titles with metallic metaphors.) Yet this novel, like its progenitor, has so much going for it that you have to give it, and the author, their due.

First, there’s the atmosphere — political, social, physical, familial, you name it — which, to me, does far more than set the scene. Tom Harper, as the incorruptible, hard-working utterly dedicated police officer, with nary a social prejudice to his name and a firm belief in feminism, at times seems a little too good to be true. However, his feelings for and about Leeds, conveyed through these descriptions, show me that he loves his city and its people, and that his desire to serve is completely genuine. He stands for something.

That makes his perfection easier to swallow, and Nickson takes care not to let Harper’s halo shine among the populace, who wouldn’t see it, anyway. The rich treat him like a hireling, whom they’ll indulge with an audience if it suits them, not acknowledging that a criminal inquiry compels them to; the poor hate him on sight, because coppers are coppers. They’re none of ’em trustworthy.

Nickson uses simple language to set his scenes, with sparing economy:

The smoke and stink from the tanneries and factories rose up the hillside. Identical, anonymous streets of back-to-back houses. Away from the moor, there wasn’t a tree or a splash of colour to be seen. Someone’s washing hung from a line high across the cobbles, already turning grey from the soot in the air.

Attention to the character of Harper’s environment achieves one other storytelling goal of note. Since this is a mystery, which must live on “no — and furthermore,” many such narratives rely on plot points to deliver the obstacles, sometimes smoothly, otherwise seeming contrived. Nickson’s focus on Harper and his city means that the tension need not result from exterior forces, and that what’s within may raise the stakes. For instance, child snatching means more than a morally repugnant crime to Harper’s corps of detectives, several of whom suffered childhoods full of fear and violence that the authorities did nothing to assuage. Finding the missing children therefore becomes a personal quest, not just part of their job.

I also like how Nickson fuses the political and social issues of the day with the crime, his protagonist, and the Harper family. On every page, you see some aspect of how privilege influences or defines justice, and how each Harper works to change that, even as they remain pessimistic, to varying degrees, about the long-term outcome. And while they agree in sum about the importance of social change, the details get in the way, so that though they love one another, they don’t always get along.

As a consequence, The Molten City, despite its heroic paragon, delivers a satisfying mystery and a vivid portrait of a socially fragmented England.

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

King and Councillor: The Mirror & the Light

18 Monday May 2020

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Review: The Mirror & the Light, by Hilary Mantel
Holt, 2020. 754 pp. $30

Following Anne Boleyn’s beheading in May 1536, chief advisor Thomas Cromwell’s star has never shone brighter in his royal master’s eyes. But Henry VIII, as Cromwell knows better than anyone, is nothing if not changeable, usually for the wrong reasons and in disastrous ways. Not that His Majesty lacks intelligence, learning, or shrewdness. Rather, his childish temper and make-the-earth-stand-still behavior when he expresses a desire threaten to undo good governance or prevent it altogether. So though the king has just gotten rid of an unwanted wife and married Jane Seymour, who promises to be more pliable than her predecessor, if not more fertile, other troubles emerge immediately.

Financial and religious grievances spark a popular rebellion in the northern shires. France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor trade phrases of amity; even a temporary truce among these rivals could leave one or more free to invade England. Henry’s daughter Mary, fiercely loyal to her late Spanish mother, is a rallying point for foreign and domestic enemies seeking to destroy Henry’s recently instituted control over the English church and return primacy to Rome. And though the king is happy with his new bride, she has always been sickly.

But The Mirror & the Light, the third, triumphant volume in the Cromwell trilogy, involves far more than a throne in peril. The history, politics, and backstabbing would provide a feast for any historical novelist, and indeed, many have written about these events. Mantel’s sense of which details matter or her gift for dramatic portrayal set her apart, but there’s more. Cromwell is what a later generation would have called a master psychologist and deep thinker who understands how to protect Henry from himself, and so the councillor’s maneuverings make a fascinating, tension-filled narrative. Cromwell institutes reforms, keeps the king from imploding, and protects the royal reputation at home and abroad, all while convincing Henry that His Majesty has done everything himself.

Cromwell’s singular success derives partly from a concept extraordinary for the time: Offer a rival a reward to do what you want, and you need not hit him or her over the head to show who’s in charge. Fancy that. Cromwell also has a far-sighted vision in which a wise, forbearing monarch, aided by experts chosen for their ability rather than lineage, will govern the nation without having to depend on an uneasy coalition of noblemen who itch to occupy the throne. You can see why the king’s councillor collects enemies.

You can also see how Mantel has thought deeply about power, its use and abuse, and cast the king-councillor relationship as a matter of preserving England. As my favorite novel-writing guru likes to say, your protagonist must have private stakes at risk (what happens to him or her) and, even more importantly, public stakes affecting the world at large (which is why we care). Here, Henry’s and Cromwell’s lives and interests are the private stakes, whereas the public stakes involve a philosophy of life and government essential to the modern age—and, if you will, progress from medieval mayhem.

You can hardly get more compelling than that. Yet Mantel doesn’t play favorites or grant Cromwell the earnestness that mars so many novels about progressive figures. He remains a man of his time, perfectly willing to deploy the executioner’s ax or the power to seize assets, and if he can’t influence Henry’s more odious whims, he bows to expediency and fulfills them to the letter.

Further, this erstwhile blacksmith’s son from Putney lives up to his age (or any other) by allowing ever-increasing power to seduce him, much as he tries to keep himself in check. In a brilliant stroke, Mantel shows how helpless Cromwell felt as a boy, abused by his violent father, learning early to live by his wits. Now, the higher he rises, the more he thinks and speaks about his origins. In a sense, he’s still that struggling, mistrustful, hard-edged boy.

Then, of course, there’s the justifiably famous Mantel prose, which creates authority, mood, and feeling as well as descriptive beauty, as in this passage about Cromwell’s late wife’s possessions:

Her jet rosary beads are curled inside her old velvet purse. There is a cushion cover on which she was working a design, a deer running through foliage. Whether death interrupted her or just dislike of the work, she had left her needle in the cloth.… He has had the small Flanders chest moved in here from next door, and her furred russet gown is laid up in spices, along with her sleeves, her gold coif, her kirtles and bonnets, her amethyst ring, and a ring set with a diamond rose. She could stroll in and get dressed. But you cannot make a wife out of bonnets and sleeves; hold all her rings together, and you are not holding her hand.

When a servant, observing him at this moment, asks whether he’s sad, Cromwell replies—typically—that he can’t be. He’s not allowed; he’s too busy.

Readers of the previous two volumes may be pleased to hear that the author has taken greater care to identify the ubiquitous he that refers throughout to her protagonist. Occasionally, you hit bumps, most notably when Cromwell reminisces to himself, but you can’t stay lost for long. If you count pages, The Mirror & the Light is a long book, but the only trouble I had was making it last. This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher through my work for Historical Novels Review, where this post appeared in shorter, different form.

Insight: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free

06 Monday Apr 2020

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Review: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, by Andrew Miller
Europa, 2019. 410 pp. $19

One rainy night in 1809, a coach pulls up to a vacant country house in Somerset, discharging a badly injured man. Nell, the housekeeper, can’t tell whether it’s John Lacroix, master of the house, for he possesses few recognizable clothes or belongings, and facial hair and wounds obscure his features. However, Nell tends him; and yes, it’s John, an officer of hussars returned from a disastrous campaign in Corunna, Spain, against Napoleon. John slowly recovers from his physical wounds, pleasing Nell and his beloved sister, Lucy, but he’s emotionally out of sorts and refuses to speak of his war. And when a comrade visits to urge him to heal quickly and return to his regiment, John decides to travel instead and settles on Scotland as a destination. He’ll look for an island where he may find solitude and solace, though how he envisions those qualities remains vague, even to himself.

Meanwhile, two men have been sent, unofficially yet on high authority, to hunt him. Why they’ve targeted John is unclear, at first. All you know is that one of his seekers, Calley, is as vicious a brute as any who’s ever drawn breath. On sighting a man he’s never met, for example, he measures up the newcomer to guess whether he’d be his equal in a brawl. It’s Calley against the world, and he’ll come out swinging.

This brilliant, delicately written thriller has to do with a manhunt, obviously, but offers a significant twist. John’s hunting himself too, though he doesn’t know that yet, trying to figure out who he is. His entire life, he’s accepted a given version of himself and can’t see its constraints. Instinctively, he turns away from questions, especially the existential kind. But on his travels, he meets Emily, a freethinking woman who’s going blind, yet sees what he can’t (a lovely touch). As he learns to trust her, he opens himself up to insight and reflection — which is all very well, but two men are trailing him.

Death of Sir John Moore, British commander at Corunna, Spain, from an 1815 aquatint by William Heath, engraved by Thomas Sutherland (courtesy The Martial Achievements of Great Britain and her Allies from 1799-1815, by James Jenkins, via Wikimedia Commons)

To call a thriller “delicate” may sound strange, especially considering that this one, like many, portrays its share of violence. Yet the adjective fits. Miller’s is a subtle hand; he shows just about everything, letting you infer from his beautiful, lucid prose all you need to know while keeping John and Emily less open to themselves than to the reader. That’s extraordinary storytelling. Like a house assembled by artisans who take pride in details that few visitors or even residents would ever notice, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free reflects the author’s dedication to moments small and large, characters major or minor. Nell, the housekeeper, has an inner life, as does John’s sister, Lucy, though neither plays a lengthy role. Such loving attention extends even to characters with whom our protagonist never even interacts:

He would stroll while he was still free to do so, and he set off, walking away from the water and turning into a narrow street of gabled buildings, part of the city’s medieval guts. Through cellar windows he saw backs bent over benches, cutting, sewing. He saw through two windows — the whole body of a house — a garden where men were twisting rope. At the gates of a yard he saw three giants stripped to the waist, their skin blushed blue from some process they were resting from. They watched him as he passed. They looked like men made almost mad by what they did.

Note that this prose, which carries you through what might otherwise seem like a digression, puts you — and John — in the scene actively, conveys a notion of his character and an image of early nineteenth-century English life.

Also impressive, and what few authors succeed at, the villain has his due. Calley’s thoroughly repugnant, yet you glimpse the kind of life he’s had, and why he might have surrendered to his crueler instincts — all of it suggested, never announced.

Andrew Miller has written a splendid story that’s at once a page-turning novel of suspense and an inquiry into what defines freedom. I highly recommend Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, one of the finest novels I’ve read in several years.

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

A Different Kind of Thriller: The Second Sleep

03 Monday Feb 2020

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Review: The Second Sleep, by Robert Harris
Knopf, 2019. 298 pp. $27

In 1468, the bishop of Exeter sends a young priest, Father Christopher Fairfax, to a remote village to bury a parson who has just died in an accident. But when Father Fairfax gets there, he discovers that his late colleague collected antique books that the church and government have condemned as heretical. What’s more, at the funeral, a stranger interrupts the service to declare that the deceased’s death was no accident, nor did it result from witchcraft, as some have said — the accident site is thought to be haunted. To no surprise, more startling facts come Christopher’s way, and what he thought was a trip to perform a sacrament turns into something not at all routine, likely dangerous or compromising.

Shield of the See of Exeter, established in the tenth century (courtesy Hogweard, via Wikimedia Commons)

In The Second Sleep, then, do we have a murder mystery with a Gothic overlay? Is this another example of a trope, Killed by an Ancient Manuscript? Or, maybe, to play the book publicists’ game, this novel is The Name of the Rose meets Middlemarch.

None of the above. We’ve got a splendid, thought-provoking, unusual thriller, by a master on top of his game. I thought Harris slipped some with Munich, but The Second Sleep evokes the quality of Dictator and An Officer and a Spy. As with those novels, here, the pages gently exhale history like a subtle, authoritative scent, “no — and furthermores” pile up effortlessly, and the protagonist undergoes an arduous journey, changing in a way he couldn’t have predicted.

But there’s more, because Harris has bent to the genre to his will. As the narrative gradually makes clear, there’s something odd, not to say out of character, about this fifteenth-century English village. And as you continue to puzzle how this can be — for the details are too precise to be accidental, and Harris is a careful storyteller — you and Father Fairfax have something in common. You’re both due for a significant surprise.

However, as I said, this is a subtle, gradual reveal. Consider this paragraph from the fourth page, one that displays Harris’s fine prose as well as a hint of his intent:

After a while, the road began to ascend a wooded hillside. As it climbed, so it dwindled, until it was little better than a cart track — ridged brown earth covered loosely by stones, shards of soft slate and yellow gravel braided by the running rainwater. From the steep banks on either side rose the scent of wild herbs — lungwort, lemon balm, mustard garlic — while the overhanging branches drooped so low he had to duck and fend them off with his arm, dislodging further showers of fresh cold water that drenched his head and trickled down his sleeve. Something shrieked and flashed emerald in the gloom, and his heart seemed to jump halfway up his throat, even though he realised almost at once that it was nothing more sinister than a parakeet.

Parakeets? How’s that?

In finely wrought coherence of story and character, The Second Sleep takes on themes regarding knowledge, faith, reason, church and state, and human frailty. There’s even a touch of coming-of-age, for, like the best of Harris’s protagonists, Christopher faces severe challenges to his beliefs, character, and principles, and the narrative pushes the envelope at his expense. But the author neither lectures nor spells out anything unless he has to, which leaves room for the reader to think and feel — what a novel should do.

I’d say more about this fine book, but I fear giving too much away. Don’t read the blurbs on the back, though for once, the flap copy is safe. The Second Sleep will both entertain you and make you think.

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

Women Without Men: A Single Thread

09 Monday Dec 2019

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Review: A Single Thread, by Tracy Chevalier
Viking, 2019. 318 pp. $27

Memories of the dead beset the house in Southhampton, England, where Violet Speedwell lives with her widowed mother. It’s 1932, sixteen years since Violet’s older brother was killed in the Great War, but to Mrs. Speedwell, it’s as though he died yesterday. She grieves him and her late husband to such lengths that she has no room in her heart for Violet, nor even for her other son, Tom, though he’s given her two grandchildren. In fact, Mrs. Speedwell is so unfailingly nasty, impossible to please, and entirely self-centered — talking nonstop of how she’s been put upon — that Violet comes to the end of a very long rope. She moves to Winchester, where she rents a room in a boardinghouse and obtains a transfer to a branch of the insurance company where she works as a typist.

Be it known that Violet is thirty-eight, lost her fiancé in the war, and has moved all of twelve miles. She’s one of many Englishwomen who remain “spinsters,” as they are called, with tacit or explicit disdain, the uncounted casualties of war. But her mother has never uttered a word of sympathy or condolence. And to no surprise, when Violet leaves, Mrs. Speedwell throws a fit worthy of King Lear and is not in the least mollified by her daughter’s weekly visits. Said pilgrimages, incidentally, cost train fare that Mum would never think to underwrite, a sacrifice because Violet’s job in Winchester covers the rent and little else. Even people who don’t know her well remark on how thin she looks; she never gets enough to eat. Freedom has its price.

Then too, the other “girls” she works with, younger, less conscientious, or empathic than herself, snub her, except when they want something. They live up to their employer’s prejudices by focusing on when and whom to marry, which means they would leave his freezing, inhospitable office and bequeath a mountain of untyped insurance contracts. Heavens! Just shows you can’t trust a girl.

Looking for a social outlet, Violet volunteers to embroider cushions for Winchester Cathedral. An unusual idea, perhaps, but she loves the cathedral, which puts her in mind of other desires:

Over the centuries others had carved heads into the choir stalls, or sculpted elaborate figures of saints from marble, or designed sturdy, memorable columns and arches, or fitted together colored glass for the windows: all glorious additions to a building whose existence was meant to make you raise your eyes to Heaven to thank God. Violet wanted to do what they had done. She was unlikely to have children now, so if she was to make a mark on the world, she would have to do so in another way. A kneeler was a stupid, tiny gesture, but there it was.

I have to confess that embroidery has never interested me, but Chevalier brings the craft to life, because she invests care in who the broderers are, the egos involved, and the power struggles that inevitably result. These women can be fierce in their loyalties and ostracism, especially if they sense behavior they believe improper. Nevertheless, within this vicious sewing circle, to which Violet recruits others, she finds purpose, friendships, a measure of confidence, and, through proximity, an attraction for a cathedral bellringer, a married man twenty years her senior. Heavens, indeed.

The high altar of Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire, as it appeared in 2014 (by permission of DAVID ILIFF, License: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Chevalier has portrayed both the generosity and small-mindedness of English provincial life to a T. Another “quiet” novel, in other words, in which the author displays her well-known gift for characterization and deftly explores themes of gender roles and sexuality without earnestness. I particularly salute how she depicts women crushing other women, beating them down through social snobbery or selfishness, hurting the very people with whom they could make common cause. Without calling undue attention to the irony, Chevalier shows how Violet’s male boss exploits her, that brother Tom’s condescension and sexism undermine her, or that a man seems bent on stalking her–and still, other women find ways to cut her down, voicing the same attitudes that men do. Through that, Chevalier wants you to recognize how women often attack their sisters or others who represent their own interests, out of fear or envy.

Sometimes, quiet books speak loudly. This is one.

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

Teach Your Children: Grievous

21 Monday Oct 2019

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Review: Grievous, by H. S. Cross
FSG, 2019. 524 pp. $30

John Grieves, a.k.a. Grievous, has never felt so tested, pained, or enraged, despite a life that has given him much heartache. The cause of his current frustration and anguish is a fourteen-year-old student, Gray Riding, whom everyone says will win a scholarship to Oxford one day — unless he’s expelled from Saint Stephen’s, the public (private) school in Yorkshire where John is his housemaster.

Eton College boys wearing hats corresponding to the various rowing teams competing on the Thames, June 1932, photographer unknown (courtesy Bundesarchiv via Wikimedia Commons; Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13350 / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Naturally, he’s the most sensitive housemaster at the school; the others would have caned Riding black and blue until he shaped up or shipped out. But in the year 1931, John understands that though the momentous issues of the day never penetrate Saint Stephen’s gated walls, his struggle with Gray, and how he manages his own strengths and weaknesses in that effort, matter just as much in their own small way. That knowledge, however, generally offers little consolation.

Gray follows an adolescent code of honor typical of Saint Stephen’s, and of the public-school culture: never show feeling, never flinch, never make yourself vulnerable, never betray a friend. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s rebellious schoolboy character, Stalky, the friend he chooses is one determined to break every rule, even those the school hasn’t thought of yet. Mind you, that’s even before John’s thirteen-year-old goddaughter, Cordelia, shows up and smites the boy in a heart that others suppose has been encased in lead.

The genius of this novel resides in the urgency with which Cross imbues John’s attempt to redeem young Riding, and why the boy resists. Didn’t such novels go out with saying goodbye to Mr. Chips? Well, no, as Cross amply proves here. This British public school resembles an infernal machine that stamps its inmates with snobbery, sadism, treachery, and cold-hearted contempt, while hunting down the homoerotic impulses it otherwise does so much to encourage. Any sensitive soul like Gray would howl in rage and pain, but only to himself. His outlet is a Tolkienesque story he writes during class lectures, featuring characters named Valarious and the Elf Rider. Already chained by Kipling’s Stalky, he wonders, during a very risky escapade with his reckless friend, whether stories can help him at all:

The ground was damp, his seat soaked, his teeth coated in licorice. If they could make it back intact in every sense, Gray silently vowed to devote himself to ordinary life and stop confusing it with stories. In stories, you didn’t risk your life and your arse waiting in a field to perform your heroics.… In stories, a coherent hand guided the plot; there was no tumble of make-believe just when you needed to think clearly. Friends in stories never lied to one another.

This passage, which occurs around page 60, marks the point at which, for me, the narrative overcomes obstacles that may deter even a dedicated reader. Cross explains absolutely nothing of Saint Stephen’s myriad intricacies, letting you infer them as you go along, including the schoolboy slang, which reminds me of Anthony Burgess novels in which he invents languages. How maddening. Nevertheless, you have the sense that if you can only hang on, you’ll be rewarded; and so you will. That said, the author need not have refused to clarify more of her transitions, so that I don’t have to ask myself which character’s voice I’m tuning into right now. I could also have done without the long dashes that introduce dialogue instead of quotation marks, an affectation I dislike.

Names matter in this very literary novel. John Grieves is an apt handle for a man who suffered as a conscientious objector in the Great War and who’s never gotten over a disappointment in love. Dr. Sebastian, the headmaster, acts as though he’s been pierced by many arrows, though John, a lifelong friend, actually takes more of them. Most importantly, I think, Gray’s first name is Thomas, and because the two names and their initials appear several times, I can’t help think of Thomas Gray, the eighteenth-century poet whose masterpiece, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” hung in the back of my mind while I was reading. You can apply the poem’s most famous line, “the paths of glory lead but to the grave” to John’s story, and, even more significantly, Gray’s father. And John’s initial motive to help Gray, one that many teachers must feel, appears in this subsequent couplet: “Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,/And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

I wish Cross had given Grievous a more fully resolved ending. But, as a sequel to Wilberforce (whose title derives not from the famous British abolitionist but an older student who tries to liberate Gray from his self-imposed emotional shackles), I expect another volume in the series to bring the story further.

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

Land, Fens, Love: Call Upon the Water

14 Monday Oct 2019

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Review: Call Upon the Water, by Stella Tillyard
Atria, 2019. 269 pp. $26

Summoned to England in 1649 to help oversee the draining and development of wetlands called the Great Level, Jan Brunt, a Dutch engineer, seeks professional advancement. A reserved, taciturn man who outwardly reveals little other than his seriousness of purpose, within, he harbors great passion for the natural world he would master. Sharp-eyed and introspective, Jan follows currents of thought like the watercourses he strives to control, both of which lead him to startling places. Most significantly, his ramblings bring him to Eliza, a reactive, passionate woman of the fens where he measures and surveys. Such people, according to Jan’s informants, are half-savage and of no account. But Eliza and Jan begin an affair that prompts him to question much of what he thought he knew of life.

From this tantalizing premise, Tillyard weaves a narrative at once physical and metaphysical, using the most basic elements, water and land. With an elegant simplicity I admire, Call Upon the Water explores what land and water mean, how will and freedom struggle against natural and human-made obstacles, and what that implies for love between two people of very different worlds and outlooks. Consequently, Tillyard offers a profound look into our essential surroundings, which usually pass unnoticed because they’re constantly within sight. Her novel gradually takes you over, giving you much to ponder, a magic that begins with her deceptively simple prose:

I am a Dutchman and an islander. Water and the sky are safe to me as my mother’s skirts. I know an empty silence and a full silence. Stand still in a full silence and it’s loud with noises. A heron takes flight; he creaks like a ship in sail. Ducks scuffle in the reeds. I hear the beat of wings, the movement of creatures in the grass, water rippling, and the wind that accompanies me everywhere, sighing and roaring. Nature, that seems so quiet, pours out its songs. Even in the darkness there is a velvet purr of sound, of moles underground and field mice above.

Tillyard uses similar pared-down, evocative language to establish the way things work in the 1650s, whether she’s recounting Jan’s surveying procedures, describing the harbor of Nieuw Amsterdam (which figures in the story), or narrating how indentured servants live in North America. These vivid pictures show Tillyard’s grasp of social history, and a deep one it is. What a shame, then, that the jacket flap reduces this rich, complex portrait to a bland recitation that goes out of its way to spoil the story, recounting the action up until about the last thirty pages. If you read Call Upon the Water — and there are good reasons to do so — do not, repeat, not look at the jacket flap.

Now that I’ve said that, I confess I wound up liking the book less than I thought I would. That’s partly because the storytelling jumps around from the Great Level to Nieuw Amsterdam and elsewhere like a restless traveler. It’s as though Tillyard has set her sights on a circular narrative with two beginnings that eventually meet, and she’s invested too much in this device to back away from it. But if we’re meant to be surprised on reaching that long-awaited junction, the resulting aha! doesn’t justify the heavy lifting required to get there. Similarly, when Jan realizes he loves Eliza, a shift in narrative perspective calls undue attention to itself, an affectation particularly unnecessary, since the words already convey how smitten he is. Tillyard doesn’t need artifice to tell this, or any other, story.

Conversely, she seems oddly unwilling to clarify certain aspects of her narrative, perhaps because she fears to show or tell too much, another form of artifice. Still, I want to know why Eliza behaves in certain ways, or what she sees in Jan, worthy though he is; yet, for much of the novel, she’s a shadow figure. When her voice finally appears toward the end, it’s a shock, more so because I don’t find her entirely credible. To cite one example, I like her feminism, which she sums up as, “No man should think because I am a woman and a slighter shaped, that my eyes and my thoughts are smaller than theirs. That is a mistake easy to fall into, as others have done.”

But I don’t know how she comes to this attitude, which surely begs for explanation, especially in 1650. Nor do I understand how Jan and Eliza manage to ignore conflicts inherent in their relationship—not that they have to talk them through, but they should at least recognize that they’re there. All you know is that Eliza claims a preternatural ability to house deep or inconvenient feelings in well-contained, separate compartments. I’m not convinced.

Despite these reservations though, I can recommend Call Upon the Water as a portrayal of life seldom seen, with much to reflect on, told in marvelous prose. For many, that will be more than enough.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher, in return for an honest review.