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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.

What a Tangled Web We Weave: The Poison Bed

10 Monday Jun 2019

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Review: The Poison Bed, by Elizabeth Fremantle
Pegasus, 2019. 403 pp. $26

In 1615, England’s golden couple, Robert and Frances Carr, face trial for murder, and the only question is whether both will swing or only one. At first glance, their predicament sounds highly improbable, given how far they have fallen and how quickly. Why, it seems only yesterday that Frances was a star at the court of King James I, celebrated for her charismatic beauty, wit, and sharp intelligence. Further, as a member of the powerful Howard family, she’s a force one does well not to dismiss. Her husband, who rose from obscurity as the orphan of a minor nobleman to become the king’s lover, trusted advisor, and a rich man, cuts an equally brilliant figure. (To read what Winston Churchill had to say about that as a historian, click here.) Not only that, he rescued Frances from an abusive marriage — not without help, of course, and therein hangs a tale.

As Robert observes, “If people know what you love most, it is a fault line they can exploit to break you.” And success breeds enemies who’d like nothing better than to bring down the blessed and seize their substance. So as the novel begins, and guards sweep the Carrs away to prison, the narrative gradually leads you to wonder who’s behind the arrests, and why. But nothing’s as it seems. Robert and Frances both love wealth and power, and her family — well, they’re venal and vicious as they come — and maybe the golden couple cut corners (or throats) on their way to the top. So who’s guilty, and what did he — or she, or they — do, exactly? You won’t find out until the very end.

Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, as William Larkin painted her in 1615 (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

What a brilliant thriller this is, with enough thrust, counterthrust, and deception to make a Jacobean revenge tragedy. (John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi even makes a cameo appearance as a theatrical offering.) Fremantle tells her story in two directions, like halves of a sliding door that roll from opposite sides until they meet. This is exceptionally hard to bring off, and many such narratives feel forced or shoehorned simply to fulfill a literary conceit. Not here. Told in alternating chapters, titled Her and Him, with rare exceptions — all early on — the storytelling feels coherent, almost seamless, despite shifting verb tenses, from present to past, and back.

The Poison Bed succeeds, in large part, because of the prose, which puts the two main characters so vividly on the page, they’re practically sitting next to you. Take, for example, this passage from before their marriage, when Robert sees Frances for the first time in years:

In the intervening years, she’d become a woman. I watched her with [Prince] Henry, laughing about something, their heads flung back, mouths open, but she stopped suddenly, turning away from him, her gaze locking on me, as if she were a hawk and I a hare. I like to imagine it was the force of my desire that drew her attention. I had never seen such eyes, dark glossy ovals. Just a square of white in each, a reflection of the window behind me, and my own tiny form etched there. She said nothing, just smiled, displaying teeth as neat as a string of pearls.

Rest assured that Frances’s view of Robert in the same scene is equally feral. But Fremantle’s approach goes deeper. She extends such metaphors throughout the book, always taking pains to imbue emotional transitions with physical parallels, often concerning animals. During one conversation with the king, while hunting with falcons, Robert’s keenly aware that James’s bird, much larger than his kestrel, could destroy her if it wished, and there’d be nothing Robert could do. That’s the same position he’s in with his monarch. Similarly, when Frances wonders what to do regarding her husband’s anxieties, she watches a groom calming a skittish horse and gets her answer. I like that approach much more than rhetorical questions, such as, What do I do now?

But if The Poison Bed has a flaw, it’s an unfair shift in which it comes out that not all the narration may be trusted. Having called out Samantha Harvey for that in The Western Wind, I’m bound to mention it here, while trying not to reveal too much. When the change first happens, if you’re like me, you’ll resent it and feel manipulated. But if there’s a saving grace, it’s that the revelation can’t be a complete surprise, given the court atmosphere, the power games the characters have played, and the lies they tell themselves in justification — assuming they even bother. In all that falseness, some readers may be put off; after all, for whom is the reader meant to feel empathy?

Still, maybe that’s what Jacobean court life was like — and even if it wasn’t, The Poison Bed has created that world in fine, plausible detail. Despite the rude surprise, it’s one of the most gripping novels I’ve read in a long time.

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

Trial by Fire: The Ashes of London

22 Monday May 2017

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Review: The Ashes of London, by Andrew Taylor
HarperCollins, 2016. 482 pp. $27

Given its numerical sequence, the year 1666 evokes portents of deviltry in many superstitious people who lived then, so the Great Fire that ravages London can only have a malign explanation. The cause isn’t hard to figure, for within living memory, Oliver Cromwell had a king’s head struck off, an act that still divides the country, and which many assume has invited divine vengeance.

But the heavens have no monopoly on violent expression, for the dead monarch’s spendthrift, wastrel son has regained his throne, fixated on eliminating anyone connected with his father’s execution. Suffice to say that English folk have myriad motives for killing or extorting one another, as if they believed the fire hasn’t gone far enough, and further destruction requires their assistance.

The Great Fire of London, by an unknown painter, presumed seventeenth century (courtesy Museum of London via Wikimedia Commons)

James Marwood, a young clerk of quick wit but poor prospects, must negotiate this political and social maelstrom against terrific odds. In the ashes of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a man’s body has been found, stabbed expertly in the neck, with his thumbs bound together. James must investigate while maintaining his clerkship to an irascible, suspicious newspaper publisher who hobnobs with the great. Naturally, the great take a keen interest in the murder case. Naturally too, their number keeps growing, their interests conflict, and they each take James aside to enlist his aid, bargains in which he has no choice. Not only must he please them to remain employed, what little income he has must support his ailing father, who served five years in prison for his association to the regicide faction, a fact no one has forgotten.

Should James disappoint any of his taskmasters, Marwood père will likely dangle from a rope, and James may follow after him. Further–and what a brilliant stroke–James dislikes his father, a difficult, selfish man who cares only for his apocalyptic visions, and who, in his half-demented state, is liable to wander off, preaching seditious monologues that will bring the king’s soldiers running. So James has absolutely no freedom in which to move; he’s caught between many fires, not just the one burning the city.

Meanwhile, there’s Catherine Lovett, a young woman whose father also belonged to the regicide faction and has spent years on the run. Catherine, or Cat, as she’s called, lives with her aunt, uncle, and lecherous cousin, but through a trusted servant, has been trying to find her father. Like James, she has mixed feelings about her paternal relative, but she’s miserable where she is, and he’s her only surviving family, so she hopes that by reuniting, life will improve for both of them.

Fat chance. As the novel begins, Cat and James cross paths as the flames engulf St. Paul’s, into which she tries to run, and from which he restrains her, receiving a nasty bite on the hand for his pains. But he gets off easy, compared with others who cross her, and though you could say they mostly deserve it, she’s not someone to trifle with. And you can bet that as James penetrates the mystery of the corpse at St. Paul’s, and of others to follow, their paths will converge again.

How that narrative unfolds is one of many pleasures The Ashes of London offers. Another is the prose, which conveys the place and time so completely that you feel you’re in it.

St. Paul’s had given up a number of its dead because of the Fire, for tombs had burst open in the heat and flagstones cracked apart. Some corpses were little more than skeletons. Others were clothed in dried flesh in various stages of decay. . . . The souvenir hunters had been at work, and there were bodies that had lost fingers, toes, hands or feet; one lacked a skull.

Taylor pays particular attention to social class, one way the novel feels alive. Cat, who grew up in a comfortable home and who flees her wealthy aunt and uncle’s house, must become a servant and go into hiding. For the first time, she walks alone in London and becomes a target for any man who cares to touch her or make lewd remarks, which underlines one difference between rich and poor. (That said, when Cat was with her aunt and uncle, she was betrothed to a titled suitor who seemed little better.) Similarly, James’s investigation would be complicated enough without having to bow and scrape before people who don’t condescend to notice his presence unless they wish to bully him–or, conversely, people of lower station than himself who act servile but may be untrustworthy. All this, Taylor handles deftly.

For all that, I wish he’d expunged the clichés that occasionally mar his narrative. (“Cat could not speak. Her happiness was sponged away. Fear made it hard to breathe.”) He’s a much better writer than that, and for the most part–the vastly greater part–it shows in The Ashes of London.

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

Much to Atone For: Crane Pond

05 Monday Dec 2016

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Review: Crane Pond, by Richard Francis
Europa, 2016. 348 pp. $18

This spare, beautiful novel retells a story at once familiar yet full of surprises, that of the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Samuel Sewall, a Boston merchant and a man widely respected, tells how those infamous proceedings occurred; how he became one of the presiding judges; what he was thinking during the testimony and deliberations; what the community thought of them (and him); and how he felt afterward. That premise is itself a bold undertaking, because it implies creating sympathy for a judicial murderer who thought a witch hunt was the right idea.

Unattributed illustration from 1876 depicting the Salem trials (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Unattributed illustration from 1876 depicting the Salem trials (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

 

But Francis goes one better. Not only does he show Sewall at his worst and compel you to consider his protagonist fairly, he begins the narrative years before the Salem trials. There’s no prologue, no portents, no gimmick to placate a reader who might become antsy during such a lengthy backstory. Francis wants you to understand the political, religious, and emotional reasons an honest man like Sewall winds up participating in and endorsing procedures that are flagrantly dishonest. Yet despite what might seem a digression, the tension never flags. Why not?

I think it’s because Francis has entered Sewall’s everyday life, beliefs, and psyche so thoroughly that I can’t help being drawn in. Sewall’s a man who constantly wrestles with his faith. “Trouble and disgrace can come from any source; the world is composed of little things as well as great ones,” he observes. Every conversational misunderstanding, fib, nightmare, unguarded impulse, or declaration of spiritual terror from any of his beloved children sets him off on a soul-searching expedition that will inevitably lead to prayer on bruised knees. Even the bruises prompt reflection:

Would the use of a cushion to ease the discomfort be a popish luxury or simply a practical way of prolonging his devotions?
Also he thinks of his dear wife Hannah, who is somehow able to be both good and sensible at the same time, which ought to be possible for all of us, since God has not sown discord and contradiction in the world–those elements have been placed there by His enemy.

That enemy, Sewall believes, runs rife in his community, as in others everywhere. Massachusetts Bay Colony, though held to be blessed by God, may well have lost its way and fallen under the Devil’s influence. And since Sewall feels himself capable of temptation, whether by lustful impulses toward his pretty sister-in-law or the desire to please men in power, he’s not in the least self-righteous, whereas his judicial colleagues clearly are. Moreover, he’s convinced that the impieties he perceives in himself have brought God’s wrath, which explains, for example, why several of his children have been stillborn. Notice that he never blames Hannah. Rather, he’s quick to tell his wife and children that they have nothing to be afraid of before God, while he spends sleepless nights worrying about his soul.

Consequently, well before the witchcraft trials begin, you know that Sewall does nothing lightly, and that he’s trying his best to do right–if he can only figure out what it is. But aberrations like the witch hunts don’t spring out of nowhere, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the purge takes on a life of its own, and who’s the driving force. That doesn’t excuse what happens, only to illuminate it. And what a horrifying story it is, told so brilliantly that even though you know how it must end, you keep hoping that someone will have the sense to say, What nonsense.

But as the judges hunt down any who object and twist themselves into knots attempting to justify the course they’ve chosen, they silence any voice of reason. Crane Pond thus captures the smug, hypocritical rigidity of fundamentalism at its deadliest, and in that, the novel could not be more timely. With extreme religious factions exerting their muscle in our nation and around the globe, daring to think for oneself or hold a healthy skepticism can be a called a crime, even to deserve a capital penalty.

Like Mary Doria Russell’s Doc, Crane Pond springs from careful research; Francis has written a biography of Sewall, so he knows his ground. But, as I wrote about Doc, it’s one thing to go to the library, and another to weave fact into sturdy fictional fabric. Like Russell, Francis does so with utter confidence, because’s he’s imagined what his characters would say or do in any situation, and, most importantly, why. What’s more, he’s kept his prose style muted and plain, like the churches in which they pray, yet the words spring vividly to life, proving that a gifted author need not display verbal pyrotechnics to create a luminous work of literary fiction.

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

Pawn or King’s Counselor?: The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan

04 Monday Jul 2016

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Review: The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan, by Robert Hough
Anansi, 2015. 342 pp. $16.

Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life, but I didn’t know that such things as chess hustlers existed, nor that they prowled seventeenth-century London’s coffee shops and taverns, looking for fools and their money. But in this well-told, riveting novel, which begins in 1664, young Benny Wand has a difficult choice: Spend twelve years in Newgate for having fleeced the wrong gentleman or be deported to Jamaica. Though Benny has never been to sea and has no apparent skills other than his chess mastery, he instantly chooses the New World, for he rightly expects a dozen years behind bars will be a death sentence by slow torture.

Alexandre Exquemuelin's 1707 portrait of Henry Morgan, painted almost twenty years after the subject's death (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Alexandre Exquemelin’s 1707 portrait of Henry Morgan, done almost twenty years after the subject’s death (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

But on arrival in Port Royal, called “the wickedest city on earth,” he quickly realizes that his prospects are dim indeed. An acre of transported criminals like himself crowds a beach, living on rum and roast turtle, with no hope except the rumored reappearance of Henry Morgan, a privateer licensed by the British Crown. Morgan’s reputation for daring, and his ability to liberate Spanish gold from its former owners have the societal castoffs excited, and no wonder. Not only is it possible for men who wouldn’t know sky from ocean to become rich virtually overnight, but, as Benny learns when the fabled captain shows up, his leader has no use for the social barriers that have kept his new crewmen down all their lives. In return for obedience, Morgan offers something extraordinary–advancement based on merit.

Benny soon profits thereby, for Morgan fancies himself a chess player and, hearing of Benny’s prowess, invites him to his quarters for a game. What a heady experience for a young man who’s never come closer to power than being on the wrong side of a judge’s bench. Benny revels in their contests and in Morgan’s free admission that his deck swab’s skill easily surpasses his own, the first praise he’s ever received. What’s more, he asks Benny his secret, only to be told there is none. Victory, he explains, depends on seeing what’s in front of you, what might be lurking just out of sight, and in planning for both.

Naturally, Morgan recognizes the inherent military wisdom in Benny’s approach, and you won’t be surprised to hear that, little by little, the captain relies on him for advice in the field. However, though Morgan listens, what always eludes him is Benny’s gift at anticipating what the enemy will do next. The adventures make for tense reading, but there’s much more here. The relationship between the two men explores the nature of power (and how it corrupts); the fury unleashed in men whom society has humiliated; and how money influences both.

For instance, when Benny and his mates are filling their pockets during a successful raid, he feels vindicated:

Sheer glory this was. Every step through that steaming and fearsome jungle had been worth it, for with each pilfered necklace and pocketed earring I was getting even with all those who’d made my life miserable in England. I’m talking about unforgiving landlords and brutal schoolteachers and truncheon-swinging police and priests with fat roaming hands. Sod the world was running through my head while we emptied one house after another, and it was intoxicating as Kill Devil [a potent alcoholic drink].

The problem with intoxication, however, is that it can possess you, and Benny’s no exception. Having noticed Morgan’s growing corruption, he worries about his own, and whether he’s become his captain’s creature, caught up in another man’s game. Is Benny a pawn, or is he the man who can save Morgan from himself?

Hough’s narrative moves swiftly but seldom compresses an emotional turning point. I like the vivid prose, which, in Benny’s salty, worldly voice, makes his character come alive. Morgan comes through too, though less clearly, perhaps the drawback of this particular first-person approach. None of the other characters seems fully fledged, but the key relationship is so complex and delivers so much that this matters less than it might otherwise. At times, I wondered whether Benny’s language or thought process sounded too modern, but that too shouldn’t stop anyone from reading this entertaining, thought-provoking novel.

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

An Existential Warrior: Sword of Honor

23 Monday Nov 2015

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Review: Sword of Honor, by David Kirk
Doubleday, 2015. 441 pp. $27

Musashi Miyamoto, the young protagonist of this absorbing, far-ranging novel (and a real seventeenth-century figure), walks away after the battle of Sekigahara, determined to live. For this revolutionary decision, which the samurai code calls the height of dishonor, Musashi becomes an outlaw.

Jacket design by Michael J. Windsor for Doubleday.

Jacket design by Michael J. Windsor for Doubleday.

Three transgressions make the young man’s life forfeit. First, he fought for a lord on the losing side, for which Musashi should have committed seppuku, ritual suicide. However, he’s long detested that custom and goes into hiding instead. Second, he’s accused of having insulted a warrior from a powerful clan whom he slew in single combat, a charge he denies, to no avail. Thirdly, and most significantly, he announces to all and sundry that seppuku is criminal nonsense; that the samurai code, known to initiates as “the Way,” is morally false; and that any man who kills for a cause other than his own–as when a lord commands him to–is a coward. Not content with that, Musashi takes these views on the road, trying to prevent seppuku when he happens across it, and fending off the samurai despatched to kill him.

In other hands, perhaps, this arresting premise would merely provide excuses for grisly combat, of which there’s no shortage here, or an adventure story that makes the pages turn rapidly, as these do. But Kirk has much bigger psychological, political, and moral game in mind, and his epic sweep, focus on justice, and using a specific case to portray an entire society remind me of Kurosawa films like Rashomon or Seven Samurai. Throughout the novel, characters constantly challenge themselves and others to define what the purpose of violence is, and what an individual person is to make of that.

As a fellow fugitive from the Way haltingly observes:

What difference, what individual difference, did you and I make at Sekigahara? . . . Yet our army lost, and so we two must bear the shame. To be hated. What if our army had won? We would be loved, and yet we would have had the exact same effect upon the victory. Would have had . . . what we had before. But magnified. And what would we have done to earn it? Nothing. No. No. It is as though we . . . as though human beings are . . . buckets or, or, or . . . vessels.

Yet nothing’s so simple. Musashi sees no other choice–indeed, he seeks no other–than to prove by the sword that the Way is bankrupt. The contradiction is obvious, but not to Musashi, who believes he’s honest because he fights only for himself and his ideals. He assumes that each martial victory will convince other samurai to abandon the Way, and he’s astounded when they respond by trying to attack him.

But there’s more. The samurai sent to kill him, Akiyama, is himself an outcast, and Kirk exploits that, leading Akiyama to question why he’s been sent on this mission, and what, precisely, is the moral threat that his quarry represents. Along the way, Musashi lands with a blind woman and a young girl who challenge his assumptions, and among whom he becomes a different person from the raging swordsman who enjoys the combat at which he’s preternaturally gifted.

Is there yet more? Yes, there is. Musashi’s quest brings him to Kyoto, where an uneasy peace simmers with conflict. The Tokugawa Shogunate, the victors of Sekigahara, have moved the capital to Edo (modern-day Tokyo) and left behind a military governor. Many people in Kyoto resent the Tokugawa for that, perhaps none more than the Yoshioka, a famous samurai school. It’s their champion whom Musashi allegedly insulted at the battle, and they’re a political power in the city. Staying out of trouble is therefore a full-time job for Musashi, and he’s no good at it.

Sword of Honor follows Child of Vengeance, which I reviewed December 8, 2014. Each stands on its own, though the precursor shows how Musashi has always had a dual nature, with healing impulses as well as violent ones. Sword of Honor is a deeper, more proficient novel, though, and I’m glad to see that Kirk has taken to showing his characters’ emotions more often than telling them, a flaw that marred the previous book at times. I could have done with fewer, less grisly battle scenes, but none seemed gratuitous, and there’s no denying that the samurai world, as with any knightly class, was based on violence.

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

Hunting Dissidents, and the Truth: The Seeker

10 Monday Aug 2015

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Review: The Seeker, by S. G. MacLean
Quercus (UK), 2015. 398 pp. £14

A politician once said of Germany that it took half the country to control the other half (and he was speaking around 1900, well before either world war). I get the same chilling impression of midseventeenth-century London from The Seeker, a mystery that involves murder, royalist conspiracies, and the terror of speaking one’s mind.

Cover by Henry Steadman (Courtesy Quercus Books, UK).

Cover by Henry Steadman (Courtesy Quercus Books, UK).

It’s 1654, and after a fractious, savage civil war, Oliver Cromwell has seized power, employing a vast, pervasive spy network to root out anything he considers subversive. His most ubiquitous, feared agent is Damian Seeker, who seems to know whatever you shouldn’t have done, when, and with whom. So if you’ve spoken against the Lord Protector Cromwell’s joyless, repressive regime; longed for the Stuart monarchy to return; written a poem extolling liberty; or merely sat in the same room as someone who’s done any of these, when The Seeker comes for you–and he will–don’t bother to deny a thing. It’s better not to.

However, what makes Seeker more than an extraordinarily energetic, gifted goon is a passion for truth, no matter where it leads. Consequently, when an assassin fells John Winter, a soldier who enjoyed the Lord Protector’s favor and sat in his inner council, it’s more than a security breach. It’s also a murder case, and finding the killer matters, not only because he could strike again, but–well, because. And from the first, Seeker doubts that Elias Ellingworth is the killer, even if he was discovered near Winter’s body, holding the bloody knife, and even if he’s penned seditious pamphlets.

To find the real murderer, Seeker must follow a sinuous trail that quickly branches in several directions, all of which appear to threaten the regime. Coffee houses, the latest fad in London, are the perfect breeding ground for conspiracy, though they’re also places for free conversation on any topic under the sun. I like how MacLean plays this theme. Cromwell’s followers pretend that they have swept away a tyranny based on birth and replaced it with a temperate government that values merit. But, as Ellingworth insists, the Lord Protector has betrayed the democracy he once professed and instituted a tyranny of his own. That Seeker, a commoner of humble origins, hunts down dissidents to uphold an unjust, autocratic ruler lends the conflict a fitting irony.

Little is known about Seeker’s origins, though, for the man never talks about himself or his feelings, if he even has any. He’s all work. However, Maria Ellingworth, the imprisoned suspect’s sister, interests him, and I doubt I’m giving anything away by saying that the young woman’s naive honesty and directness slowly seep through his defenses. It’s obvious from the get-go, though anything but obvious how it will end.

That’s The Seeker’s greatest strength, I think. Except for a scene or two recounted out of order to withhold a secret, the novel is exceptionally well plotted, no mean trick, given the sheer number of characters. Further, MacLean excels at hiding whether certain key characters are friends or foes, sometimes up until the end. I could have done without a cliché action or two, as when Seeker holds off his men to battle a traitor in single combat, but that’s a minor quibble. I love the period details, which flow seamlessly through the narrative and lend atmosphere. The language does slip occasionally, though; I’m certain no seventeenth-century Englishman would have ever used the phrase liaise with.

Seeker’s also pretty thin as a character, yet he’s the deepest of the lot. Late in the novel–too late, I think–we’re told (not shown) why he’s so loyal to Cromwell, and why he loves order above all. But I’m not entirely persuaded, and I think it would have taken little to establish this in small ways throughout the narrative. Seeker has potential–why is he so fierce, and why does truth matter to him?–but this book doesn’t exploit his inner conflicts. Maybe in future installments, MacLean will show more of him and her other characters.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed The Seeker. In the interest of full reporting, let me add that the novel won the 2015 Crime Writers’ Association Endeavour Dagger for Historical Fiction.

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

Annotating Others’ Lives: The Minimalist

06 Monday Jul 2015

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Review: The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton
HarperCollins, 2014. 400 pp. $27

Eighteen-year-old Petronella Oortman has left her small Dutch town for Amsterdam and marriage to a wealthy, much older businessman she has barely met. Nella, as she’s called, could have done much worse. She comes from an old, respected family, but her father has gone bankrupt, and, considering that women have no power to make their own lives, a good marriage is all Nella can hope for. Since Johannes Brandt ranks among the merchant princes of Amsterdam, the world capital of trade in the late seventeenth century, she has instantly achieved a status to be envied.

Petronella Oortman's doll's house, anonymous craftsman, 1686-1710. Petronella and her husband, Johannes, were real historical figures (Courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house, anonymous craftsman, 1686-1710. Petronella and her husband, Johannes, were real historical figures (Courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

But that’s not how she feels entering her new home. Her husband isn’t even there to greet her, and when he does show up, he seems indifferent. Johannes doesn’t even assert his conjugal rights, about which Nella has mixed feelings. She longs for affection and warmth, but her mother has lectured her about the pains and discomforts of marriage, to be dutifully endured, because that’s a woman’s role. However, it’s not just Johannes who slights her. Nella’s sister-in-law, Marin, finds fault with everything the bride says or does, as if she resents her brother marrying, especially that one.

Yet there’s much more to Marin, a woman who keeps maps, souvenirs from the Far East, and business ledgers in her bedroom, and treats her brother as if he were a greenhorn at trade.

Marin starts to shift in Nella’s mind. From her drab black clothes, Marin rises like a phoenix, enveloped in her nutmeg scent–no lily for her, no floral nicety. Covered in the symbols of the city, Marin is a daughter of its power–she is a secret surveyor of maps, an annotator of specimens–an annotator of something else as well, not so easy to slot into a category.

Indeed, Marin isn’t the only manipulator in Nella’s life. Johannes’s wedding gift is a miniature house, inlaid with pewter and tortoise shell, a precise replica of the one they live in. At first, the gift bewilders and angers Nella. By giving her a doll’s house, is Johannes making a not-so-veiled allusion to her youth and the difference between their ages? But to amuse herself (she’s got little else to do), she orders furnishings for the gift house from a miniaturist, who sends her more than she’s ordered, all exact renderings of the inhabitants, dogs included, and the furniture. Each delivery contains a pithy aphorism or exhortation, riddles that leave Nella perplexed.

Only an insider could have created these things with such accuracy. What’s more, as events progress, and Johannes’s business empire shows severe cracks, the miniatures seem to foretell a bleak future, if not ordain it. Who’s watching or pulling the strings?

Normally, I shy away from fiction in which magic plays too great a role, especially as a deus ex machina. But to Burton, magic’s a tool, not a toy, and neither she nor her characters are saying, “Gee whiz, look what I can do!” Rather, The Miniaturist is about freedom, or lack of it, and the willingness to choose a way of life despite what others may think. Burton does an excellent job conveying the social policing through which neighbor watches (and reports on) neighbor, branding ordinary desires as sinful and stamping out individuality. The very creation of a miniature house inlaid with tortoise shell creates tension between a longing for beauty (and to show off) and fear of what others might say, perhaps from jealousy.

In this constrained environment, people are themselves miniatures, closeted in small moral and emotional spaces–invisible prisons, as Johannes calls them. There are secrets within secrets, lies within lies. Through their gradual revelation, Burton uncovers truths about how the world works, especially for women, and what few choices they have. That powerlessness is what Nella and Marin struggle against–Johannes too–and their engrossing story keeps the pages turning.

That said, I wish The Miniaturist went deeper, in two respects. Though I like the way Burton portrays the central characters, with internal conflicts and multiple layers, the town hypocrites, who make briefer appearances, could have worn capital H’s on their clothes. Also, and probably related, the religion feels put on, as if nobody in Amsterdam actually believed that stuff, when of course, they did.

In fact, by staying away from the religious core of Dutch life, I think Burton misses a great opportunity. The entire question of free will is central to Calvinist thought, yet nobody in the novel wrestles with it, except to worry that the civil authorities will punish them. Divine retribution seems far away, and yet in that time and place, it was a real concept.

Still, I enjoyed The Miniaturist and think it deserves its popularity.

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

What You Will: The Tutor

15 Monday Jun 2015

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Review: The Tutor, by Andrea Chapin
Riverhead, 2015. 356 pp. $28

A twenty-six-year-old actor named Will Shakespeare entertains a crowd of minor nobility at a Lancashire estate in 1590. Master Shakespeare has as yet written nothing to deserve the fame or fortune he confidently expects, and his most evident talents are dressing above his station and seducing scullery maids. The occasion is St. Crispin’s Day, which means that Shakespeare-loving readers know what to expect.

William Shakespeare, 1610 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

William Shakespeare, 1610 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Sure enough, instead of verse honoring the saint, the bold, foppish visitor launches into speeches about a martial king who spouts phrases like “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” The performance enthralls everyone, even the French guests, though they realize that Shakespeare is recalling Henry V’s crushing victory over their forebears at Agincourt.

I call this an “Oh, Susannah!” moment because, when I was little, I saw a Hollywood movie about Stephen Foster, in which the composer no sooner sings his masterpiece than the world taps its collective foot. To be fair, Chapin handles the scene with bravura, and I must confess, I’m the last person to criticize, for I owe my name to Henry V and grew up hearing those speeches around the house. Even so, it’s a tad hokey.

However, the real reason to read The Tutor is to appreciate how Chapin depicts the young genius and his disturbing effect on others, especially women. The key woman here is Katharine de L’Isle, a beautiful, extremely literate widow of thirty-one, a poor relation to the noble family that has taken her in since she was orphaned at a young age. Will tutors the children of the manor, but he casts his eyes elsewhere, quickly finding Katharine, or Kate, as he insists on calling her. From the first, sparks fly in repartee worthy of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. To keep him at arm’s length, she corrects the verses he shows her, questioning his word choices and lambasting his style with a sure hand, which piques his vanity but drives him to improve. But she’s already lost, and she knows it. Worse, the poem he’s wrestling with is Venus and Adonis.

What a brilliant stroke: The two play out the mythical characters as if the long, drawn-out seduction were their own. Everything Kate’s heard and seen should tell her that Will’s using her, to cast her aside when he pleases. He’s lecherous, cruel, a social climber, an actor who spins lies like truth and demands loyalty while giving none. But Will’s more charismatic and exciting than anyone Kate has ever met, and she, who has spent her life loving words, hears them in a new way. For once–hallelujah!–I’ve read a convincing portrayal of a desperate, obsessive love.

Chapin knows her literary ground and understands the poetry, while her shrewd characterization of a jealous man who lives a double sexual standard perhaps prefigures such plays as Much Ado, Othello, or Measure for Measure. (When Will calls Kate a headstrong woman who deserves her solitary widowhood, it’s hard not to think of Taming of the Shrew; and when three accused witches pass through, their presence recalls Macbeth.)

But the novel would be better minus excess baggage. Kate’s household is Catholic, suffering persecution under Queen Elizabeth’s repressive hand, and though that suits the time, I think it unbalances The Tutor. The religious war brings about convenient exits and entrances, but several feel forced, as do a few of the many deaths. The way Chapin portrays this dysfunctional family slides into melodrama at moments.

Kate feels too good to be true, especially for her time–her extraordinary intellectual gifts, the way she risks her reputation without a qualm (or, for that matter, correction), her acceptance of a male cousin’s homosexuality, the way she treats her maid almost like a friend. I can accept one or two of these, but all? I’m not sure. The language, though almost always suitable and lovely indeed, still lapses into the modern, as when the male cousin talks like a therapist, or when random idioms or words like paranoia or spymaster appear.

All that aside, though, The Tutor offers many pleasures, and I expect that readers who love Shakespeare without worshiping him will enjoy it, as I did.

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

Striving After Wind: Merivel

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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Review: Merivel: A Man of His Time, by Rose Tremain
Norton, 2012. 373 pp. $27

In his own words, Sir Robert Merivel is “the son of a humble Glovemaker from Vauxhall, and I had prospered in life only because I had a talent to amuse the King of England.” But if Merivel, as even his lovers call him, owes his success to the self-deprecating wit with which he makes Charles II laugh, no reader will hold that against him. Indeed, Merivel appeared in Restoration, where he received such good notices that Tremain brought him back for an encore.

King Charles II, by John Michael Wright or studio (National Portrait Gallery, London, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the US.)

King Charles II, by John Michael Wright or studio (National Portrait Gallery, London, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the US.)

Merivel’s appeal lies partly in adventures that go awry, often in funny ways, so that he’s a picaresque figure, a sadder-but-wiser, seventeenth-century Tom Jones facing up to late middle age. Merivel wonders whether he’s been a good father, a good master to his servants, and the king’s friend or his slave. To ponder these, he sets out for Louis XIV’s court at Versailles, probably the worst place on earth for introspection. If this sounds thin as a premise, consider what King Charles says: “All is in the story, Merivel. No artefact can come to its full significance without the telling of the tale.”

And an engaging tale it is, often in ways I didn’t expect. Merivel’s a seventeenth-century thinker who believes in the then-infant scientific method, which means he’s curious about everything and willing to ask questions. An atheist in all but name, he has plainly read Ecclesiastes, which happens to be my favorite book in the Bible (and to which Tremain has put able use). Merivel practically quotes that perceptive text on the folly of placing all desires in great undertakings, which, like life, are transitory:

But such are our days. Such are the days and times of Every Man and, no matter how hard we work and strive, we can never know when something shall be given to us and when it will be taken away.

However, Merivel has trouble living up to this creed and being satisfied with what he has. He has a sweet, loving daughter, to whom he’s very close; his profession as a doctor, which he practices with a clarity and honesty seldom seen among his colleagues; and the chance at a love more profound and satisfying than any he’s ever experienced. But whether he can be content with these most human of riches forms the core of the novel. And since, as Ecclesiastes says, there’s nothing new under the sun, Merivel’s story is as old, and yet as topical, as can be.

Likewise, I think that artifice, foppery, and pretension plague our age much as they did Merivel’s, so he seems familiar there as well. He wrestles mightily with his worst tendencies, which include self-pity, impulsiveness, and skirt-chasing. Yet if he often fails to master them, he has a good heart and can draw people to him simply by being himself. Much of this great gift comes from his empathy for self-delusion, and his grasp of the particularly sharp pain that comes when you think you’ve “held Wonder in your hands,” as the king puts it, only to lose it when knowledge strips the illusion away. This is one quality that makes Merivel such good company.

Another is the prose, which captures the time and place. Tremain gives you the seventeenth century, unvarnished, filthy, and invigorating, whether she’s describing the lice in the wig or the sublime country air or the witty conversation of intelligent people trying to grasp the science of their age. I’ve never read a description of Versailles like hers, both funny and appalling, or the grisly aspects of hospitals or inns, with quite that edge. Finally, she’s drawn a delicate, often moving portrait of a friendship between king and commoner, which ends in just the way it should–I dare not say more.

Merivel is the first novel of Tremain’s I’ve ever read. It won’t be the last.

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