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Heresies: The King at the Edge of the World

28 Monday Dec 2020

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Review: The King at the Edge of the World, by Arthur Phillips
Random House, 2020. 265 pp. $27

In 1591, Mahmoud Ezzedine lives a fulfilling life. As court physician to the Sultan Murad in Constantinople, Mahmoud is highly respected, and his general practice gives him a deserved reputation as a skilled, empathic healer. He has a comfortable house, a beautiful, loving wife, and a son whom he dotes on. Truly, Allah has blessed him.

But a diplomatic mission to London, of all places, is setting forth, and Mahmoud, who’d rather not go anywhere, is dragged along. He has little choice, really, for Murad the Great’s command is law. However, the official who gives the Caliph of Caliphs the idea to send the doctor with the diplomats lusts after Mahmoud’s wife. As a kind, honest person who prefers directness to invasion or suggestion, Mahmoud’s no match for that particular courtier, or any other, for that matter. And you just know, even if you haven’t read the jacket flap — don’t — that the good doctor will make an innocent mistake, for which he’ll pay dearly.

If you’re like me and get upset when you read about decent people suffering for their virtues while the evil triumph, The King at the Edge of the World will make you ache. For that reason, short as the novel is, and recounting as riveting a story as you could want, the threats to our hero kept me from plowing through. Do read the book, though — but not, repeat, the jacket flap, about as potent a spoiler as you’ll ever find.

Sultan Murad III (d. 1595) by an unknown Spanish artist (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain). As his first act upon accession to the throne, Murad had his five younger brothers strangled.

Phillips excels at re-creating historical attitudes, prejudices, and ways of reasoning. Mahmoud’s adventures in England also resemble a thriller’s in their ever-increasing intensity; combined, these elements make a strong, thought-provoking narrative. At its center, Phillips puts the England riven by conflict between Protestant and Catholic and imagines how a Muslim would view that. It will be recalled that Elizabethan politics and diplomacy revolved around who prayed where, and in what way, and how many people died, often in hideous fashion, for doing it wrong or attempting to make everyone else do it their way. Hard to imagine that all this idiocy happened during an age blessed with cultural triumph — and Mahmoud, the observant Muslim, remains unimpressed:

He was there, he reminded himself, to be a figure of strength and confidence in the face of endless strangeness, of threats to health and mental stamina. He must fortify the bodies of the embassy’s men (himself included) and fortify their minds against all that was wrong here: the half-naked women, the food, the fog, the filth, the intoxicating drink, the intellectual softness, the islanders’ several varieties of devoted and violent false faith.

The physician, if he weren’t a member of a diplomatic mission, would be called a heretic and a savage to his face (as some English folk manage to imply even as they think they’re being polite). But who’s the person who embodies religious virtue, and who are the real heretics? Who’s the savage, and who’s the civilized, cultured man? This is how Phillips casts the sceptered isle in its glory. To be sure, he also creates an English narrator who insists that Catholic plots against the realm do exist and, if not crushed, would cause widespread bloodshed. Since he’s utterly credible, the question then becomes how to square the civilization and the savagery; and of course, there is no real answer.

My only objections to this novel — have I mentioned the too-revealing jacket flap? — concern Mahmoud’s role as a political actor. How could such a guileless innocent occupy any court position, let alone that of a physician, with the power to kill as well as heal? After all, history records how Ottoman crown princes, on attaining the throne, might have their brothers strangled with a silken cord, as Murad did. Only the politically adept would survive such an atmosphere, or even be invited into it.

Similarly, as the narrative progresses, Mahmoud learns a thing or two about survival — not easily, mind you, and requiring excruciating mental gymnastics, which Phillips ably portrays. For that reason I don’t entirely accept the end, which the author fudges somewhat, unwelcome in itself.

Nevertheless, I invite you to read The King at the Edge of the World and be amazed at Mahmoud’s ingenuity — and his creator’s.

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

Saving the Queen from Herself: Lamentation

27 Monday Jul 2020

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Review: Lamentation, by C. J. Sansom
Mulholland/Little, Brown, 2015. 656 pp. $19

In summer 1546, Henry VIII’s much-abused, overindulged body begins to fail, and the London court vultures jostle for a perch from which to become regent for the next king, the boy Prince Edward. Religious conflict will likely determine who triumphs in this struggle, and those deemed heretics pay with their lives, often at the stake. In this combustible atmosphere, Queen Catherine, who’d like to be regent for her stepson, has made a potentially fatal blunder. In secret, without telling Henry, she has written a religious confession, Lamentation of a Sinner, which wouldn’t pass theological muster, and which has been stolen.

Very likely, the thief acted on behalf of a powerful lord who desires her downfall, and there are many of those. Pick your preferred form of treason: disloyalty to the throne, or heresy? Either crime could send Catherine to the block, just like two of her predecessors, whose jewels and clothes she wears. And despite Henry’s ill health, his mind’s still sharp, as are his executioners’ axes.

Queen Catherine Parr (1512-1548), copy of a contemporary portrait after Master John, painted sometime between 1600 and 1770 (courtesy UK National Trust, at Seaton Delaval Hall, Northumberland, on loan from Lord Hastings; via Wikimedia Commons)

Through her uncle, Lord Parr, she summons Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer who has helped her before with his superior skills at detection and reasoning. A commoner, a hunchback, and more of a free-thinker than he reveals to any but his intimates, Matthew must exercise the greatest caution around ruthless, ambitious courtiers jealous of their prerogatives, who despise him for his looks, birth, and possible heresy.

Accusations of heresy have become an effective, if two-edged, political weapon, often based on such concepts as whether Christ’s blood and flesh appear in fact at communion or symbolically. Given the loose, abstract nature of the argument, any utterance may be (mis)construed according to the hearer’s wishes or prejudices, one way to dispose of an enemy. Further complicating Matthew’s investigation, printers known for or suspected of heretical thinking have been murdered. Did they have the queen’s manuscript? And if so, do the killers possess it now? Do they mean to publish it and destroy the queen that way, or do they have other plans?

Sansom skillfully intertwines these mysteries with the politics of the day. It takes getting used to the notion that anyone would persecute anyone else over such fine distinctions of ritual and believe themselves righteous in doing so. But before long, you understand the mindset that makes this possible, because the social attitudes in this book feel internal to the characters, not merely slipped into their mouths.

To back off this extraordinary novel a second, I’m irritated when I tell people I write historical fiction, and all they focus on is the research I must have to do, as if that were the hard, original part. What about the supreme difficulties of crafting a credible, compelling narrative, in words nobody else has used in exactly that way, and which must pull the reader in on every page? So when I hear such remarks, I’m tempted to reply that anyone can go to the library.

Well, Sansom is the library. He knows every building in sixteenth-century London: which ones stood next to it, what it looked like, who built it, with what materials, who owned it, and how they came by it. That’s just for starters; you see the lords strut, the hangers-on fawn, the supplicants grovel for a sinecure with the great. Among the common folk, you see beggars, lawyers, peddlers, merchants, artisans — you name it. Consider this paragraph describing Matthew’s visit to part of the palace at Whitehall:

He led me to a group of half a dozen richly dressed ladies playing cards at a table in a large window-bay, and we bowed to them. All were expensively made-up, their faces white with ceruse, red spots on their cheeks. All wore silken farthingales, the fronts open to show the brightly embroidered foreparts and huge detachable sleeves, richly embroidered in contrasting colors. . . . A spaniel wandered around, hoping for scraps. . . .

Such knowledge of detail, almost always wielded with impressive dexterity, conveys a dazzlingly rich portrait of Tudor London. To be sure, Sansom occasionally resorts to information dumps, and he sometimes repeats phrases or facts. But in a narrative as long as this one, with as many instances of “no — and furthermore” as I can count, all revolving around Byzantine power struggles, a reminder of who’s in whose camp doing what can be helpful. And talk about pulling the reader in on every page; Lamentation is a mesmerizing story.

The characters appeal to me less. Matthew, aside from his penchant for setting the record straight, which invariably costs his friends, has no great flaw that I can see. Most characters, though rendered in physical vividness, seem ruled by a single trait, or at most, two. But the excellent storytelling and the never-flagging sense of the physical involve you, and you’ll keep guessing the outcome until the end.

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.

What a Mystery Is Man: The Phoenix of Florence

22 Monday Jul 2019

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Review: The Phoenix of Florence, by Philip Kazan
Allison Camp; Busby, 2019. 349 pp. 15£

Onorio Celavini, one of sixteenth-century Florence’s two police inspectors (to use a broad term), has a typical case on his hands, or so it seems. Near a bridge, a man lies dead, the apparent victim of a gang attack, for he’s taken two of his assailants with him. Known as a seducer of other men’s wives, he’s unmourned in many circles, but as a wealthy, powerful aristocrat, his death matters to officialdom — more so when a well-born woman dies soon afterward, the crimes apparently connected.

Celavini has heard this all before and is sick of it; whatever a man has done, a woman winds up paying for it. But that’s life, in Florence or elsewhere, and orders are orders — solve this case, and quickly. So he bends his considerable skills to the investigation, aided by an enviable coolness in the face of danger, product of his years as a mercenary, and his knowledge of Tuscany and its politics, lessons that any successful soldier imbibes in the field.

Giovanni Bellini’s portrait of a condittiero, or mercenary captain, late fifteenth century (courtesy Samuel H. Kress Collection at the National Gallery, Washington DC, via Wikimedia Commons)

However, Celavini gets a surprise when he hears a familiar name associated with the crime, one he knew in his youth but had thought extinct. That brings these murders close to home. But though the investigator’s personal involvement is an old device, it’s different here. Unlike most mysteries, the real puzzle is Celavini himself, and The Phoenix of Florence tells a tale more of revenge than of who done it, more Count of Monte Cristo than Sherlock Holmes.

Don’t let that stop you, and don’t be surprised when the criminal investigation leaves off, and a long section of Celavini’s past takes over — for more than half the book. Kazan is less interested in who killed whom than in why men and women are the way they are, the greatest mystery there is. And I strongly suggest that if you let yourself follow his lead, you will be richly rewarded. Human nature, venal or honest, evil or benign, comes into full view, but the crux of the novel, I think, has to do with strength, weakness, and who perceives them, that perception often having deeper consequences than it should. What Celavini does with this provides both a satisfying story and a fitting ending.

It’s a brave author who departs for two hundred pages from the main narrative, and my regular readers may recall that I faulted Daniel Mason in The Winter Soldier for a much shorter digression. But much as I admire that novel and its author, he had a different purpose. Celavini’s past is the main story. I’ll say that it’s rather violent, so be warned, but I dare give nothing else away — The Phoenix of Florence tests this reviewer’s mettle — so I hope you trust me by now.

One way Kazan grips you, digression or not, is the prose. So many historical novels have been set in Florence (or Venice) that they’re practically a trope by now. But try this:

It was stiflingly hot, and the miasma of the dyeworks and the river mud had finally managed to creep into the house. The stench curled itself around me, ripe with rot and sharp with minerals, as clinging and insistent as the memories that wandered through the empty rooms, whispering in my ears. My nightshirt felt like a lead sheet and itched. When I sat down, the wood of the chair seemed to suck my skin. I went out into the courtyard, but the air was thicker there, and a rat was fidgeting around in the dry fronds of the date palm. At last I lay down on the flagstones in the kitchen and floated in a twilight where the cold stone brought relief but was painful as well; however, I couldn’t have one without the other.

I wish I could say more, but I shouldn’t. Read The Phoenix of Florence and be amazed.

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

The Old Lie: The Fifth Servant

12 Monday Feb 2018

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Review: The Fifth Servant, by Kenneth Wishnia
Morrow, 2010. 387 pp. $26

On Good Friday, a young girl in Prague is found murdered, her throat cut. Since the year is 1592, suspicion automatically falls on the Jews, and since that evening also marks the start of Passover, why, that settles it. Whoever killed her must have used her blood to bake matzoh. Never mind that by Jewish law, blood is ritually impure, literally untouchable, or that matzoh must be made of flour and water. The infamous blood libel has had a long, sturdy life, and in late sixteenth-century Prague, just about every Christian believes in it implicitly.

In taking this ancient lie as its premise, The Fifth Servant pushes its characters (and the reader) to look closely at bigotry and hatred while also inviting laughter. To explain that, I could say that oppressed people need humor to survive, and that Jewish humor, especially of the ghetto or shtetl variety, is well known. But that’s only half the story. This remarkable novel promises a wild ride even in the front matter, which compares the word shamus, or private detective, with its Yiddish ancestor, shammes, or sexton of a synagogue.

Benyamin Ben-Akiva, a Talmudic scholar newly arrived from Poland, is the shammes in question, the fifth of his calling in a ghetto with four synagogues. This makes him literally a fifth wheel, and he’s easily the squeakiest in town. Benyamin has three days to solve the crime, or the ghetto will pay, probably with its destruction. This doesn’t exactly come as a shock to him.

Holy Week and Eastertide were especially risky, and a gambling man would say that we were long overdue for some old-fashioned Jew-hatred. Every year the Jews got thrown out of somewhere. The lucky ones merely got beaten up, had their property stolen, and escaped with their books and the clothes they happened to be wearing at the time. But one Easter a while back, a mob of enraged Christians had practically burned down the entire Jewish Town, leaving only the black and stone shul and a few crummy houses that refused to fall over. Three thousand people murdered in one weekend, all because some idiot said that a Jewish boy had thrown a handful of mud at a passing priest.

Still, how can Benyamin do anything when Friday evening is not only the first Passover seder but the Sabbath, and he may undertake no labor? Moreover, since the crime took place outside the ghetto, and the authorities have closed the gates to Jewish traffic, how can he possibly gather clues or question witnesses? Finally, how can Benyamin carry out his investigation when several rabbinical authorities oppose him and his rationalist methods? It’s that heretical way of thinking, they believe, that caused the trouble in the first place. If everyone were properly devout, they argue, there’d be no blood libel.

Rabbi Judah Loew’s tombstone in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague (courtesy MKPiekarska, via Wikimedia Commons)

But Benyamin has one respected ally, Rabbi Judah Loew, a rationalist himself (and a historical figure, incidentally). Between the two of them, using Talmudic logic and wisdom from the Torah and other texts, they try, little by little, to crack the mystery surrounding the girl’s murder. But the odds are heavily against them, and you won’t be surprised to hear that “no; and furthermore” greets them at every turn — excuse me, neyn; un noch, since Yiddish is the key language, here.

Along the way, Wishnia re-creates sixteenth-century Prague, Jewish life of that era, and a world of intellectual ferment alongside brute superstition. I’ve never read a mystery in which the sleuths are Talmudic scholars, quoting references from sacred writings to support the inferences they draw from observed facts. (For that matter, even the ghetto’s whores are learned enough to enter the debate.) That can be very funny, especially when they have to explain themselves to Christians, who believe that drawing inferences from anything must be an example of Jewish witchcraft. Such humor carries a dangerous edge, of course. But even among his fellow Jews, Benyamin has to overcome suspicion of his origins, scholastic pedigree, and ways of reasoning. For instance, when one skeptic asks, “How come I haven’t heard of you?,” he replies, “Because the angels who sing my praises do it beyond the range of normal hearing.”

At times, Benyamin’s commentary wears thin; a little less archness would have worked a lot better. And the reader unfamiliar with Hebrew or Yiddish may feel at sea, though the text explains the many quotations and expressions. (There’s also a glossary at the back.) But such is the draw of The Fifth Servant that it pulls you into its world and doesn’t let go – for laughs and heartache, both.

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

Where Tension Comes From (or Not): The Devils of Cardona

03 Monday Jul 2017

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Review: The Devils of Cardona, by Matthew Carr
Riverhead, 2016. 401 pp. $27

Nobody likes the priest of Belamar de la Sierra, a Spanish village in Aragon near the French border, and for good reason. But when he’s assassinated in March 1584, and his body used to desecrate his church, whatever he’s done to deserve his fate is immaterial. The crown and the Inquisition have accused Moriscos, former Muslims forcibly converted to Catholicism, of the murder. By definition, their crime is at once political and an apparent example of the heresy that must be rooted out of Spain.

An advisor to King Philip II counsels His Most Catholic Majesty to appoint a civil rather than an ecclesiastical investigator, much to the disgust of the Inquisition authorities. Nevertheless, Bernardo Mendoza, judge and erstwhile soldier in the wars against the Muslims, comes highly recommended, and he’s permitted to pursue the inquiry.

Philip II of Spain, ca. 1550, credited to Titian’s studio (courtesy Museo del Prado, Madrid, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the U.S.)

That, however, is easier said than done. Not only do the people of Belamar de la Sierra, Christians of old lineage and Morisco alike, distrust the royal investigator and pretend they know nothing about the priest’s death, they all have stories about the extortion, debauchery, and rape the late man committed at their expense. But hardly has Mendoza heard even an inkling of these offenses when more murders occur, and more again, involving bandits, Moriscos, greedy landowners, rogue officers of the law, Inquisitors, and just about everyone else in Aragon. Double-crosses abound, no road is safe, and everyone is on the take.

Consequently, Carr has plenty of material with which to keep the wheels spinning at a dizzying rate. He also knows a great deal about sixteenth-century Spain, whether he’s writing about religious belief, politics, church architecture, or fashion, which he conveys in often vivid prose. I further appreciate Carr’s eye for themes, which include religious prejudice, where justice lies between poor alternatives, and misperceptions about Islam, which is certainly topical.

Despite all the busyness in The Devils of Cardona, though, it’s flat. It’s obvious very early on that the Moriscos are largely innocent, so there’s no mystery there. If you can’t tell by analyzing the clues, you know by the overly earnest tone praising these people and showing how badly they’ve been abused. I can’t argue; was there ever a more detestable monarchy or one that perverted law or morality in a more monstrous fashion? But I don’t need to read set-piece paragraphs explaining how Moriscos are really good guys once you get to know them. And that’s standard here, as Carr habitually tells you how to feel about his characters by giving them pleasant or unpleasant facial features, a judgment to which they live up, without fail. The good guys are obviously good, and the bad guys are really, really bad. And the baddest guys around are the landowners, so by page 200, or halfway through, you know that’s where Mendoza’s sleuthing will lead him. There’s little doubt how that will end.

Carr tries to throw you off the trail by introducing further and further twists, usually acts of violence, some of which are predictable too. But there’s a better way to keep readers turning the pages. We all want the innocent to triumph, and the inquisitors to be damned. But that’s abstract, and you could get that by reading a history of the period. Rather, I want to care about Mendoza and to see Inquisitor Mercader, his chief ecclesiastical adversary, in a way that makes him a full person. Unfortunately, Carr doesn’t allow either.

Donald Maass, a literary agent whose books have shaped my approach as a novelist and a reviewer, addresses this issue in his latest effort, The Emotional Craft of Fiction. He argues that the best you can get out of adding plot points is to keep the pages turning through sheer intricacy. But many, if not most, readers will give up, because you’ve failed to engage their empathy, and if they do finish the book, they’ll have trouble remembering it. To make a deeper, more lasting impression, you have to connect the characters’ inner lives with the action, and the manner in which you do so strikes a chord (or doesn’t). Tension resides in the reader’s mind, not the words on the page. And this is true, Maass says, for any type of fiction you can name, thriller or literary, romance or fantasy. Makes sense to me.

I think Carr is an able writer, and The Devils of Cardona is only his first novel. I hope his future efforts reveal his characters to greater depth and complexity–and if he manages that, he won’t have to work so hard at plotting.

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

A Pox on Those Borgias: In the Name of the Family

01 Monday May 2017

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Review: In the Name of the Family, by Sarah Dunant
Random House, 2017. 429 pp. $28

The best fiction portrays larger-than-life characters as real people, and you couldn’t ask for larger figures than the Borgia clan. Here, the sequel to Blood and Beauty, Dunant gives us a fifteenth- and sixteenth-century pope who raises corruption to a high art, even for the papacy, and two of his infamous, illegitimate children. Cesare’s a murderous, charismatic military genius of absolutely no scruple who terrorizes half of Italy. He also has, shall we say, deeper than brotherly feelings toward his beautiful, younger sister, Lucrezia, whose marriages he arranges and whose husbands he disposes of according to whim.

Bartolomeo Veneto’s portrait of a young woman, possibly Lucrezia Borgia, ca. 1510 (courtesy National Gallery, London, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain in the U.S.)

What Dunant does with these remarkable figures–and, by the way, throw in Niccolò Machiavelli, Florence’s envoy to Cesare–is itself extraordinary. I won’t say she makes Cesare sympathetic, which would be asking too much. He’s not the only politician who can wield a knife blade, either himself or by proxy, yet Dunant makes no excuses for his particular brand of viciousness. But she does show his passionate attachment to his sister (the incestuous current largely omitted in this book, oddly enough), and his attempts to end brigandage and corrupt taxation. He even earns the loyalty of certain people, at least those not related to the bodies dumped in the nearest river. Likewise, though his father, Pope Alexander VI, is the definition of venality, he also loves his children deeply, as well as the courtesans who bore them. So he’s a real person too, with a sense of humor, a cheerful outlook, and more avarice than most, but again, not alone, there.

However, Lucrezia holds the center. Only twenty-two but on her third husband, the heir to the dukedom of Ferrara, she’s well aware that she lives in a house of cards. Her presence in Ferrara pacifies the powerful Este family and keeps them grudging allies of the Borgias; the immense dowry she brought doesn’t hurt, either. But her aging father-in-law, the current duke, makes no secret of his disdain for her, and should she fail to produce an heir, the only thing standing between her and a sorry end is Cesare’s army. And Cesare, though he seems never to lose a battle, is dying a slow, miserable death from “the French pox,” also known as syphilis.

Dunant excels at small moments, and she renders her characters’ inner lives with a sure hand, no mean feat when they’re historical personages whose psychology may or may not emerge in sketchy contemporary sources. Take, for example, Lucrezia’s first official meeting with her husband-to-be, Alfonso, who unfortunately shares a name with her predecessor, the one she truly loved:

Noblewomen are early connoisseurs in the art of the courtly kiss, and over these last weeks Lucrezia has been gobbled and pecked, dribbled on and stubble-scraped, has even felt the nibble of teeth and odd teasing flash of a tongue. But this, this, she thinks, is more like a wet dog flopping down onto a hearth. As he [Alfonso] lifts his head, she takes in a lungful of sweat and leather. If perfume has been applied, it is long lost in the dust between here and Ferrara.

Dunant intends to show not only that Lucrezia’s a pawn in the Borgia’s power game, but how all women of that time are invisible except as sex objects. It’s not just that men succeed in labeling women as temptresses, the embodiment of sin, the weaker vessel, and all that. It’s that women are unworthy of serious notice, so that, for instance, medicine hasn’t bothered to study whether men can transmit the French pox to women, and what happens when they do. Or, on a more intimate level, Alfonso and Lucrezia feel strain in one another’s company, yet he sees no reason to learn how to talk to her. Even Machiavelli, who lives to talk politics and history, refuses to do so with his wife, Marietta, whose only legitimate role is to endure his long absences and infidelities.

All this is excellent, sometimes brilliant, even, and always interesting. Yet In the Name of the Family doesn’t quite hold together for me. The narrative depends on episodes, many of which could drop out of the book and leave the plot unchanged. Nothing that Macchiavelli does or says, really matters, for instance. Each episode may keep the pages turning, but they don’t always feel connected, except by chronology, so there’s no crescendo of tension, no climax. The end just peters out.

To an extent, Dunant has little choice, because history doesn’t cooperate with timely cataclysms, and, to her resounding credit, she’s faithful to history. Nevertheless, reading In the Name of the Family sometimes feels like fictionalized history rather than a novel. I still recommend it; I think it deserves wide readership; but I liked Blood and Beauty more.

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

Those Double-Crossing de Medicis: The Red Lily Crown

11 Monday Jul 2016

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Review: The Red Lily Crown, by Elizabeth Loupas
NAL, 2014. 418 pp. $16

It’s April 1574, and Florence braces for the death of one de Medici grand duke, Cosimo, and the accession of another, Francesco. It’s common knowledge that the heir apparent has two interests, women and alchemy, and the skinny is that he’ll be a crafty, intemperate ruler–just like his forbears, in other words, except more so.

Bronzino's portrait of Francesco de Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, 1567? (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Bronzino’s portrait of Francesco de Medici; 1567? (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

But such thoughts are secondary for Chiara Nerini, the fifteen-year-old daughter of an alchemist and bookseller who immolated himself searching for the Philosopher’s Stone. Alchemy fascinates Chiara as well, and her father’s laboratory has many treasures in it:

It was fantastical, disconnected from hunger, hunger, hunger, worn-out clothes and winter cold, as mysterious as if it had been created by some kind of magic. There was an athanor made of brick and clay from Trebizond–wherever that was–and a green glass alembic in the shape of a crescent moon. There was a gold-and-crystal double pelican and a silver funnel engraved with an intricate circular labyrinth design, supposedly a thousand years old.

But tragedy as well as poverty has dogged the family; her mother is dead, and horsemen ran over and killed Chiara’s brother, knocking her on the head too, a blow that still causes her headaches and fainting spells. She and her two surviving sisters live with their grandmother, a woman of republican sympathies who ill conceals her contempt for the ruling house. Nevertheless, Chiara has taken it upon herself to sell off her late father’s equipment, and who better to buy it than Francesco de Medici?

However, even to approach the great man is a dangerous gambit, and she’s nearly trampled again in the attempt. But she’s also lucky that Ruanno, an English alchemist working for Francesco, recognizes the worth of the object she has brought to sell–except that when de Medici sees it, and her, he makes a proposition she can’t refuse. Chiara is to remain in his house as a servant and assist in his laboratory, where he’s trying to create the Philosopher’s Stone. He believes that to succeed, he needs someone to represent the feminine principle, and she’s nominated. If she passes several tests to prove she’s a virgin , she’ll work alongside Ruanno and the grand duke, and her family will receive food, money, and gifts. But if Chiara fails the tests or breaks her vow, she’ll die. Simple.

This chain of events illustrates the key strength of The Red Lily Crown. You’ll notice that each twist in the story corresponds to a “yes, but,” the parallel structure to the “no–and furthermore” common to thrillers but also appearing in well-plotted novels of other genres. In the “no–and furthermore,” the protagonist thinks she’ll get what she’s looking for, only to fail and be presented with an even worse problem. Here, Loupas relies on a different sort of complication. Yes, Chiara sells her father’s equipment, but Francesco co-opts her. Yes, that has its advantages but could also prove fatal. Later in the novel, the author employs the “no–and furthermore” too; but to set the stage, she’s content to lead Chiara into a labyrinth.

De Medici drives the tension, changing minute to minute, leaving everyone around him to wonder what he really wants, what he’s got on them, and what they can or can’t get away with. I find him a bit much, vicious and selfish beyond belief, and the information that his parents persecuted him doesn’t quite balance the portrayal. But Loupas re-creates the Medici court, its intrigues, affairs, murders, and rituals, with a sure hand. I believe that part.

I have more trouble crediting certain plot turns, well done though they are, especially the de Medici arsenal of poisons. You know that Ruanno, who seems too good to be true, and Chiara will attract one another, so that’s no surprise, though Loupas keeps you guessing as to how it will unfold. I wish she hadn’t rushed important transitions in the romance, and it seems as if Chiara can read his thoughts whenever she wishes, a telepathy to be envied.

But I like a good story, and The Red Lily Crown is one.

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

Mangled Shakespeare: Beatrice and Benedick

21 Monday Mar 2016

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Review: Beatrice and Benedick, by Marina Fiorato
St. Martin’s, 2014. 431 pp. $28

Beatrice, a young woman from Verona, is walking her cousin’s estate in Sicily when she sees a Moor making love to a white woman who wears an identical wedding band to his. Though at first surprised that interracial marriage is even possible, Beatrice comes away wanting a husband too, especially one who’ll desire her so powerfully. As it happens, her uncle is about to play host to Spanish noblemen representing the power that rules Sicily; joining them are Benedick and Claudio, merchants’ sons from Padua and Florence, respectively. Beatrice and Benedick fall for each other on sight, while Claudio cozies up to her cousin, Hero.

According to legend, this balcony was where Juliet entranced Romeo (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, undated)

According to legend, this balcony in Verona was where Juliet entranced Romeo (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, undated)

Readers familiar with Much Ado about Nothing will recognize this setup as backstory for Shakespeare’s comedy. Maybe you’ve also identified the passionate couple on the beach as Othello and Desdemona. And when you hear that Beatrice’s older brother is named Teobaldo (aka Tybalt), and that a feud between the Montecchi and Capuletti families is tearing apart Verona, you’ll know to keep an eye peeled for Romeo and Giulietta.

This bold contrivance promises a rollicking story and a bushel of grand themes: jealousy, the nature of love, the sexual double standard, how appearances deceive, split loyalties, and so forth. But Beatrice and Benedick falters from the get-go, and the narrative seldom rises above what feels ordained. It’s never easy to create tension in a well-known story, but Fiorato tries by adding plot rather than by deepening her characters. That’s a mistake.

The trouble begins with her premise, which supposes that Shakespeare was Sicilian. I might accept that notion for the two hours’ traffic of her stage if she portrayed him as a rising poet and dramatist, a charismatic figure caught up in his verse. But her ink-stained scribbler’s capacity for invention takes a distant third behind the terrible wrongs done him and his thirst for revenge. He claims the mantle of authorship solely by spouting words that have since become famous, which prompts either a wink-wink, nudge-nudge or uneasy laughter. Worse, Beatrice and Benedick quote random snippets from Guess Who and even pen sonnets from the same source. You too can write great literature in your spare time, without any practice at all!

This implausible conceit would matter a lot less if the characters, especially the men, amounted to more than a collection of attitudes, locked in place for an obvious purpose. Benedick, aside from his looks and ability with a rapier (how he learned is never adequately explained), has little to recommend him, and his pride, ideas about women, and approach to life seem handed to him rather than born from within. As the wheels turn, you sense that he’s got a long journey to make, and much ado about transforming himself, before the final drama with Beatrice takes place.

Moreover, for no good reason, he immediately embraces as great friend Don Pedro, a Spanish nobleman who wears villainy barely concealed below his charm. Yet it takes Benedick, supposedly a perceptive fellow, a very long time to get the message. Further, he does so while serving Don Pedro aboard ship in the Spanish Armada, a nod to the political theme. But the conflict between Don Pedro and Benedick could unfold anywhere, and burdening the narrative with yet another epic story–one with an inevitable ending–is too much. Maybe more to the point, Fiorato’s narrative seems to lose its moorings at sea, while it’s far more authoritative at the Spanish court, where, for example, King Philip II keeps a red-headed dwarf as a caricature of England’s Queen Elizabeth. What a fabulous scene, full of tension from unexpected undercurrents.

That leaves it up to Beatrice to save this hodgepodge, but she can’t. How she got to be so independent-minded, capable with a sword, or virtually oblivious of sex until watching Othello and Desdemona are only some of the questions I have. Her conversion to ardent feminism feels unnecessarily earnest, maybe because she doesn’t have that far to travel. Further, I’m not clear how a woman who holds feminist views (and knows how to defend herself physically) surrenders so meekly to her tyrannical father. One such surrender, however, provides what I think is the author’s best scene. Before male witnesses, a doctor brusquely examines Beatrice to prove her virginity so that a marriage contract may be drawn up. Nothing speaks more eloquently than this humiliating, abusive act, which needs no further commentary. I wish the rest of Beatrice and Benedick had shown the same directness and economy.

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

What a Family: Médicis Daughter

18 Monday Jan 2016

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Review: Médicis Daughter, by Sophie Perinot
St. Martin’s, 2015. 374 pp. $27

James Thurber once wrote about a vicious, ill-tempered Airedale, of which he observed that there was a slight advantage living in the same house, because Muggs didn’t bite the family as often as he bit strangers.

Unfortunately for Marguerite de Valois, the heroine of this novel, there’s little advantage in being Cathérine de Médicis’ youngest daughter, and no humor, however dark, to comfort her. The Queen Mother, the real power in late sixteenth-century France behind her weak-willed, ineffectual son, Charles (portrayed here with symptoms of manic depression), spares no one. Though an able, decisive leader, not for nothing is Cathérine known as La Serpente, and nobody feels the venom more than Marguerite, a beautiful, curious, intelligent child.

Marguerite, who can’t believe that maman cares about her only to the extent that she can marry the girl off for political advantage, redoubles her efforts to please. Naturally, too, this gets her nowhere, because she can never be pleasing enough, and any sign of hesitation to obey, let alone have her own mind, dooms her to punishment, which of course Marguerite turns against herself. She must be wrong. Maybe she even harbors sinful desires that prevent her from being properly dutiful. Otherwise, why would her family, who love her, treat her like that?

Trouble is, though Marguerite readily accepts her position as a diplomatic pawn and yearns to have a royal husband and a crown, her carefully tutored notions of morality and sin clash with what she sees at court. When she happens on her elder brother, Henri, having sex with a lady-in-waiting, Marguerite asks her mother whether she intends to stop it. Of course not, Madame says.

It is to your advantage to permit and ignore those women who are least dangerous–those less clever than you, lacking connections, or with personal attributes which presage a short tenure. A woman who a man will soon tire of is no serious threat.

Cathérine speaks from experience; when she first came to France from Italy, she had to put up with Diane de Poitiers, her late husband’s mistress. Nevertheless, “Had I arrived and found His Majesty without a mistress, I would have made it my business to steer him toward a woman loyal to myself. One must be clever where there is a husband to be managed.” Her daughter is appalled, though she doesn’t say so.

But there’s more pressing business. Catholic and Protestant are at each others’ throats, and the conflict, occasionally breaking out into open warfare, divides the kingdom. The Valois monarchy, caught between the need for internal order and the wish to wipe out the Protestants–a project that many French subjects are itching to carry out–leads to twisting, double-edged alliances and a deep insecurity. Marguerite vaults herself into the hurricane by conducting a torrid, clandestine affair with the duc de Guise, a Catholic champion from Lorraine viewed as an upstart by the Valois.

St. Bartholomew Massacre of Protestants, 1572, as reconstructed by Francois Dubois, a Protestant painter. (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain).

St. Bartholomew Massacre, 1572, a key event in the Wars of Religion, as reconstructed by Francois Dubois, a Protestant painter. (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain).

I like how Perinot handles the Valois family dynamics. The way Cathérine coddles her eldest son while essentially emasculating him seems real, as does her blind preference for Marguerite’s older brother, Henri, a narcissistic jackass of the highest order. The affair with de Guise gradually reveals sides of Marguerite’s lover that she’d rather not have seen, yet he can rightfully protest that she also values him for those qualities, or once did. Best of all, I like how Perinot portrays Marguerite’s early married days with a husband she detests; those familiar with the history will recognize how mistaken Marguerite is, and how he’s worth ten of anyone else.

That said, there are serious flaws in Médicis Daughter, chief of which is that the first eighty pages are largely irrelevant and slow the pace. The later narrative repeats what you need to know about the characters anyway, whereas the ending feels somewhat abrupt and could have used more space. The writing, though often fluid, occasionally stumbles because of a heavy hand, as when Marguerite’s first-person narration underlines a point already made. At times, Perinot explains when she should show, and the racing pulse and sharp inhalations are formulaic expressions of emotion, curiously so when the author has drawn her characters so astutely. One oddity is the random French word or phrase dropped into dialogue, which seems to have no purpose; another is the use of current colloquialisms, like call out, impact, or according to her script. No doubt sixteenth-century royalty used idioms like the rest of us, just not the same ones.

Still, there’s much to like about Médicis Daughter, and I think readers who stay with it will be rewarded.

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