Tag Archives: Spain

Painter in the Snake Pit: The Creation of Eve

07 Monday Sep 2020

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Review: The Creation of Eve, by Lynn Cullen
Putnam, 2010. 392 pp. $17

When Sofonisba Anguissola yields to long temptation and has a passionate encounter with an artist colleague, she has much to lose. For one thing, Rome in 1559 is hardly the place for a woman to risk her reputation. For another, as a painter, Sofi has dared sign her canvases “the virgin,” partly out of pride in her dedication to her craft, partly to protect herself as a woman in a male profession. No more. As she says in the first sentence of this remarkable, compelling novel, “In the time it takes to pluck a hen, I have ruined myself.”

Sofonisba Anguissola’s 1556 self-portrait (courtesy Łańcut Castle, Łańcut, Poland, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain in the United States)

However, as the daughter of a petty aristocrat, Sofi’s not without resources, and her talent has received notice. No less a figure than Michelangelo himself has tutored her—which is how she met Tiberio, her lover, also the maestro’s student—and though she must now hide herself, she’s got a place to go. On the strength of drawings she’s made, Sofi receives an invitation from the court of Felipe II of Spain to teach painting to his new bride, Elisabeth of Valois, and be her lady-in-waiting. In that capacity, Sofi attends the royal wedding at Guadalajara, after which her adventure begins:

For this reason, I suffered to trundle these last two days over stony Castilian roads from Madrid, in a coach jammed with eight chatting perfumed Spanish ladies clutching their shawls and their small-bladdered dogs, with Francesca [her maid and chaperone] cutting her eyes accusingly at the pups each time we hit a bump. After a night four-to-a-bed with these ladies and their female companions at an inn along the way, I can assure you that the lapdog’s ability to draw fleas away from its owner is highly overesteemed.

As the quotation suggests, Cullen has given her protagonist a delightful, alluring voice and superbly re-created time, place, and manners, an atmosphere sustained throughout. You expect the novel to focus on feminist issues, notably the double standard regarding honor and purity, which the narrative handles with skill, in multiple facets and circumstances. As king, Felipe may have his mistresses, but if Elisabeth, who’s only fourteen, so much as smiles at the noblemen who fawn on her, look out. As a foreigner herself and a strong woman, Sofi becomes the queen’s trusted confidante.

Look out, again. Raising a foreigner of comparatively low birth to such a position makes enemies, and those who have been displaced put Sofi on notice. But they’re not the greatest danger. Felipe’s sister Juana, a marvelously insidious character, would like nothing better than to destroy Elisabeth and sees the upstart artist as a pawn in that game. Not only does Dona Juana question Sofi closely about Michelangelo, now under fire for his rumored homosexuality and his “degenerate” fresco in the Sistine Chapel, which the Church is considering painting over (!), the king’s sister makes sure that Spain’s inquisitor-general asks Sofi about these as well. Further, Dona Juana seems to know about Tiberio, from whom Sofi has waited, in vain, for a letter declaring his love and willingness to marry her.

So “no—and furthermore” flourish here. I admire how Cullen weaves art, feminism, palace cabals, politics, and sex, moving confidently among historical figures. She casts Felipe II as a more rounded person than he’s often portrayed, capturing his stiffness while revealing his love for gardening and tenderness as a father. I’m also glad to know about Sofonisba Anguissola, having heard only of Artemisia Gentileschi as a female painter of the time, though the former came first by several decades. I like Cullen’s rendering of the royals, but the real show-stopper is Catherine de Medici, Elisabeth’s mother, whom the Spanish queen visits once in France. You understand immediately why, as a child, Elisabeth preferred her father’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, as a mother figure.

The way Sofi becomes privy to certain secrets sometimes stretches credulity, but not to the point of utter contrivance. The lone historical inaccuracy that sticks out concerns the potato’s presence in the royal gardens, which wouldn’t have happened then (if ever, in that era); but I know that only because I wrote a book about it.

More serious is Cullen’s assertion, in her afterword, that Felipe II is wrongly considered to embody the Inquisition, and that contemporary versions elsewhere (see, for example: Mary Tudor) killed more people. That may or may not show Felipe in a more favorable light. But to suggest that the Spanish Inquisition has an exaggeratedly evil reputation because of contemporary chroniclers relegates a great crime to a body count. Fernando and Isabella’s expulsion of Jews and Moors in 1492 and the persecutions of converts afterward attempted to eradicate cultures that had enriched Spain. I think that outdoes Bloody Mary.

My long-time readers may recall that I reviewed one of Cullen’s more recent novels, The Sisters of Summit Avenue, set in the depression-era Midwest, a narrative about sibling rivalry, populated with excellent characterizations. Her authorial range impresses me; and though that story is closer to home, I actually prefer The Creation of Eve. Read both.

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

Insight: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free

06 Monday Apr 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Terror of 1492: By Fire, By Water

15 Monday Jan 2018

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Review: By Fire, By Water, by Mitchell James Kaplan
Other Press, 2010. 284 pp. $16

Luis de Santángel, chancellor of Aragon and trusted counselor of King Fernando, has a fatal secret, half of which is common knowledge. Everyone knows that three generations back, Santángel’s family was Jewish. Such is the suspicion against so-called conversos, however, that a man like Santángel, despite considerable service to the crown, must never be seen talking to a Jew or found possessing Jewish texts or ritual objects. Consequently, the other half of Luis’s secret is that he’s begun to feel curiosity about his Jewish roots.

But the Inquisition, led by Tomás Torquemada, Queen Ysabel’s confessor, operates a large, many-tentacled network of spies and informers. And when they sweep up a close friend of Santángel’s, a fellow converso, for having secretly observed Jewish rituals and discussed the holy texts, Luis has had enough. Recognizing the danger to himself and his son, and believing that Torquemada’s brutalities are un-Christian behavior and unwise politics, he decides that the Inquisition must be checked. But that is a very tall order, notwithstanding King Fernando’s comparative lack of religious zeal. Ysabel has enough for both.

I like how Kaplan handles the politics, whether royal or ecclesiastical. The characterizations of Torquemada, Fernando, and Ysabel have depth and conviction. It would be too easy to betray them as cardboard villains, but Kaplan takes the high road, showing them as true to themselves. Consider, for example, this passage through Torquemada’s eyes:

The inquisitor general loved the sharp, rough, solid feel of skillfully hewn stones, joined together with or without mortar. They yielded to the will of man only with difficulty, but once shaped, did not budge. They stayed where one placed them. They performed their humble tasks without grumbling or questioning, holding up a building, providing shelter through storms, giving townsfolk a place to gather and pray. Of course, they were not alive, but they were part of God’s creation, and thus worthy of man’s respect. Aye, of man’s wonderment.

Of particular interest is how Fernando, as King of Aragon, is the less powerful monarch, conscious that Ysabel brought more to their marriage than he did. He’s much more interested in conquering the lone remaining Moorish bastion, Granada, than in church affairs, a preference that has disastrous consequences. I also like how the narrative depicts another friend of Santángel’s, a Genoese sailor named Cristóbal Colón. He has the harebrained idea, based largely on religious texts, that he can sail west from Spain and reach both the Indies and Jerusalem. Santángel has arranged an audience for Colón with the monarchs.

Luis de Santángel, by an unknown nineteenth-century artist (courtesy Museo Naval de Madrid via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the U.S.)

I’m less drawn to the other characters and subplots. Luis, a widower, falls for a beautiful Jewish widow in Granada, Judith Migdal. She’s a silversmith, an extraordinary fact, but one that few people seem to remark on or object to. That idealized glow shrouds much of what she does, for Judith has no apparent faults, and her unerring social skills always save the day. Kaplan re-creates Jewish life in Granada with love and fervor, and I like reading about that. But aside from subtly underlining that the Spanish monarchs are bent on destroying a culture of which they understand nothing and from which they could learn much, its place in the narrative sometimes feels tenuous. The romance is frankly unbelievable and turns on a cliché.

Finally, the narrative seems to suspend itself during the religious debates that move Santángel closer to the faith of his ancestors, and the relative absence of tension feels jarring, given that these discussions could cost the participants their lives. I understand why Kaplan has included these scenes, because he wants to show the natural human curiosity about what is forbidden, and to score a few philosophical and theological points. But I think the novel would have worked better had he focused more on the politics, and I wish those had determined the ending rather than the deus ex machina he employs.

Nevertheless, By Fire, By Water has something to say, and though it reenacts events more than five centuries old, to recount the lengths to which bigots will go unfortunately retains deep relevance. Thirty years ago, when visiting an antiquarian in Toledo who had Jewish ritual objects for sale, I mentioned the expulsion, only to be told that I’d “insulted” his king and queen. By Fire, By Water is as clear a fictional exposure of that attitude as you’re likely to find.

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

Cloak and Swagger: The Vineyard

11 Monday Dec 2017

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Review: The Vineyard, by Maria Dueñas
Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza García
Atria, 2017. 530 pp. $26

When Mauro Larrea speaks, people listen. Admired in Mexico City for his business acumen, ability to take daredevil risks without blinking, and to carry himself as if he belongs wherever he goes, Mauro has what most would consider an enviable position. But he has also lost much in life — a couple fingers of his left hand, to an accident when he labored in silver mines in his youth; his beloved wife, Elvira, who died shortly after giving birth to their second child, Nicolás; his homeland (he was born in Spain); and now, nearly his entire fortune. The industrialist to whom he paid an exorbitant sum to ship him the latest in mining equipment has just died at the battle of Bull Run – for it’s 1861, and the Norteamericanos are slaughtering each other.

Not only is Mauro ruined, his adult children’s futures are at stake, for they would lose face, social position, and, in the case of Nicolás, an advantageous marriage. So for their sakes as well as his own, Mauro must leave Mexico City before the news gets out and make it seem as if his departure is simply another surprising but brilliant stroke in his inimitable entrepreneurial strategy. How he achieves this, I’ll leave you to discover, but I give you my word that he’s less than scrupulous, and that it’s very complicated.

So is the rest of The Vineyard, but before we get into that, let’s settle a question of genre. My friends at Atria have been offering me a steady diet of romances, a genre I dislike and have no patience for, though I did review one, thinking it would be something else, and regretted it. No regrets here. The Vineyard deals with deep passions, a rags-to-riches protagonist, Byzantine family cabals, and Latin locales vividly rendered, the themes and background common to much romantic literature. But The Vineyard isn’t a romance, capital R, especially not in the sense comparable to other authors named on the jacket flap.

Rather, in its whirr of subplots, each of which intrudes at the wrong moment for Mauro – but the right one to set up a “no; and furthermore” — the narrative recalls Alexander Dumas, père, and The Three Musketeers. Mauro is no D’Artagnan, a hot-blooded youth thirsting to drive a rapier between an opponent’s ribs. The duels in The Vineyard are psychological, based on swagger without the strut, a high-stakes gamesmanship, poker without the cards. Yet the comparison holds true, I think. And because the focus is money, especially inherited money, and the power it confers, for me that evokes another great nineteenth-century storyteller, Honoré de Balzac. Like him, Dueñas portrays Mauro constantly struggling to remain moral and not always succeeding. And also like Balzac, she pays attention to the emotional connection between character and reader, so that the morality feels personal, not abstract.

Consider this passage, when Mauro, in Cuba, contemplates accepting an offer to buy into a consortium that deals in slaves:

A firm, round breast loomed up at him. Attached to it, a tiny mouth sucking at a nipple. And, all at once, confronted by the simple image of a young mother with dark skin nursing a child, all those thoughts he had been desperately trying to thrust from his mind overwhelmed him with the force of a river bursting its banks. His hands extracting Nicolás from his wife Elvira’s bleeding body; his hands on [his daughter] Mariana’s belly the night of his departure from Mexico, sensing the new, unborn child. The skinny little slave girl violated by her aging master while she was cutting sugarcane; the baby daughter she had brought into the world when she was only thirteen, who was subsequently prized from her as one might peel away the skin of a fruit.

I’m not saying that Dueñas stands beside Dumas or Balzac, only making a point about possible literary ancestors and how she takes her craft seriously. This passage, though full of feeling, is unsentimental–which, to me, seems antithetical to romance, capital R–and describes great savagery, again perhaps atypical to that genre. Better yet, though Dueñas constructs an intricate plot and juggles its interlocking pieces with remarkable skill, she gives you the most compelling reason to turn the pages, fleshed-out characters with inner lives. If The Vineyard falls short, it’s that I find the story a bit operatic for my tastes, especially in its latter stages, with too much screeching. Likewise, some of the derring-do seems incredible, and the family rivalries can be hard to follow. But so long as we’re talking about opera, Dueñas generally hits the high notes, so it’s hard to complain.

The Vineyard is an entertaining, engaging novel.

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

The Tepid Tropics: Conquistadora

04 Monday Dec 2017

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Review: Conquistadora, by Esmeralda Santiago
Knopf, 2011. 414 pp. $28

Be careful what you wish for. That might be the moral of this novel, but it would be hard to blame its nineteenth-century protagonist, Ana Larragoity Cubillas, for wanting what no other young woman of her time, place, and social class could normally dream of. The daughter of a Seville aristocrat whose illustrious sixteenth-century ancestor sailed with Ponce de Leon, Ana asphyxiates in an emotionally and intellectually stifling home where name and pride are the only things that matter. Her parents, angry that she wasn’t born male, see no reason to treat her with warmth or kindness, since she disappointed them and will never amount to anything they approve of. Ana’s sole refuges are the diary her conquistador forebear left behind and the occasional visits to her grandparents’ farm, where she comes alive in the garden, the barn, and the fields. Naturally, these are no pursuits for a girl of noble lineage. But she is determined not to encase herself in crinoline, marry a rich dolt older than herself, and die without seeing the world.

Rescue comes in Ana’s teenage years from a schoolmate, Elena. Not only does Elena provide the friendship Ana has never known, the girls become intimate in ways the nuns at the convent school would not even have the vocabulary to describe. The girls’ encounters are easily the most passionate scenes in the book, and Elena is the instigator, a nifty surprise given that she’s much more conventional than Ana. But that’s not all. Elena has two handsome cousins, twins of fine manners whose merchant father has commercial interests in Puerto Rico. It’s assumed that Inocente will marry Elena; Ramón proposes to Ana. But Ana has a plan: Why don’t they all move to Puerto Rico and run the sugar plantation that belongs to her prospective father-in-law? With the will and persuasiveness typical of her, Ana sells everyone on the idea and convinces her stuffy parents to permit her marriage to a mere merchant’s son.

The difficulty of reconciling a romantic education to the real world is a common theme in literature; Cervantes, Flaubert, and Sinclair Lewis come to mind as practitioners. So it’s a given that Ana’s plan doesn’t work out the way she intended, but she’s nothing if not adaptable. And though the plantation is in far worse shape than she imagined, she’s excited to be there:

She’d been moving toward this destination not knowing exactly where it was, what it looked like, but now Hacienda los Gemelos was spread below her, calling to her. She wanted to be on the ground, to feel its rich earth, to smell it, taste it even. Long before she reached it, she knew she’d love this land, would love it as long as she lived. She was eighteen years old, had arrived at the end of a journey that was also a beginning, one that she’d already decided was final. I’m here, she said to herself. I’m here, she told the breeze. . .

Corvera’s 1893 drawing of Juan Ponce de Leon, first governor of Puerto Rico (courtesy British Library, via Wikimedia Commons)

The vivid descriptions are one thing I like about Conquistadora. Another is the care Santiago takes with her minor characters. She creates touching portraits of the slaves who work Hacienda los Gemelos, many of whom carry traumatic memories of their abduction and transport across the ocean. (The ones who don’t remember were born on the island, often to mothers impregnated by the white overseer.) Since these people are virtually invisible to their owners–except when they try to escape–Santiago is plainly trying to rectify the imbalance, and I applaud that.

That said, however, I find Conquistadora a tepid novel. It reads more like a biography of Ana (or, more properly, Hacienda los Gemelos) than fiction, consisting of events that follow logically, even predictably, and reach no height of feeling, except, as I said, the schoolgirl love affair. There’s no character arc, because you find out all you will ever know about the characters early on, and Santiago tells their emotions more than she shows them, so it feels rote. There’s no story arc either, just episodes. If you drew a diagram of the tension, you’d have a sine curve, not a rising line.

I also dislike the tendentious aspect of the narrative. Ana’s descended from a conquistador, and the title is Conquistadora, after all. You see how she mistreats her slaves, and how they suffer. So how many times do you need to be told directly that she’s much like her ancestor, and that her wealth is built on the dead bodies of enslaved laborers? Quite a few, apparently.

Conquistadora is more interesting for its subject matter than as fiction.

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.

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.

Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears a Crown: Master and Commander

14 Monday Mar 2016

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Review: Master and Commander, by Patrick O’Brien

Norton, 1990. 459 pp. $14

I don’t know why or how I avoided reading this novel, the first in a famous series about the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, but as a recent convert, I advise you to hie yourself thither. Master and Commander is no ordinary sea story, even if you think one cannonade is much like another, or that you’ve heard all you care to about wooden ships and iron men.

HMS Victory, the most famous British ship of the Napoleonic Wars, if not any era (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

HMS Victory, the most famous British ship of the Napoleonic Wars, if not in all of history (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Rather, O’Brian takes the genre giant steps beyond its normal limits. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about sailing ships, how they functioned, or life (and death) at sea, yet the narrative wears this information lightly. Moreover, he has an extremely perceptive eye for character and mood, revealing the inner lives of the main cast, certainly, and even glimpses of what the minor players dream about, portrayed in vivid, easily flowing prose. I wish he’d given more depth to the two women who appear most frequently; they’re little more than ambitious sex objects. Nevertheless, it’s pretty clear that O’Brian is master and commander of both the English language and psychological observation.

The premise is deceptively simple. Jack Aubrey, a Navy rat in his late twenties, has finally obtained a captaincy over the Sophie, a brig assigned to patrol western Mediterranean waters. His career has suffered severe ups and downs, mostly because he can’t control his feelings about idiotic, narrow-minded superiors who give him idiotic, narrow-minded orders. Since we’ve all felt that way, we can sympathize, though I suspect that most people would display better judgment than Aubrey, who conducts a more or less open affair with his immediate commander’s wife. On the other hand, Aubrey has a friend or two in high places and his excellent seamanship to recommend him. So he’s given the Sophie, which he sees as his chance at redemption and getting out of debt, for the navy rewards its captains for every enemy ship they bring home as a prize of war.

Just before he’s due to sail, he meets Stephen Maturin, a penurious doctor who shares his love of music, among other interests. The captain persuades his new friend to become the Sophie’s surgeon, a real coup, given that most vessels must put up with half-educated sawbones just as likely to kill their patients as cure them. Further, having lived in the western Mediterranean for years, Maturin’s knowledge of the Spanish coast and its languages make him a valuable asset. But Stephen’s greatest task may be to slip gently inside the captain’s blustery, mercurial exterior and understand his rough edges in ways that nobody else does.

This is where Master and Commander excels. Maturin’s presence as a landlubber curious about everything nautical–and his subtly raised eyebrows at customs and traditions that he thinks make no sense–gives life under sail an extra dimension, a view with which the reader identifies. But it’s not just that O’Brian’s characters move fluidly among every rope, spar, and pulley, employing their names and functions so naturally that they have trouble explaining them to Stephen in terms he can understand. It’s that Aubrey, a very social creature who loves good drink and good conversation, and who has dreamed all his life of being master and commander, realizes that his new rank forever separates him from the shipboard society he craves. Dining with the Sophie’s officers brings this sad truth home:

Everyone was unnaturally well behaved: Jack was to give the tone, as he knew very well–it was expected of him, and it was his privilege. But this kind of deference, this attentive listening to every remark of his, required the words he uttered to be worth the attention they excited–a wearing state of affairs for a man accustomed to ordinary human conversation, with its perpetual interruption, contradiction and plain disregard. Here everything he said was right; and presently his spirits began to sink under the burden.

What perplexes Aubrey most is why he can’t seem to break the ice with James Dillon, his extremely capable lieutenant who holds him in guarded contempt. Stephen understands Dillon better, for they’re both Irish-born and became acquainted during the disastrous Rebellion of 1798. Aubrey’s prejudices against “Papists” touch Maturin less, because he’s Protestant, but he deplores the captain’s careless, disparaging remarks about Catholics and Irish rebels, which, naturally, set Dillon’s teeth on edge.

These touchy relationships add tension, but they also underline a central theme, about social rank, power, and their far-reaching effects. Rank and power can swell to a geyser propelling a man upward or a vortex dragging him down, and managing these equal possibilities requires a keen hand on the wheel, day in and day out. Even men of lower rank and prospects face the same problem. The sailing master, a gifted navigator, curries Aubrey’s favor, partly because he’s sexually attracted to the man the crew nickname Goldilocks–but homosexuality is a hanging offense, so he’s careful to make his fawning look like anyone else’s. Another example is an ordinary seaman who clearly has the gift to advance but fears to progress beyond what he thinks is his natural station. The Sophie is an entire world in a short stretch of timber and canvas.

Disclaimer: My son loaned me his copy of this book, which he read long before I did, a mark of his good taste.

A Decent Guy Struggling Against Evil: Midnight in Europe

09 Monday Feb 2015

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Review: Midnight in Europe, by Alan Furst
Random House, 2014. 251 pp. $27

Reading Alan Furst’s pre-World War II spy fiction is like eating pastry from the hand of a master chef: You savor it, enjoying the many flavored layers, and sigh when you’re done. Midnight in Europe, his fourteenth effort, is no exception, though whether the flavors meld well or leave as strong or lingering an aftertaste as previous novels is another matter.

Cristián Ferrar is a typical Furst protagonist–brilliant, handsome, escaped from his native country (Spain, in this case), well connected, attracts interesting women, appreciates the good things in life (so must spend a lot of time in Paris), and holds strong principles without having to shout them from the rooftops. A decent man, in other words; but December 1937 will test any European’s sense of decency, not least in Spain, where Franco’s Fascist troops are winning a civil war in which mercy and justice have no meaning.

Bomb damage, Spain, 1937. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

Bomb damage, Spain, 1937. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

The Republican forces resisting Franco lack both unity and weapons. Ferrar can do nothing about the political mess strangling his country, but, as a lawyer with a respected firm of international scope, he may know people who might just possibly be willing and able to run guns to the Republicans. However, this is worse than risky business. Hitler and Mussolini are actively supporting Franco, which means the Gestapo will be watching; and even Stalin, who grudgingly supplies the Republicans, won’t let anyone else do so, which means the NKVD will unleash its hit men on nominal allies. Will the democracies help? Don’t even ask. As one character observes, “Europe is a nice neighborhood with a mad dog. Just now the dog is biting Spain, and nobody else in the neighborhood wants to get bitten, so they look away.”

Rueful political irony, a Furst specialty, is a particular pleasure of Midnight in Europe. A Macedonian underworld figure “spent his teenage years fighting Bulgarian bandits. After that, being a gangster was easy.” A scrappy Polish dockworker in Gdansk, upset that German agents are muscling into the waterfront, complains that he hasn’t punched a German “in days.”

Another Furst trademark is atmosphere you can practically eat with a spoon:

 

Parisians found themselves restless and vaguely melancholy for no evident reason, an annual malady accompanying the nameless season that fell between winter and spring. The streets were quiet–only dog walkers beneath shiny umbrellas and the occasional couple with nowhere to be alone. In the cafés, newspapers on their wooden dowels went unread, as though the patrons refused to read them until they produced better news. A change of government was in the air, though nobody believed it would change anything but itself.

Even so, Midnight in Europe, the thirteenth Furst novel I’ve read, seems too gentle to be a thriller. The only scenes that truly gripped me were those toward the beginning, in Spain, and a couple toward the end. I wish the author had set more of the story in Spain, territory that, if I remember correctly, he hasn’t revisited since a large, breathtaking swath of his first novel, Night Soldiers. Romance moves Ferrar almost as much as politics, and that’s fine, but he just isn’t tested enough, either on the street or in his heart. You sense he can get out of any trouble he gets into, and that nobody he trusts will ever turn on him.

Some years back, a literary agent told me that to sell well, American authors must write thrillers that have American or British protagonists. American readers, he said, won’t buy them otherwise–at least not in large numbers–whereas Europeans don’t trust Americans to get European characters right. Furst has been bucking this trend for years, though Mission to Paris had a European-American protagonist, and Midnight in Europe has scenes in New York.

So I wonder whether market forces (or perceptions of them) have influenced his latest output. His books have generally gotten shorter, softer, and less complex. (Oddly, that relative simplicity doesn’t stop the text of Midnight in Europe from identifying characters when they reappear, as if the reader might have forgotten who they are. This is so out of character for Furst that I suspect an intrusive editorial hand.) In fairness, basing fiction on the dread before the storm is no easy task. Even more ambitious, the latest novels feature spies who aren’t professionals but have volunteered or been coerced into it. Furst clearly admires that scheme and an author who made good use of it, Eric Ambler. (Check out Journey into Fear sometime, and you’ll see what I mean.) But it doesn’t always click.

By all means, if you’re a Furst fan, read Midnight in Europe. But if you’re just starting out with him, try Mission to Paris, which I find the best of the last half-dozen titles. And if you’re in for a longer, wilder ride, try Night Soldiers (and its long, fascinating section on the training of an NKVD agent) or Dark Star.

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