Since it took me over a year of reading in fits and starts to get through The Iliad, I was somewhat apprehensive about The Odyssey. The Iliad is a good book, but epic poetry, I’ve discovered, is not for the faint of heart; it’s vast in scope, heavy in subject matter, and often, especially in the case of The Iliad, weirdly repetitive — intended for oral recitation, in sections, epic poems were enjoyed by their original audiences in a far different manner than how we take them in today.

That said, The Odyssey was a much more enjoyable read for me than The Iliad. First of all, the characters go somewhere, and there is much less bickering, and no pouting Achilleus. The translation I read, by Richmond Lattimore, was easy to follow, but the language was suited to the epic subject matter (I was even able to scribble down some new words to look up.) That’s not to say that The Iliad was a worse book; I just found it a lot more difficult.

The premise of The Odyssey is known to most people, even those who haven’t read the book, since most everybody has skivved off reading it in favor of the SparkNotes version, at school. Odysseus, on his journey back from the Trojan War, suffers many troubles and obstacles, only to to find his house in Ithaca taken over by suitors seeking his own wife’s hand in marriage.

That’s the simple version. In reality, the structure of the book is well-built and complex. I was surprised to find that the better part of Odysseus’s journey is told in flashback, and that his story is surrounded by a framing device: before we are introduced to Odysseus, we meet his son, Telemachos, who grows more frustrated by the day at the suitors who waste his father’s property in feasting and entertainment, who dally with the serving girls, and try to force his mother, Penelope, to choose one of them against her will. With the assistance of Pallas Athene, goddess of war, wisdom and etc., Telemachos goes on a journey to learn whether anyone knows whether his father is dead or alive. Seeing an advantageous opportunity, the suitors send out a ship to lie in wait for him, and we leave Telemachos in a cliffhanger — could this be the first cliffhanger ever written?

I was surprised at the sophistication of the storytelling in The Odyssey; it employs numerous narrative devices that add to the excitement for the reader, and the pacing is just right for each part of the story. Homer knows when to linger over a matter, and when to skip another. Whereas in The Iliad, the battle scenes dragged on and on, the events in The Odyssey flow briskly along (in spite of a propensity on everybody’s part for speeches in response to just about everything).

Maybe it was because there was a greater feminine presence in the story, but I liked all the characters, both male and female, better than when I read The Iliad, though as in The Iliad, I found the often prideful and sometimes downright dumb behavior of Odysseus and his companions perplexing — for instance, when Odysseus, angry over the murder of some of his friends, shouts at the Cyclops, who throws a huge rock at their boat, sending it back to shore to where the Cyclops is, they get away once more… and then Odysseus does it again. The pre-Christian tendency to lack mercy also bothered me, but paganism was a tough path, after all. So many interesting themes and questions emerge through the course of the story — the treatment of the female characters in the ancient world and their varying responses to it, the contrasting potrayals of hospitality (or lack thereof, in the case of the Cyclops) — but I think the theme that stands out the most and which seems to be the main theme of the story is the question of suffering. In other words, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Homer’s answer seems to be, “Because the gods hate you.” Like I said, paganism was a tough path. The interesting thing, however, was Athene’s protection and provision all through the journey of Odysseus, perhaps as a representative of grace.

Really, I’m still processing it. I don’t think it’s the sort of book that you could fully grasp in one reading, or even multiple readings. Though it was fairly difficult to get through, I’m glad I read it, and happy to have it on my bookshelf, and I’m sure I’ll return to it for further exploration.

This post is a stop on The Classics Circuit: Ancient Greeks Tour.

When I decided to branch out into reading other members of the Inklings (the casual literary circle comprised of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and others), Dorothy L. Sayers was the obvious first choice as the only female of the group. I started out reading Mind of the Maker, Sayers’ book on the creative process; it’s still sitting next to my bed, and I turn to it when I want to give my grey matter a workout. C.S. Lewis wasn’t kidding when he famously said he liked “the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation—as I like a high wind.” Her writing in Mind of the Maker is brisk, brilliant, and forces you to engage intensely with the text as she carries you from point to point with razor-sharp acuity.

That acuity is the bedrock of Whose Body?, the first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, in spite of Lord Peter’s languid speech and flippant manner; with shades of The Scarlet Pimpernel, he seems an unlikely detective at first, speaking in an aristocratic drawl, carefully selecting the appropriate dress in which to view a body discovered in a bathtub, and employing his valet as an assistant in surveying crime scenes. He’s the epitome of the younger son of the British aristocracy, but as the story goes on you see that this is, if not exactly a front, not the full depth of Wimsey’s character.

Wimsey is all enthusiasm when he receives a call from his mother who knows some gossip she thinks might interest him: a body has been discovered in the bathtub of an unsuspecting church architect, Mr. Thipps, wearing only a golden pince-nez. Wimsey calls on his friend, Detective Parker, who’d thought at first that the corpse might be that of a missing person he’s searching for, Sir Reuben Levy, a successful Jewish businessman who apparently disappeared from his house stark naked. It turns out not to be Levy, but still Wimsey and Parker can’t shake the suspicion that the two cases are somehow connected.

This is not tough reading like Mind of the Maker, but it’s no potboiler either. The story keeps you guessing, and even though my suspicions about the identity of the murderer were confirmed, I couldn’t have dreamed up the way in which it was done, and that’s really the focus of the whole story: how do the two crimes connect, and how was it accomplished? And why? Meantime, the character of Lord Peter is compelling as you watch his complexities emerge from behind that easy-going façade—ever so subtly—bit by bit; archetypally English, no fuss is made about his past, and ultimately, little is revealed, but you just know there is more to Wimsey than the bored aristocrat looking for his fun solving crimes and collecting antique folios.

The other characters are equally interesting, and what seem to be caricatures turn out to be something more. Wimsey’s over-talkative mother is actually sharp as a tack, and by her prattling she uncovers important details and imparts them to Wimsey in the guise of gossip. It’s no accident, either—Lord Peter’s carefully cultivated appearance of superficiality would seem to be inherited.

Detective Parker plays Watson to Wimsey’s Holmes, and there appears to be a true, if reserved, comradeship between them. In fact, Sayers isn’t afraid to mention Sherlock Holmes a number of times during the story; she makes it clear that Wimsey was personally influenced by reading the stories, and so she carries the real world (Doyle’s influence on her work) into the world of the story (the influence of the Holmes stories on Lord Peter). This and other literary references (for instance, to Dante, whom Sayers translated) give the sense that these characters live in the same world we do (albeit in the 1920s), and as in Sherlock Holmes, we come into the characters’ lives in media res; though this is the first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, this is not his first investigation, nor his first crime solved.

There’s no point denying the influence of Sherlock Holmes since Sayers doesn’t bother. Wimsey never pretends to have Holmes’s genius, but along with the fact that he too plays a musical instrument (in Wimsey’s case, the piano) there is something about his manner, his intuition, the way he puts two-and-two together in a sudden, inspired way, that gives a feeling of similarity between the two. Perhaps there’s also a similarity in the emotional walls they both put up to hide their weaknesses and sensitivities, Holmes’s wall of cold, unfeeling intellect, and Wimsey’s barrier of devil-may-care flippancy.

Whose Body? is a short, fun and very smart novel, in which Dorothy Sayers has crafted a detective compelling enough that she returned to him in 13 novels and a number of short story collections. Lord Peter Wimsey may be inspired by Sherlock Holmes, but he has a style that is all his own.

This review is part of The Golden Age of Detective Fiction at the Classics Circuit.

Portrait of Napoleon by Antoine-Jean Gros.

In The Companions of Jehu, even though Alexandre Dumas implies the fate of some of the characters from the beginning, throughout the book I couldn’t help wishing—no, believing— that it could turn out differently.

I have to admit, The Companions of Jehu, got off to a very, very slow start. I’m pretty sure I’ve never read a book that was so slow to begin. There was an introduction, in which Dumas shares at length, in narrative form, how he developed the idea for the novel and how he conducted his research. It was kind of funny and not boring, but there was more. Before the actual story starts, which begins in 1799, there is a ten or so page prologue tracing the history-in-brief of the city of Avignon, from the late 12th century. (I’m not kidding.) While a lot of it was pretty interesting, I understood more deeply than ever why writers are cautioned against prologues, and against beginning the story too early.

On the other hand, this history adds depth to a tale that might have seemed isolated and superficial without it. It puts the story into context. Also, it seems from the text that one of Dumas’s primary goals in the writing of his novels was to educate the French public about their history. (He must have had a more patient public than most readers today.) I know he educated me; I couldn’t help but return to Wikipedia and the dictionary again and again to learn about personages throughout the history of France and political terms of the day. Even though it was difficult to get through that initial chunk of background, I’m glad I read it. There were more history lessons sprinkled liberally throughout the text, which I found illuminating (if sometimes a pesky interruption). I’m pretty sure this is not the best way to include exposition, and it’s definitely not how it’s done now, but it did the job. Dumas’s somewhat peculiar self-aware style of narration made it easier to swallow.

Once the history was covered, it was easy to get into the story itself. Dumas has a way with dialogue and fast-paced action, which I guess maybe goes without saying. Two mysterious strangers appear at a wayside inn, and sit down at a table d’hote (basically family-style dining with other guests) and overhear the tale of some highwaymen who, in Robin Hood-like fashion, rob from the government and give to the cause of the exiled King Louis XVIII. The two strangers are surprised and appalled when one of the masked brigands enters the dining room, returns some personal funds—accidentally mixed in with stolen government money—to their owner, and leaves with no one challenging him. One of the strangers, Roland, a fiery young soldier with a death-wish, who also happens to be aide-de-camp to Napoleon Bonaparte, makes it his mission to track down these Companions of Jehu and put an end to their treason.

Dumas is sympathetic towards and critical of both the Republican and Royalist camps. He seems most sympathetic to Napoleon’s cause, but in spite of that, I felt more sympathy for the Royalists; I especially loved the rugged Chouans of Brittany and their leader, Georges Cadoudal. I also found myself more on the side of the character of Morgan, the most important “Companion of Jehu” in the story, than that of Roland, even though I liked both characters; maybe I’m just a sucker for a lost cause, but I found the royalist ideals more heartfelt than Roland’s almost unthinking devotion to his friend, Napoleon. Roland’s chivalry eventually won me over, though.

This action-packed political adventure has a bit of darkness to it, since the events take place just after the Terror. Reading this story, set in context by Dumas, it’s easy to see why people were drawn to a figure like Napoleon, and why the people of France longed for the order and stability he must have represented after the upheaval of revolution.

(Oh, and I found a new kind of dandy to love.)

This review is part of Paris in the Spring: Alexander Dumas on Tour at the Classics Circuit.

Sometimes the Fantasy genre (or any genre, I suppose) gets so caught up in trends that one can almost lose hope. Right now a certain sparse writing style seems to have preempted the delectable prose of writers like McKillip, Kushner and similar, let alone Tolkien. A lot of series are never-ending serials, often involving a magical detective, with writing that’s the equivalent of a one-two punch. Written in first person perspective with sarcastic voices, these books don’t usually have a lot of substance and just generally get on my nerves.

When I opened Auralia’s Colors and saw that author Jeffrey Overstreet thanked J.R.R. Tolkien and Patricia A. McKillip (among other great writers) in his acknowledgements, I felt a tentative hopefulness.

Auralia is an orphan discovered by one of the Gatherers, a criminal class exiled from the fortress of House Abascar because of their misdeeds. Krawg finds the infant on the riverbank, sleeping in the footprint of a mysterious creature, and sneaks her into the Gatherer camp where she will be raised alongside the other Gatherer orphans until she is old enough to attend the Rites of Privilege. There, she will be tried to see if she is worthy to enter House Abascar. As she grows, however, Auralia has no desire to leave her forest, where she seeks out all its colors, crafting gifts from them for her friends—certainly not to live in House Abascar, where colors are surrendered to the palace and the people live a drab existence under a proclaimation called the Wintering of Abascar. When Auralia finally accepts her calling to show Abascar the colors she’s discovered, a chain reaction begins that will change the lives of the people of Abascar—and their prince, Cal-raven—forever.

This book has just about everything a really good fantasy should have: Beautiful writing that evokes a sensory and emotional experience; a deceptively simple yet riveting story; a well-rounded cast of characters who are at once human and archetypal; and layers of meaning so one can go back to the story again and still find new questions to ask. Truly excellent fantasy asks the deeper questions about the things that matter, without obviously asking any questions at all, and touches the unseen. Not mere stories, the best fantasy is threaded through with the numinous. At the same time, there’s a warmth about this book, a lack of pretension, that makes it approachable.

I can’t think of another book I’ve read with heroic characters who are truly good, yet without any unmitigated villain. Every character has something redeemable at their core, but you’re never confused about right and wrong. Auralia is the archetypal “free spirit”, handled much better here than in other books I’ve read. Auralia isn’t just a feather-headed dreamer; something about her is purposeful and even valiant. The ale boy seems to be pushed into events by happenstance, and yet it becomes apparent that something unseen moves him into place time and time again. Prince Cal-raven is admirable and yet has a certain humility which makes me admire him all the more. And then there is The Keeper, a shadowy presence that makes itself known in dreams . . .

Ultimately, Auralia’s Colors is a book about the relationship between faith and creativity. What are we here for, and how do we use our gifts? How does our artistic vision connect to and reflect the bigger picture? What do artists owe others, if anything? How do we respond when others reject the light that we’re revealing?

I don’t give stars or hearts or anything here at Badgerish.Net, but with this book I’m going to start awarding “Desert Island Keeper” status to books that I think are exceptional (and would want to have with me if I was stranded on a desert island). That way, people can find my top picks by clicking the tag. (Read more about Desert Island Keepers.)

Purchase Auralia’s Colors at Amazon.

“In this new account of Richard the Lionheart’s reign, John Gillingham scrutinizes the king’s fluctuating reputation over the centuries and provides a convincing revised interpretation. Neither a feckless knight-errant nor a neglectful king, Richard I was in reality a masterful and businesslike ruler.”

This isn’t a pop history book, it’s a carefully researched biography, so the tone isn’t pithy or humorous. But if what you want is a well-reasoned examination of this king who so powerfully impressed himself upon history in such a short time, this is it.

Richard I is often criticized for only being in England a mere six months out of his reign. He was often away protecting his French domains and on the Third Crusade. While this sounds like neglectful kingship to us, we have to remember that his frontiers were in France, and at that time especially, frontiers needed to be protected; and that the Crusades were considered by the people at the time a rescue mission, and all rulers were expected to go on Crusade. Richard may have been seen as shirking responsibility if he did not go. The expectations of a ruler then were quite different to what we expect from our leaders now.

This book explores the motivation behind Richard’s actions, and spends a good deal of time on his captivity. Richard was that active sort of person to whom everything seems to come easily, so that he inspired envy, and had a sense of humor and a knack for making his opponents feel inferior. So by the time he shipwrecked on his way back from the Third Crusade, he’d made enough enemies that he had to travel through the alps in secret. It wasn’t long before Duke Leopold of Austria took him captive, and a heavy ransom was required for his release. In Richard I, Gillingham examines the reasons behind this captivity, and shows that far from being an irresponsible king who foolishly abandoned his country, Richard had set up a well-organized government that would have functioned soundly in his absence, if he hadn’t been imprisoned unlawfully.

Purchase Richard I (Yale English Monarchs) at Amazon.

Le Rêve (The Dream in English) is not so much a story about religious fervor, but about Zola’s most important theme: heredity. In this case, how heredity plays out when the child is reared and educated in an environment that suppresses the negative traits of that heredity. Not having read much naturalist literature, and no Émile Zola, I chose the book that seemed most up my alley—a naturalist tale told within a fairy-tale framework. I chose to read a translation by Eliza E. Chase courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

The story opens with a little girl sheltering herself from the snow in the portal of a Cathedral dedicated to Saint Agnes. There under the protection of its roof, a statue of Agnes and carvings of the other maiden saints seem to watch over the girl through the cold night. Nearby, the home and workshop of an ecclesiastical embroiderer is nestled into the church architecture, and in the morning, the embroiderer’s wife, Hubertine, looks out and sees the child dying from the cold. Hubert and Hubertine take Angelique in and raise her, since they have no child of their own.

Angelique leads a sheltered existence in the embroiderer’s house, but doesn’t desire more than to go from her room, decorated with antique furniture and overlooking the garden and a wilderness called the Clos-Marie, to the embroidery workshop where she learns to create magnificent works in silk and gold thread. She rarely leaves the house, and so she learns little of the outside world. She grows up an innocent. Her only source of information about the world is “The Golden Legend”, an elaborately illustrated book on the lives of the saints, which she becomes obsessed with.

“How wonderful it all was! These saints and virgins! They are born predestined; solemn voices announce their coming, and their mothers have marvellous dreams about them.”

She grows up convinced that she has a special destiny, and when she is a teenager, she believes that she will marry a prince, as Saint Agnes went to Heaven to marry her prince, Jesus. So she begins to wait for him . . .

This book is written as a fairy-tale, but there are psychological undercurrents that indicate something else is really going on as Angelique’s dream unfolds. For one thing, Angelique is passionate and willful, her “freaks” (as Zola calls them) eventually being brought under control by her gentle upbringing and Hubertine’s patience. These fits are brought on by anything that makes Angelique feel a loss of control, including hindrances to her acts of charity (which will make her like the saints). She also displays obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (not to be confused with OCD); at one point, she tells Felicien, the young man she loves:

“‘We had a white cat, with yellow spots, which I painted white. It did very well for a while, but it did not last long. Listen a minute. Mother does not know it, but I keep all the waste bits of white silk, and have a drawer full of them, for just nothing except the pleasure of looking at them, and smoothing them over from time to time.’”

These hoarding behaviors are apparent as early as Angelique’s first day living with the Huberts; when they try to examine the book containing her personal records, they witness her first holy-terror tantrum. Zola makes clear later on that Angelique’s passions are hereditary, passed on from her mother, Sidonie Rougon, and in the context of the whole Les Rougon-Macquart saga, from her ancestress, Adelaïde Fouque.

Angelique grows and is reared with kindness and patience, and those passions are directed toward the saints first and finally to her prince, Felicien. Zola, though an atheist, does not seem to be criticizing religion specifically—the story is rife with nostalgia for the trappings and ritual of Catholicism—at most he indicates that the parents are to blame for sheltering her. This seems to be done more out of a desire to shield her from life’s harsh realities rather than to protect her from worldly influences—though Hubertine does fear that at school she “might not always have the best of associates”. It comes off as a sort of neglect, rather than an intentional strategy to cloister her, and Hubertine often admits to regret for it.

Though Zola portrays all the characters of the story sympathetically, unfortunately they come off flat and unrealistic. Why would Hubertine neglect to acquaint her daughter even with the neighbors in their small, highly Catholic village? No reason is really given. Why does Angelique try, for the space of about a chapter, to make Felicien think she dislikes him, even after she realizes she loves him? Well, she hasn’t confided in her adoptive mother about him, and she can’t tell her now, can she? Why can’t Felicien marry a poor embroideress? Not because she’s poor, but because his father regrets the loss of his late wife. Huh? Motivation is weak in this story, and the characters are like the figures on a Sunday School flannel-board: flat and moved around to make the story’s point.

There is some beautiful description in this book, and the descriptions of the embroiderer’s art alone made it worthwhile reading for me:

“It was for this unknown hero that, little by little, there seemed to grow on the white satin the beautiful great lilies, and the roses, and the monogram of the Blessed Virgin. The stems of the lilies had all the gracious pointings of a jet of light, whilst the long slender leaves, made of spangles, each one being sewed on with gold twist, fell in a shower of stars. In the centre, the initials of Mary were like the dazzling of a relief in massive gold, a marvellous blending of lacework and of embossing, or goffering, which burnt like the glory of a tabernacle in the mystic fire of its rays. And the roses of delicately-coloured silks seemed real, and the whole chasuble was resplendent in its whiteness of satin, which appeared covered almost miraculously with its golden blossoms.”

The detailed depiction (surely accurate considering Zola’s insistence on research and a scientific approach to writing) of the work-room and activities of the embroiderer alone make me glad I read the book. The embroidery itself seems to take on a mythic, magical quality.

Though the romance often feels forced and the characters’ motivations don’t always make sense, the scene in which Felicien chases the barefoot Angelique through the Clos-Marie at night and swears his love to her is genuinely sweet. There is some beautiful imagery in this story, and a small handful of touching moments, marred unfortunately by the unbelieveable characters.

However, the psychology that underpins the story is interesting. I’m not sure Zola fully understood the mental state behind the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, but the disorder has an interesting affect on the events of the tale. There is a point at which Angelique can choose to run away with Felicien and marry him, but she looks around her room, at all the white objects in it, and asks him to give her just a few moments. And as she sits there, the reader starts to realize that she is never going to leave, that her obsession with the color white, the possessions she’s hoarded, are holding her there. She justifies her decision to stay with a speech about obedience, but that moment of admission was there, the reader caught it:

“She continued to look round the room as if she had
forgotten some valuable object there, but could not tell what it was.
It was a regret, at first slight, but which rapidly increased and filled
her heart by degrees, until it almost stifled her. She could no longer
collect her thoughts. Was it this mass of whiteness that kept her back?”

Though Angelique believes her passions and the willfulness of her heredity have been conquered by her upbringing, in reality, her passions have merely been redirected. She is not a prostitute like her cousin Nana, and in the end she dies an innocent, but it is still her ambition, for goodness, for perfection, for sainthood, that killed her. In the end, heredity wins out.

This book was interesting but not enjoyable to read. In spite of the fairy-tale feel, there was a depressing, hopeless tone throughout, or rather, a sense that all of Angelique’s hopes are false. I believe Zola was genuine in his attempt to explore his themes through the medium of the fairy-story, and the undercurrent of hopelessness may have been Zola’s attempt to subvert the fairy-tale framework; to me the book was superficial and the ending especially felt less true to the human condition than most fairy-tales.

The Byzantine city of Constantinople was the heart of Christendom during late antiquity and the medieval period, yet it’s usually only studied in upper-level history courses. A city of legend and power, Constantinople was the center of the world. The Christians in the East had a different culture from those in the West, a different style of dress, a different church, and a more mystical way of thinking.

The Sheen on the Silk is the story of Anna Lascaris, who disguises herself as a eunuch called Anastasius Zarides, in order to work as a physician in Constantinople, where she hopes to discover how her fraternal twin brother Justinian was involved in the murder of Bessarion Comnenus, a leading figure in the fight for the Orthodox Church to maintain its sovereignty. The city of Constantinople was destroyed by Crusaders 70 years before the story begins, and the people are growing anxious as another Crusade is rumored to be on the horizon. As Anastasius, Anna must discover what happened to her brother, hiding her true identity and the secrets in her own past, while the web of political intrigue grows tighter around her.

The story is fast-paced, the mystery is pretty interesting as it develops, and the characters keep you guessing. They are all likeable, even the “villains”—many of the characters have understandable motivations or sympathetic reasons for the heinous things they sometimes do, and it’s difficult not to at least grudgingly admire them (though I’ll admit I found all the regret expressed over the death of one particular character confusing). Fortunately, the most likeable and admirable character in the story is Anna herself; she’s a woman of intelligence and skill, who is consistently honest and noble, refusing to lie to or flatter even those who have power over her.

The “woman-posing-as-a-man” plot device works better here than usual, because of Anna’s choice to pose as a eunuch; it’s convincing, since eunuchs are a separate class, physically different from either men or women. Because the reader has most likely never met a eunuch there’s a helpful lack of a point of comparison. This status allows Anna to have an advanced profession and be viewed by other characters as an adult, which would be impossible if she posed as a teenage boy.

The romance in The Sheen on the Silk is also handled well; it grows naturally out of the circumstances, and has an effect on the events of the story and their outcome. It’s not angsty or ridiculously dragged out; Giuliano and Anna get flickers of awareness of their feelings, but are not prone to examine them too closely. Giuliano’s attraction to a supposed eunuch is not played for laughs or even made much of beyond his bewilderment.

The only real disappointment in this book is that the setting is somewhat under-described. The historical place and time are used to create a unique political atmosphere, but the writing felt light on sensory detail. I can picture Venice easily, but Constantinople is new to me; I want to smell the spices in the air, see the Byzantine architecture crumbling and burnt before me, taste the olives, wine and cheese. There are points where the author touches on these details, but somehow Byzantium is not described with the richness I expected. Also, apart from Anna and Zoe Chrysaphes, a character meant to represent the soul of Byzantium, few of the characters are described in any detail that helped me to visualize them.

As for the religious aspects of the story, I didn’t feel the sense of mystery and the acceptance of the inscrutability of God that are characteristic of Orthodoxy. The person who best represents that openness in the book is Anna Lascaris herself, but the religious caste is portrayed as power-hungry and lacking faith in God (instead trusting in themselves to “help” God). Just one priest that represented the spirit of the Orthodox faith would have made the conflict between the Roman and Orthodox churches seem so much more meaningful. Only the characters who doubt that the church matters at all ask the important spiritual questions.

And important spiritual questions are asked, in a way that’s mostly satisfying and not preachy. The characters frequently revisit the question of God’s apparent silence, and in the case of Roman Bishop Palombara, this spiritual search rings especially true. Anna wonders how much the rituals and ordinances of a church matter to God himself, and whether such things are really worth dying for. Often she responds to spiritual questions with statements that I think are meant to be profound, but I usually found them confusing and modern-sounding. But ultimately, for Anna the matter comes down to an issue of freedom and sovereignty: Whether the beliefs of the church are true or not, it’s wrong for others to force the Byzantines to give up their convictions. I can agree completely.

Overall, the book’s strong points outweigh its flaws, and I found the story engrossing and the characters fascinating. If you’re looking for a historical novel with a realistic heroine and a tender, understated romance in an unusual setting, The Sheen on the Silk is a very good choice.

Purchase The Sheen on the Silk by Anne Perry.

This book is an ARC given to me by Marcia at The Printed Page.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25796513@N08/ / CC BY 2.0

Title: A Study in Scarlet, from The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet is the first Sherlock Holmes novel ever written, and the first Holmes story I’ve ever read (apart from a distracted scan of The Red-Headed League in elementary school). I was warned by multiple websites not to read it first, as it’s the earliest and not supposed to be the best, but I ignored the warnings; I like reading things in order. Though it isn’t perfect, it’s a fun read, and if it’s considered one of the worst Holmes stories, I’m definitely looking forward to the rest.

The story begins when Dr. John H. Watson, recovering from his stint in Afghanistan, is looking for a flatmate to share the burden of rent, and is introduced to a peculiar fellow by the name of Sherlock Holmes.

His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch, as I frequently had occasion to observe when I watched him manipulating his fragile philosophical instruments.

Watson spends the first couple chapters of the book trying to figure out just what it is Holmes does for a living, since his habits are so odd and his fields of study so disparate. Before long, he learns that Sherlock Holmes is the world’s only consulting detective, and that his odd assortment of visitors are actually clients seeking his assistance. For the first time, Holmes invites Watson to visit the scene of a crime with him, where they examine the body of a wild-looking man, bloody but somehow uninjured, and nearby, the word RACHE written on the wall.

This novel is a short one, more like a novelette. Holmes and Watson are fairly undeveloped as characters in Doyle’s mind at this point, and he made some obvious changes when he returned to them in The Sign of the Four (in just one example, in A Study in Scarlet, Watson makes a list of Holmes’ limitations, and describes his knowledge of literature and philosophy as “Nil”.) But the familiar characters are essentially there, and there’s a thrill in seeing Holmes come alive on the page for the very first time. I was surprised to find that a good portion of the story takes place in Salt Lake City, Utah, in a long flashback; I’ve heard that Doyle often made his stories a sort of history lesson, in which an historical event is described through the eyes of one of the characters.

Holmes is more cold and calculating than I expected in this story, and while I realize that’s one of his signature traits, I’m hoping his characterization will be rounder in future stories. Watson is a likeable narrator, who isn’t afraid to stand up to someone even as masterly as Holmes when he feels he should. I wasn’t disappointed in A Study in Scarlet, and I’m glad I read it first, since the stories can only get better from here.

***

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In all of McKillip’s works, the emotion of the story and the evocative language carry the reader along through a tapestry of dreams. Her characterization is both rich and archetypal, and there are funny moments as well as a sense of deep magic always flowing in the background. McKillip never neglects story, but in The Bell at Sealey Head, the story moves more to the fore than in some of her other novels. Lady Eglantyne is aged and bedridden, barely hanging onto life in her chambers in Aislinn House, an old house overlooking the port town of Sealey Head. While the townsfolk wonder what the new heir is like, Emma, a maid in Aislinn House, is able to open doors onto another Aislinn House, where Princess Ysabo moves through a series of daily rituals that she must perform without question, lest she face punishment. Ysabo walks daily up and down the stairs accomplishing seemingly meaningless tasks, feeding the crows last night’s leavings each morning, lighting candles, turning the blank pages of a book. The question “why” is rewarded with a slap to the face from a man whose name she doesn’t even know. Meanwhile, in Sealey Head, a mysterious guest has arrived at Judd Cauley’s inn, and everyone wonders who Ridley Dow is and why he is so curious about the daily tolling of the bell.

Reading The Bell at Sealey Head, there was a moment when I finally understood what novels are for. I can’t recall exactly which moment it was, but reading Judd Cauley’s thoughts, experiencing what he experienced, made me certain that the purpose of reading fiction is to know others intimately, to get inside the heart and soul of another and know them as we can know few others in this life. Someone said McKillip writes the same characters over and over, but the human spirit is endlessly faceted, and exploring those facets, over and over, can be rewarding in a way that coming up with new quirks and unique backstory isn’t. Her characters are archetypes, yes, but it’s not because she can’t think of anything new to say; rather it’s that she never runs out of things to say about people, and certain types draw her back over and over with the questions and puzzles they present. I think this is where movies fail and books succeed: there is no other media in which language can be used so precisely to explore the inner landscape of another person, as well as the external events that effect that landscape. It’s like living another life, for a few hours or days.

While the townsfolk of Sealey Head plan parties and make matches, the rituals in that other Aislinn House go on and on, and it serves as the inner landscape to the story itself. If Sealey Head is the story’s body, Ysabo’s world is its mind. It would be easy to say that the rituals Ysabo moves through in a neverending cycle are a commentary by the author on the vanity of meaningless religious practice, imposed upon us by men and tradition, and perhaps that’s so. But I kept thinking of the way we sometimes accept meaningless ritual in our everyday lives, how we wake up to an alarm, shower, convey ourselves to our destinations, then sit in our cubicles or classrooms busying ourselves with pointless tasks for reasons we don’t fully understand, made use of by a system set into place long ago. I think many people’s lives are not that different from Ysabo’s, and that our rituals can be similarly imposed upon us by a mysterious source or mindless acceptance that “it must be good because everyone says so” or “it’s always been this way”.

Of course, narcissists, control-freaks and powers-that-be sometimes use ritual to mind-numbing effect upon others. Often the ritual in The Bell at Sealey Head reminded me of the controlling spouse who demands all labels in the kitchen cupboards face forward, or that the floor behind the refrigerator not harbour a speck of dust. Such arbitrary, whimsical rules are a prison for the person who must perform the rituals day after day, until their own thoughts are bound by this control mechanism. The constant cycling of Ysabo’s ritual, going up and down winding stairs, feeding the crows, lighting a candle, locking a door, echoes the misery of a mind locked in its own meaningless rituals, trapped in the prison of obsessive compulsive disorder, in which the rituals must be performed over and over again without question lest evil befall the individual. The “body” that is the town of Sealey Head goes about its business, unaware of the cycling torment of its inner world, as the individual may go about their business giving no indication of their own inner turmoil.

But The Bell at Sealey Head is not a heavy book. It’s more story-driven than McKillip’s books usually are, but the writing is still beautiful, the characters still rich and the magic still deep. The plot of this book is fun and the relationships are charming; The Bell at Sealey Head has a light tone that makes for a slightly different sort of read than McKillip’s other works, though her signature use of repeated motifs is still present. Mostly though, the characters and McKillip’s humor—more apparent in this book than some of her others—really drew me in. Highly recommended.