The Romantic Armchair Traveller

Afghanistan: Beyond All Frontiers by Elizabeth Darrell

 

Novels that marry historical fiction with sweeping historical romance seem never to go entirely out of fashion. Its mix of high emotion, graphic violence, and 19th century colonial exploits makes Beyond All Frontiers by Elizabeth Darrell (also known as Emma Drummond, Edna Dawes, Eva Dane) a juicy example. Originally conceived before the late 1970s US and Soviet interventions in Afghanistan but published at the height of the Soviet occupation in 1983 (author’s introduction), one might expect super-power conflicts to colour attitudes in Beyond All Frontiers. Instead, historical Russian concerns get short but sympathetic shrift as Darrell gives her hero a Russo-English parentage and focuses on the consequences of British military aggression in the region. Lessening its effectiveness, however, history in Beyond All Frontiers is one-sided, relying so overwhelmingly on Western primary sources that the native populations are reduced to cartoonish bit players. In consequence, although the external plot poses as a critique of blundering imperialism, the execution portrays Afghans and Indians as menacing shadow forces whose cruelty and unpredictability are impervious to civilized Western codes. Despite the emphasis on its sober historical trappings, Beyond All Frontiers works best as a romantic melodrama.

 

1837. After being brought up by a spinster aunt in England, seventeen-year old Charlotte Scott cannot wait to rejoin her longed-for family in the northern territories of India. Sadly, on arrival she finds her parents as disenchanted with her as she is with them. Society on the remote East India Company station is ruled by mores and strictures she does not understand, and her coming-out is a disaster. Even her beloved brother, Tom, seems ashamed. While his best friend, Lieutenant Richard Lingarde of the Royal Engineers expresses interest in the mind behind her mousy exterior, Charlotte only has eyes for the dashing, daunting Major Colley Duprés.

As Charlotte’s personal life falls apart, the British invade Afghanistan and occupy Kabul. There, the biggest test of her life awaits Charlotte. But just as happiness beckons, a fateful event alters British fortunes. And after a march of terror through the snowy mountain passes between Kabul and Jalalabad nothing will ever be the same for Charlotte or anyone she ever held dear.

 

The energy in Beyond All Frontiers is infectious, and I started out highly entertained by the colourful and dramatic storytelling. While the omniscient narrator has a tendency to tell rather than show political and military developments, interspersing page-long explanatory summaries here and there, the plot’s concentration on points of high drama ensures the action moves swiftly forward. Historical fiction lovers may feel a shiver as they vicariously live through the vividly depicted trials and tribulations of the British contingent in a particularly bloody chapter of colonial history. And romance readers able to digest a hero whose behaviour today would be considered non-politically correct receive their fill, too, for although the ending is not of the triumphant type, the Happily Ever After is still piquant in an unpredictable way; Beyond All Frontiers compares well with the much meatier historical romances popular in the 1980s.

However, if like me you also expect some insight into Afghanistan and its people or at the very least a creditable look at shared history in a novel that centres on the First Anglo-Afghan War, the uppermost response may become frustration and a bad taste in the mouth. I explain why further down in this post.

First I would like to discuss the characters, because they are the reason I stayed with Beyond All Frontiers despite my problems with specific aspects of the story. Darrell creates protagonists who possess wonderful vitality and blaze off the page. Deeply flawed, they also evolve in interesting ways, and one or two of the characters who start out least likeable are eventually revealed to have more to their personalities than is evident at first. Thus Felicia Scott, Charlotte’s mother, grew into the character who most intrigued me and for whom I ended up feeling perhaps the most sympathy. I would have liked to see more of her, preferably through other eyes than Charlotte’s. Colley, too, is an ambiguous character who I felt needed more independent “on-screen” time to be fully explained and explored.

Charlotte is a heroine I did not always like but also a dynamic character with lots of personality. When she is introduced to the story, she is seventeen years old and full of illusions. Awkward and insecure, she is made endearingly real through her yearning to be loved and approved and her gauche attempts to fit in and impress. Her dramatic reaction when everything goes horribly wrong seemed quite in tune with her age, naivety, and sense of being unwanted – “a parcel”. In these early parts of the book I found the author’s portrayal of her honest and poignant and the outcome of her journey seemed refreshingly unpredictable. Charlotte grows and develops continuously throughout the six years spanned by the novel and so, because she is never a bland or static character, retained my interest even when she exasperated me. Her self-centredness and unforgiving nature seemed understandable in an immature girl trying so hard to earn affection or at least admiration and yet being made to feel a failure. But I had to take the narrator’s enthusiastic championship of her intelligence with a humorous dose of salt, despite being told that “her quick intelligence enabl[ed] her to follow the extremely complicated diplomatic nuances that were making nations nervy and suspicious of each other”.

Later on, after hard life lessons cause Charlotte to mature and to reform her attitude to the people around her, that self-centredness I mentioned develops into a self-righteousness that gradually began to erode my appreciation for her. The final straw was when she – far from a saint herself, often seeming affronted when people don’t feel sorry enough for her – exhorts her brother to take “his belt to his wife”, whom she considers “selfish” and “spoilt” (p. 443 in my edition, Severn House hardcover, 2002). In the end, to me, her redeeming feature was her capability to acknowledge her mistakes and pick herself up and humbly try again.

The narrator often seems under the impression that Charlotte and Richard Lingarde are the only competent people in India or Afghanistan. In subjects ranging from diplomacy to medicine, these two correct and instruct friends, colleagues, and professionals. But Richard seems cursed like Cassandra to have his warnings and predictions disbelieved, always powerless to prevent catastrophe. Also like Cassandra, although the circumstances are different, he is driven into (temporary) madness. Unfortunately, he behaved too much like a self-imposed martyr for me to find his suffering tragic or affecting. For more than a year, he drinks himself into stupor, shoots anything that moves, plans revenge “on everyone he could think of”, and calls his wife a slut and a selfish, heartless creature. Pot, meet kettle. His orgy in destructive self-pity makes the original cause for these excesses pale by comparison. It also compounded my unease about my and the narrator’s divergent opinions about what constitutes justifiable grounds for anger/punishment (a childhood incident involving a whip and a gypsy, p. 61).

Another aspect that drew nervous reactions from me was the language of sexual domination. On one side, Charlotte is afraid of marriage, keenly aware that marriage turns a woman into her husband’s legal possession, thus changing the balance of any prior friendship. On the other, she longs for sexual mastery by the man she loves. At one point she justifies her “overriding desire to surrender” to temptation by seemingly taking the attitude that marital infidelities are the norm rather than the exception in the society of which she is part, and reasoning that women are “weak creatures” who find it nearly impossible to resist other men’s attentions when deprived of their own husbands: “she would be a willing victim” and “It had probably been merely what all the other women had felt”. When around the same time the narrator describes as “indecorous” the women who (unlike Charlotte), on a long, arduous journey, are cooling their bare feet in a stream, I muttered a long litany that included several repetitions of the word “hypocritical”. As for the man who loves her, he wants “a demanding wanton”, “a mistress as well as a wife, a submissive tormentor, a girl to whom he could be a passionate master besides a tender guardian [...] who could make him conqueror rather than mentor.” See what I mean about 80s-style romance?

The emphasis the story places on physical beauty and attraction took me aback. Looks may have been of great significance for a woman whose main career would be an advantageous marriage, but the implications in the story go well beyond historical realities. In a scene that discusses Tom Scott’s little son, for example, Tom is put off by the boy’s looks and sighingly implies that he would be more inclined to be affectionate toward his son if the boy were as attractive as another character’s toddler child. That parent drops a few consoling words about children improving with age, but his internal thoughts indicate satisfaction at having had a child who has been beautiful since birth. Even more remarkably, each and every time we encounter them we are given long and detailed descriptions of the two women acknowledged to be the most beautiful in society. Countless paragraphs are devoted to making comparisons between them, and to the excitement the opportunity to compare them side by side engenders among the characters (“at last, the matter would be settled”). Yet when one of them, Felicia Scott, who is “nearing forty” and retains “the shape of a girl”, is seen by Charlotte in the privacy of the former’s bedroom, without makeup and dressed in a lacy nightgown, the tearing down of beauty's façade does not show Felicia as human but laughable: “the effect was almost vulgar; the lace confection she wore gave a touch of the bizarre to a woman desperately holding on to her youth [...] Her beautiful mama did not exist”. And when a character who has been determined to reject his child sees that child for the first time, he forgets his resolutions and takes the toddler to his heart because “All this time he had pictured a small monster of some kind – a grotesque female picture of [...], or a miniature of that blotched-faced travesty [...] But Anna was beautiful, entrancing”. Great care is also taken to describe Colley's clothing every time he appears on the scene. And, as my final example, in one of several instances of clunky exposition through dialogue (these disappear later in the book) Lady Lingarde remarks to her son, Richard: “You know that I have always been absurdly and outrageously fond of you. But despite a mother’s prejudice, no female has ever denied you are irresistibly attractive, destined for brilliance, and virile to the point of a woman’s desperation.”

How thrilled I would have been if the minute observations about dress had been extended to the physical setting, too. Instead, there is no texture to the Afghan and Indian landscapes. One reads about rivers, mountainous terrain, icy snows, busy bazaars, and provincial towns, but descriptions tend to create only generic pictures: “Spring came. The snows melted to swell rivers that rushed down the mountains into the valley. It grew lush and beautiful once more, with blossoms on the fruit trees scenting the air that was clear and pure.” I cannot recall a single instance of a plant or wild animal being identified by name, but rarely is the colour of a gown omitted.

This brings me back to my early comment about the novel’s rendering of Afghanistan.

At first glance, it may seem an outrageous claim about a book that painstakingly dedicates so much space and effort to detailing the First Anglo-Afghan War that there is hardly anything to be learned in it about Afghanistan or its people (or indeed India, for all that a couple of hundred pages take place there, too).

But what we are shown is really only British policies and attitudes and the pleasures and hardships of British soldiers and civilians. Not one Afghan with a speaking role makes more than a fleeting appearance in the book. Of the ones we meet, none are shown in a light that is positive, admirable, virtuous, or independent. The only Indian character lives entirely at the mercy of a British character. Once that relationship becomes an impossibility, it signals the character’s exit.

Every Afghan action seems merely a reaction to something done or said by a British character or authority, and Afghan motivations are left to be enigmas unless one accepts British interpretations of them. For example, the surrender of Dost Mohammad Khan, a key historical personage frequently referred to in the book although he appears in the story only indirectly, comes out of the blue. It is fine for the protagonists and the British civil and military authorities to be stunned by this unexpected turn of events, but Dost Mohammad’s reasons for the surrender also remain entirely unexplained to the reader. The omission is symptomatic of the novel’s treatment of everything and anything Afghan.

It is true that none of this is atypical of popular fiction stories that place the principal protagonists in a country not their own and weave the plots around tensions arising from this situation. Moreover, unabashed popular fiction that makes no excuses for making entertainment its sole reason for existing is something I regularly read and enjoy. When, however, a novel purports to present a serious and measured interpretation or explanation of something, it is asking to be judged not merely on what it is (entertainment/art) but on what it says (messages).

And that is where Beyond All Frontiers took a nosedive. I find it astounding that the story was written thirty years or more after WWII. Quite apart from the “Rule Britannia” opinions of its nineteenth-century British characters, the blinkered attitude exuded by the narrative itself is disconcertingly at odds with both the tone and amount of research poured into the historical setting. Pointedly phrased, the history in Beyond All Frontiers has a human, three-dimensional face: British; and an inhuman, one-dimensional: brown.

Afghans, Sikhs, Persians, and the various tribal groups of Central Asia take on uniform, crude and brutal traits without ethnic or national distinguishers. The sepoys who swell British Army ranks receive only slightly less hysterical treatment. Consider the descriptions applied: “barbaric cutthroats”, “rabble of [...] brutes” (40); “cruel, arrogant [facial] features”, “fanatical shrieks” (57); “Persians were quite as viciously barbaric as Indians” (62); “greedy” (89); “treacherous”, “murderous and bloody” (90); “lazy” (93); “cruel faces” (105); “rabble of Persians” (107); “viciously cruel and tyrannical” (164); “[an army’s ceremonial parade is] ‘exciting, if one cares for the wail of native bands and the smell of elephants’” (167); “maniacal fighters”, “supreme insolence” (170); “these people did not hesitate to mutilate and torture others in ways that made an Englishman sick with revulsion” (197); “treacherous villains” (210); armed forces are “ragged” (256); “cruel downward tug of [a] fleshy mouth”, “a man of few virtues” (304); “a personality verging on insanity” (386); “‘at a whim, can abandon fine feelings and indulge in cruel practices that defy all pretence of sanity’” (394); “a tide of petrified brown faces that saw nothing, heard nothing but the evidence of their own panic” (419); tell “cruel lies” (440); “cruel in the extreme” (446); “enjoying the discomfort of the infidel women” (446).

“Eastern delights and sensuality” become titillating subjects that are marvelled at or scorned without any qualms about stereotyping. “The Sikh leader’s own erotic interest in females – to the extent of having a corps of mounted amazons to perform for his pleasure – was famed over India, yet the haughty covered women of the British who had their menfolk bowing before them, earned his great admiration. It was as big a mystery as the scarlet jacket!” (165); “her hands were moving over his body in ways that only women of the East understood” (230); (my italics) “The ladies of Kabul found the pale-skinned gentlemen in scarlet coats quite as beautiful as their conquerors found them and, the Afghan men being overwhelmingly homosexual, seized every opportunity to enjoy the delightful bounty while it lasted” (220); (my italics) “was strongly built and handsome in the aggressive and somewhat dissipated manner of his race. The features were bold and striking, but already showed signs of cruelty, self-indulgence, and sensualism” (307).

 

Warning: plot spoiler

In the above context of sex and race, here is an episode that particularly disturbed me. In consequence of the degradations he perceives he endured at the hands of a captor, a principal character’s longtime mistress is rejected in the blink of an eye. Throughout the story it has been stressed how crucial she has been to his sanity and well-being, but his experience in captivity suddenly causes him to feel “an involuntary revulsion so strong that he had to stand away from her”. Why? The mistress and the captor are not known to each other or related in any way. Only one reason is directly stated: “He stood staring at her beautiful face, her slender perfection of body, her miniature dusky feet that had aroused him sexually on so many nights, and saw only an echo of [the captor] in her dark eyes and brown skin” (351). Four pages later, the same day, he notices that a British female protagonist’s skin is “beautifully pale in colour” (355) and admires her face which “contained no hint of Eastern passion, no expression of sadistic pleasure, no promise of erotic mystery”. Note that – in addition to the automatic parallel drawn between perversion, eastern peoples, and sex – until the time he summarily dismisses his mistress, he has expressly dwelled on the fact that he has never experienced anything from her but kindness, devotion, and soothing pleasure.

End of plot spoiler

 

 Like Patricia Maxwell/Jennifer Blake with Bride Of A Stranger, Darrell too fails to draw any distinction between her character’s opinions and the general narrative. The particular appeal of light skin colour to Western protagonists may be an accurate reflection of 19th-century attitudes, but paired with the numerous negative associations with “brown skin” and a complete absence of challenging commentary in a book released in 1983, I felt plunged into The Twilight Zone.

Any compliments about regional people are derogatory: “Despite his severe rule, he was as just as any sovereign one finds in this part of the world” (276). At other times, even that effort is dropped: “ [he] followed the trend of eastern rulers by living surrounded by opulence whilst his subjects starved in squalor.” (305).

A look at how British characters, in their turn, are represented reveals an interesting paradox. Keep in mind that Beyond All Frontiers conscientiously portrays how the British made a bungle of the situation in Afghanistan, that its hero is the sharpest critic of the war, and that it includes a scene depicting torture of prisoners by a British character. Here are some descriptions of British individuals and groups: “noble” (62); “inexhaustible patience and moral courage” (105); “had been forced into absolute invasion” (127); “courageous tenacity” (135); “chivalry”, “marched out bravely” (137); a Sikh army trained by Europeans is “therefore, quite disciplined” (164); “laying down his life for his country”, “gallantry in the face of the enemy”, “brave nonchalance”(175); “mesmerizing the simple natives into slavering submission” (101); “helpless captive of cruel sadistic tribesmen” (62); when the British ice-skate for pleasure, “the watching Afghans gazed with awe upon such wondrous and magical skill” (220); “fighting now with gritty determination under leadership inspired by outrage and true British wrath over ungentlemanly practices” (431); “retained an air of command which, despite the fact that he was a prisoner in great danger of his life, greatly impressed the Afghans” (440); “The garrison had orders to remain until Shah Soojah effectively ruled his people, and this the Amir was making no attempt to do [...] With their characteristic calmness, the British simply heaved a sigh and resigned themselves to doing their duty for a little longer” (290). “‘They [the Afghans] are barbarians. We are Christians’” (260).

What did Elizabeth Darrell intend to say with Beyond All Frontiers? ‘We bungled, but did it nobly; “they” sort of won, but foully’? ‘Don’t mess with people you don’t understand’? Did she truly mean to express some of the other messages I have taken away from the story? I suspect not. Or rather, I hope not. I am assuming her concern was not with articulating the point of view of the Afghans, but to shed light on a monumental but overlooked episode in history as experienced by the British. And indeed, the story successfully conveys how the British perceived the unfolding events. In taking this approach, however, the author also chose to become a mouthpiece, and that causes a host of moral and ethical tangles. Any distinction between views held by a particular character and those of the omniscient narrator are blurred by the absence of contextual commentary, by a lack of characters or events or situations that challenge or analyse or demolish prejudice and discriminatory messages. A partisan view of history is one thing; demonising and vilifying quite another.

 

Thank you to Misfit of At Home With A Good Book And The Cat for consistently finding and blogging about buried historical fiction treasures. While this one fizzled for me, many others have become keepers.

This is my first entry in the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

England: The Sister Of The Angels by Elizabeth Goudge

 

The Sister Of The Angels was first published in 1939, and the shadow cast by the outbreak of the Second World War is felt in that year’s Coward McCann hardcover back blurb: “Perhaps we are living now in a time when humanity is locked away from happiness [...] we, too, must believe that ‘bad days do pass by’ [...] You cannot read The Sister Of The Angels without being sure that, in spite of everything, the Christmas bells will always ring.” In writing the novel, however, Elizabeth Goudge cast back to a gentler time, earlier in the century, when “pumpkin-shaped horse buses” still plied the streets of her fictional West Country cathedral city. The subject of The Last Judgment does makes an appearance, but since The Sister Of The Angels is a bright and optimistic Christmas tale for both young and old, it is mainly for the purpose of illuminating a hopeful theme: rebirth.

 

Christmas is one month away and eleven-year old Henrietta joyously prepares to welcome home her irresponsible author father, Gabriel Ferranti, for one of his rare visits. But when he arrives, bringing excitement into the household of Henrietta and her adoptive grandparents and cousin Hugh Anthony, he seems to be keeping troubling secrets from her and Grandfather, Canon Fordyce. They seem to have something to do with the heart-brokenly weeping stranger she and Ferranti glimpsed in the Cathedral crypt.

The recently discovered chapel in the crypt is Henrietta’s favourite part of the cathedral. Aglow with mediaeval wallpaintings created by leprous monk Nicolas de Malden, who died before the work was completed, it fires the artistic imagination of Henrietta. Aspiring to become a painter herself she has firm ideas about how Nicolas intended the fourth, unfinished, wall to look. But one day her drawing for the wall disappears. As Christmas Eve approaches, the lives of many will be changed by the secret of the chapel crypt.

 

The simple mystery in The Sister Of The Angels will be transparent to any adult. But the reading delight comes from the fresh, poetic telling of a story that expounds on the comforting belief that “whatever our sins there is good in all” (p. 53). While Goudge spins her plot around the experiences and observations of an eleven-year old girl, she also elevates the narrative through a heart-warming brand of kindly compassion and humorous perceptiveness. Some books have the power to charm persons of every age, revealing new layers as the reader matures. To me, The Sister Of The Angels is one of these treasures.

Before I proceed to a few of the particulars that made the novel so enjoyable for me, here are a few thoughts about how the book deals with its religious content. One of the more tiresome conventions of faith-based narratives is the didacticism and ignorance of versimilitude they frequently resort to in delivering their messages. It is one thing to be content to apply one’s missionary zeal to preaching to the choir, another to fail to recognise the story appeal spiritual themes can have outside their obvious audience. Although Christian faith gently suffuses The Sister Of The Angels like sunlight the nave of Torminster Cathedral, Goudge does not attempt to evangelise. For example, a discussion about integrity arises from an examination of what it means to be an artist, not what it means to be a Christian. Goudge squarely faces human follies and foibles, and, eschewing bombastic declarations, trusts the actions of her characters to enable readers to decide for themselves what is meaningful to take away. To some, that may be the ways in which the miracle in the manger continues to renew souls; to others, that personal redemption is always within reach for the genuinely contrite.

As I progressed through The Sister Of The Angels I was strongly struck by the impression that this is a novel for and about artists. Henrietta, Nicholas de Malden, and another key character are all painters. Henrietta’s father is a poet. The most important locations are the chapel crypt with its murals, and an artist’s studio. The plot revolves around art and artistic creation, and the book’s art-filled finale is set to music. This theme extends to the book's physical pages, which contain thirteen black and white illustrations by C. Walter Hodges. The obvious parallel between God the Creator and human artistry aside, there is deep respect for the act of creation and art’s ability to transform character and sustain, connect, and comfort souls. In fact, perhaps the most interesting argument the story makes is that an artist who chooses not to be true to his/her art  endangers his/her ability “to distintinguish between good and evil” (p. 88). Nevertheless, even in serious or passionate moments the touch of wit that keeps the omniscient narrator’s voice light is never absent for long. “The painter, as he mixed his water colors and began his portrait, had upon his face that set, almost locked look that she had seen upon her father’s face when he was writing, upon Grandfather’s when he was praying and Hugh Anthony’s when he was studying cricket scores” (p. 117).

Goudge deftly encapsulates the essence of a character: Henrietta’s father is “unstable as water”, and to the solicitous maid Sarah “affliction of any sort was always a pleasure”. Even name choices can suggest more than is provided by actual description: the elderly sisters who keep a sweetshop and take in a poor lodger are called Mary and Martha. The character who won my heart, however, was Grandfather Fordyce, humble, generous, always seeing the good in everyone and having more than once had his heart broken because of it. As for the precocious, sensible Henrietta, her clear-eyed innocence reminded me slightly of Lucy in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, although the former’s version of The Wardrobe is a cathedral crypt that leads to another world only in the manner it impacts the imagination and soul; instead of meeting actual fauns and talking beavers, Henrietta's animals and angels are strictly the result of artistic endeavours. She is a deal more opinionated than young Lucy, too: “It was selfish [...] not to want to be helped. Selfish and proud” (p. 55). On one or two occasions a distinctly old-fashioned tone that to me translated as syrupiness made descriptions of Henrietta too precious for my taste. Hugh Anthony, a year younger than Henrietta, is portrayed as if it is a given that readers will agree he is charming. On the contrary, I usually found his smugness insufferable and could readily envision him growing into a tyrant!

The different treatment and expectations regarding Hugh Anthony and Henrietta mirror the Edwardian period in which the story is set but, it seems, also reflect Goudge’s own sensibilities and personal experiences. She appears to have mined her life in other ways, too, for The Sister Of The Angels. "Tormister" brings to mind Tor Hill and the book's cover illustration is clearly an adaptation of Penniless Porch (Gate), both places in the Somerset cathedral city of Wells, where she was born and lived until the age of ten or eleven; her father served as a clergyman at the cathedral. Paired with her intimate familiarity with the area, Goudge's poetic style gives the confident descriptions of the snow-blanketed world of Torminster a wondrous, fairytale beauty.

It was only after finishing The Sister Of The Angels that I learned that Elizabeth Goudge set several novels in Torminster, incorporating different mixes of recurring characters. Happily, the pleasure of reading The Sister Of The Angels does not in any measure depend on having read those other works. For those interested, they include A City Of Bells (1936) and Henrietta’s House, also published as The Blue Hills (1942). The only book by Goudge I had previously attempted was The White Witch, a historical novel set during the English Civil War. Unfortunately, I struggled with it, feeling the prose was dense and the story sluggishly paced. This was many years ago, however, and after my lovely experience with The Sister Of The Angels I am going to give The White Witch another chance. I will also look for Goudge's bestselling Green Dolphin Country, which catapulted her to fame when the manuscript won a prize and was filmed as Green Dolphin Street (trailer) with Lana Turner, Donna Reed, and Van Heflin.

As all booklovers know, some books are much bigger than their page count (in this case, fewer than 150 pages). To me, The Sister Of The Angels belongs among these. I do believe I shall institute a tradition of re-reading the novel each Christmas.

 

Excerpt

(Coward McCann, Inc. hardcover, 1939, pages 30-1):

“Outside in the street, carrying the lovely chrystanthemums that Grandmother grew in the greenhouse to the glory of God and because it was cheaper to grow flowers for the floral decorations than to buy them, [Henrietta and Grandfather] felt very happy.

The Cathedral city of Torminster looked very lovely under its mantle of snow. Though it was built in the valley, it seemed suddenly to have become, thought Henrietta, a city in the mountains. The slanting, snow-covered roofs, all of different heights and shapes, belonging to houses that had grown up like flowers one by one through the centuries, looked like tumbled mountain slopes, and the cold keen air was like the rarefied air one breathes high up in the sky. The sun was bright in a dome of blue crystal, and the shadows were violet-tinted like the shadows in mountain crevasses.

But the crowning glory was the Cathedral itself. It rose up like some great enchanted mountain, its three towers soaring up into the sky as though they did not mean to stop until they had pierced the crystal dome and come face to face with the rainbow-encircled throne that was built above it. Every ledge and pinnacle, every carved angel and saint and demon, was outlined with frosted snow, and the Virgin and Child over the west door were so covered with it that it looked as though an armful of Christmas roses had been dropped over them, the blossoms lodging in the folds of the Virgin's robe and the outstretched hands of the Child.

‘I wish we could bring him inside,’ said Henrietta, worried. ‘I'm afraid he'll catch cold out there.’

She had once seen, or thought she had seen, the carved Child laugh and clap his hands, and ever since then she could not get it out of her head that he was real.

‘Look,’ said Grandfather comfortingly, ‘he is inside, too.’”

 

Antarctica: Blood And Ice by Robert Masello

Novels set in Antarctica are few and far between, and so even the back cover’s mention of vampires did not dissuade me from reading Robert Masello’s romantic thriller, Blood And Ice. Unexpectedly, the paranormal element plays only a sporadic role in a book that centres on the ice-encased mystery of a nineteenth-century love story. Unfortunately, engaging though the premise and descriptions of everyday life on an Antarctic research station are, Blood And Ice mistakes research-heavy backstory for plot development. Unless armchair travel excites, the thrills may fail to materialise.

 

His girlfriend in a coma from which it is unlikely she will ever wake up, eco-travel journalist, Michael Wilde, eventually crawls out of depression to accept a four-week assignment in Antarctica. On his first dive he makes a sensational find that promises to transform his career: entombed in an underwater glacier is a perfectly preserved, chained couple.

Cut out of the ice and taken to a saltwater tank at the research station, the bodies are left to thaw in a controlled environment. But when Michael and some station workers return to check on them, the couple has disappeared. So have a sled and team of dogs. And that is when nightmarish incidents begin to haunt the station.

Is what has happened a miracle or a curse? After the horrors they have endured, Eleanor Ames and Sinclair Copley know only that even at the ends of the earth there is no safe haven for people like them. No one can be trusted – perhaps not even the person you love.

 

Labelled a thriller, Blood And Ice suffers from an enormous handicap: the back cover and prologue remove any surprise from the single twist on which the entire novel bases its mystery and suspense. As I moved on into the first chapter I reasoned that this element must be only a teaser to draw readers in, and that surely there would be so much more to the plot.

There is not.

Basically, Blood And Ice is a sleekly written travelogue that alternates with flashbacks to a nineteenth-century romance between a British nurse and a ne’er-do-well aristocrat-turned-officer, then remembers it is supposed to be a paranormal thriller and throws in a few random, lightning-brief episodes that hardly make a dent in the leisurely atmosphere but manage to blur the traditional distinction between vampires and zombies. There is no final climax, simply a predicament that quietly melts into a problem-free, mundane ending.

Now, I assiduously avoid horror and graphic crime fiction, so – coupled with the breathtakingly vivid scenery that is close to everything I could wish for from a novel set in the Antarctic – the low suspense factor and high romantic quotient in Blood And Ice should have been a welcome relief. Indeed, if you enjoy Agatha Christie mysteries, you have probably experienced chills similar to those I received from this book. Also, if you like Nicholas Sparks, the sadder aspects of the romantic elements may appeal to you. But if you require plot and dramatic tension from your mystery and expect emotion and conflict from your romance, you may be as disappointed as I was.

And yet it all started so well. The riveting, heart-breaking prologue convinced me I was in for an extraordinary adventure with tragic but compelling protagonists – Eleanor and Sinclair – I was prepared to follow anywhere. Then I read the following chapters and although I was still pleased with the catchy, cinematically visual writing style that makes the pages fly by, it was somewhat less emotionally gripping to learn how the modern protagonist, Michael, is given a clean bill of health by his doctor and his dentist, what his flight to the southernmost tip of Chile is like, and how the Antarctic Coast Guard cutter he then boards works. Scrupulously researched but often irrelevant details like these and flashbacks to a Sinclair who seems to differ from the initial impression I had of him consume the first one hundred pages of the book. But at least, I thought cheerily as I turned to chapter ten, Michael has finally arrived in Antarctica, so the plot can resume.

Wrong.

Nothing enriches setting like the texture added by meaningfully layered research. Robert Masello opts for a liberal interpretation of “meaningful”; my impression is that he could not bear to leave unused any information uncovered by his admirably dedicated research. Excise the extraneous facts which are never used for any story purpose such as the date when gaslight was introduced in a certain London district, the step-by-step building of a snow shelter, and the operation of a now defunct whaling station, and the novel probably shrinks by a hundred pages. But that is not even close to the two or three hundred pages of padding provided by backstory. (The full novel in my 2010 Bantam mass market paperback edition is 675 pages long.)

It is very nicely and often entertainingly written backstory, but as chapter after chapter went by, I began scratching my head, wondering when the plot would come out and play. Two hundred pages in, the ice block is salvaged, and the two separate timelines converge. Still no suspense. Another hundred pages later the next plot point sort of pulls the actual story into motion. Meanwhile, the flashbacks to the nineteenth century – which have provided the foundation for the mystery – continue intermittently, now no longer contributing anything but a meandering background tapestry. Any twists and surprises from this point onward have boiled down to a simple, will anyone die, and if so, who and when?

Moreover, since the pacing and mood continue as they have, placid and a little melancholy, the occasional insertions of action scenes are like blips on a blank screen. The story and plot structure exhibit not the slightest understanding of dramatic tension or build-up. The chills come not from scary suspense but from occasional paragraphs of gory descriptions presumably meant to highlight the callous cruelty of humans, or, in a few cases, to illustrate the look of a dead – or perhaps undead – person. These passages tend to be brief but graphic; the ones involving animals are undeniably affecting. However, since the incidents are not developed into any coherent theme or message about human interaction with nature, for example, they become merely additional ingredients thrown without method into an overstuffed, undercooked stew.

At its core, Blood And Ice is a love story spiced up with a few paranormal elements, not the other way around. After the wonderful prologue, I eagerly looked forward to what I expected would be the equally vivid rendering of the events that had led Sinclair and Eleanor to that desperate point. After all, Eleanor works under Florence Nightingale and Sinclair belongs to the 17th Lancers, a cavalry regiment that participated in an infamous battle of the Crimean War. Instead, I received perhaps my biggest disappointment with the book: I honestly doubt their relationship and path to the purgatorial destiny awaiting them in the prologue could have been told in a more long-winded, pointless manner. Here is yet another author who could benefit from studying how current romances employ external and internal conflict to deliver an involving, book-length love story.

What I did appreciate very much is that both characters, as a matter of course, observe the then prevailing standards of decency for unmarried couples. Later on, various circumstances that conspire against them as well as the tone of the storytelling continue to ensure that there are no sensual scenes. In this respect the relationship is very innocent and noble.

Another refreshing aspect, one that sets Blood And Ice apart from the common crop of vampire stories and chiller-thrillers, is the absence of evil, whether supernatural or human. The author gives the various principal protagonists motivations that set them on an antagonistic course, but while each of them has flaws and weaknesses, none of them are genuine villains. The poignancy of this tense set-up was one of the most interesting parts of the story, and I wish the author would have allowed it a lot more scope to develop the character dynamics and explore the complexities of the choices and loyalties involved.

As matters stand, there is minimal character development. The solicitous Sinclair of the prologue seemed to me a very different person from the next glimpse given of him, as a self-centered gambler with little thought for anything but dissipation and glory until something Very Bad happens to him in the latter half of the book. The character growth I assumed would account for the discrepancy, never came. His personality remains static. An early attempt to show him in a better light rather more clearly underscores the anger that always seems to seethe close to his surface. His attachment to Eleanor is presented in the light of a conquest he can turn his back on with relative ease when his regiment leaves for Crimea. After a transformative event he is afraid to lose her, but mainly, it appears, judging by his conduct, because he does not want to be alone. Towards the end, my revised opinion of him softened, but I cannot say I ever truly cared deeply for him again.

The shy, modest Eleanor is a type rather than a character, the kind of female put into a story to give the male protagonists somebody young and beautiful to rescue and protect. She is kind and sweet and good but made wan and miserable by the wretchedness of her life. The loneliness that haunts her is filled with the sense of doom of someone who believes they have been shut out from God’s mercy. Although her character may not have been the most interesting I have encountered, it made sense – but only up to a point. Bewilderingly, considering her emotional frailty, the horrific things she survives induce no particular after-reaction in her. Neither she nor Sinclair suffer from insanity, temporary frenzy, desire for revenge, depression, phobias, or any other extreme effects.

While the concept of eco-tourism may be an oxymoron, the caring attitude it exemplifies is one of the things that attracted me to the character of Michael, the writer and photographer whose underwater discovery changes the lives of many. Sympathetic and easygoing, he is not difficult to like as he goes passionately about his work and tries to protect and help the vulnerable. Although the author attempts to give him depth by assigning him a traumatic background, the notice given to his supposed depression amounts to nothing more than lip service once he arrives at the Antarctic research station (fictional Point Adélie). His comatose girlfriend therefore serves questionable purpose in the story. The accident that landed her in that fatal situation, an accident at which Michael was present, appears to have effected no change in how Michael responds to risks and dangers. The silent parallel to the woman encased in the ice is something about which the story does not reflect much, other than perhaps indicating to the reader why Michael feels a need to act as her protector.

I am hesitant to comment on the science in the novel, other than that some of the assumptions challenge everything I thought I knew about how metal, fabric, and tissue react to long-term water-exposure and freezing temperatures. There is also a seemingly glaring inconsistency about how various individuals react to the, how shall I call it, infection. As for the quality of the research the author has poured into the historical sections, it varies. There is confusion about what constitutes period decorum and clothes, for example (to illustrate that Eleanor cannot afford to dress in the latest fashions, she is made to wear gigot sleeves – which had become completely outmoded around the time of her birth and which she would thus never have had any reason to wear in the first place), but historical events are described with both feeling and strikingly atmospheric detail.

It is harder to ignore implausibilities to do with character actions and reactions. I have mentioned some already, but there are several other things I cannot bring up without spoilers. Suffice to say that bureaucracy appears to be more of a concern to some characters than bloody rampages, and that the potential state of being undead causes less questioning in someone than the claim of having personally known someone famous. I was also taken aback when the very first adjective being used to give an introductory description of a prominent secondary character’s looks was “black” when no character is described in terms of her or his whiteness (or any other skin colour, the sick or wind-burned excepted). It is a common lapse, but I would think novelists would possess the imagination to portray everybody’s appearance in smarter terms where the race of the person concerned is irrelevant to the situation.

Suprisingly, perhaps, I do not feel I wasted my time reading this novel. Yes, an intriguing premise that promises adventure, excitement, suspense, tragedy, and drama galore is undercut by the sketchiest of underdeveloped plots and an almost complete lack of suspense. Yet I truly enjoyed several of the things Robert Masello does in Blood And Ice. The setting made me feel the Antarctic freeze in my bones and visualise the locations as if I was there. The writing is energetic and flows effortlessly, carrying me along even when I was less than impressed with the story itself. At no time did I consider not finishing the book: I was too curious about the outcome for the various protagonists. Masello is not preachy about nature or the depredations wrought by humans, but a melancholy, tender undertone reverberates through the story and gives it unexpected heart. Despite major shortcomings, Blood And Ice has its moments.

 

Germany: The Glass Minstrel by Hayden Thorne

The Glass Minstrel by Hayden Thorne is the first of my Christmas-themed reads this year. While the title is marketed as young-adult historical fiction, the first half of the book has crossover appeal that made me feel I was reading general fiction. In the second half, the plot focus veers from a story that deftly interweaves several captivating character arcs to a narrower study that seems to fumble for narrative balance. Nevertheless, with its atmospheric echo of nineteenth-century romantic writers and melancholy fairytales, the The Glass Minstrel has a sensitive, refined aesthetic that feels unique these days. Its loveliness left me with misty eyes and a wish to see more historical fiction from its author.

 

1850. Two young lovers have died, but instead of supporting the grieving families the small Bavarian town of Zirndorf gossips and points fingers. When the rumours reach fifteen-year-old Jakob Diederich, his reaction is very different, for he carries the burden of a secret that unites him with the couple in ways no one suspects.

During the busiest Christmas season in years, toymaker Abelard Bauer tremulously fashions a minstrel of blown glass, paints it to look like his lost son, then destroys the mould. Across town, Andreas Schiffer struggles to make sense of the brief life of his own, favourite child through a journal that was left behind. It chronicles the growth of a love story that should bond the two fathers but instead divides them in horror and bewilderment.

As a snowy Holy Eve draws near, its message seems lost upon the men who, blinded by pain and regret, seem only to drift farther from those around them. Tormented by feelings that by turns confuse, scare, and elate him, is there any hope for Jakob in a world where even family and friends condemn boys like him and feel shame for the kind of love that Stefan Bauer and Heinrich Schiffer shared?

 

A review of The Glass Minstrel by John at Dear Author inspired my interest in the novel. A slim trade-format book with just under two hundred pages, it explores profound themes with an acuity and delicacy that kept me engaged even when my enchantment waned into “mere” enjoyment.

While the prose is simple, even slightly repetitious at times as it details business in the toyshop or Jakob’s duties at the inn where he works, and while a few awkward paragraph transitions could have been smoothed out with sharper editing, Thorne’s writing style is to the point and beautifully readable. The tone it sets enhances the period mood and gives the setting a mythical quality. The alpine landscape and town details are sketched in with only the lightest of generic touches, furthering the impression of a place that owes less to any real location than to the villages of old, German fables and vintage Christmas cards.

Likewise, the political upheavals taking place during this period in the German states – including the Kingdom of Bavaria, where the story takes place and where King Ludwig I had been forced to abdicate in 1848 – are fleetingly noted in The Glass Minstrel but not incorporated into the plot. There seemed to be fertile potential in these rumbles, but as indicated above, the author elects to keep things universal. (The use of symbolism seems ineffectual in any case, with nothing much developing in terms of depth or meaning from the continual noting of the snowy weather or staring through windows. The description of a particular nightmare is a notable exception.) Although a plot that interacts more firmly with its social and political setting would have enriched the historical aspect – which if not wallpaper-y is still very thin – on a storytelling level it simply means that the novel’s mood stays true to that of a fable. Manners and in particular attitudes are appropriately attuned the era, however, so I never felt I was reading a dress-up contemporary or fantasy.

Nor should the absence of a strongly-defined setting be mistaken for shallowness. I have read countless books double the length of The Glass Minstrel, books targeted for adults, that achieve not half of its emotional realism, sensibility, and insight into grief, longing, pain, and love. The conflicts arise from a social context that is still familiar today, but the historical context raises the stakes further and trenchantly exposes the vulnerabilities of the situation and the gravity of the character dilemmas. These are explored with compassion that has room both for sympathetic understanding of the parents’ grappling with a sense of betrayal and for hope that bridges can be built over even the deepest abysses by love. Since I have emphasised the fairytale qualities of the novel, I would like to make it clear that no magic wand is waved here: while redemption and reconciliation is achieved by some of the characters, scandal, social ostracism, and intolerance remain issues in society at large.

The few problems I had with the book are minor, with one exception. In view of The Glass Minstrel being young-adult fiction, my issue may seem paradoxical. But as the first half evenly meshes the individual lives and relationships of the main protagonists with each other and the townspeople, the late-coming swing to an almost exclusive focus on Jakob did jolt me. For much of the second half I felt I had begun by reading one book and was now reading another. Since I had invested equally in the other protagonists (the fathers) I missed the one who almost entirely disappears from the story until the very end, and kept wishing throughout that the plot would remember to return to him.

Looking at the novel as a Bildungsroman, however, the portrayal of Jakob’s growth and painful maturation from boy to adult is keenly perceptive. The tenderness of innocence and the all-enveloping, all-changing experience of a first crush are shown in all their intensity, as is the offering of one’s heart only to discover cruelty that leads to anguished confusion and fear of persecution. A sensitive, daydreaming youth, Jakob has a practical side that allows him to clearly grasp the dangers and difficulties of his situation but also makes him honest with himself as he quietly refuses to deny or marginalise his feelings. Working at the local inn, he helps support his struggling family without complaint, but events open up his awareness of a larger world and excite him with the possibility of a more ambitious future. I longed for it for him, too, not always for unselfish reasons: for a longish section nothing much happens in the story except what goes on in Jakob’s head. During this time the author has him either daydreaming or interminably scrubbing and sweeping the floors at work. Since I was already missing the other characters, this is the one time I grew restless while reading the novel.

A note on the back cover (Cheyenne Publishing trade paperback, 2010) recommends The Glass Minstrel to readers aged sixteen and up. In keeping with the general tone of the book, in all but one instances any sensuality referred to is confined to excerpts from young Heinrich Schiffer's journal, and there it is sweetly hinted at rather than truly described. For this reason the one scene where Jakob’s fevered imaginings leads to a really very brief but by comparison unexpectedly explicit moment, struck a slightly jarring note for me.

The most complex character in the book is arguably the bereaved father of Heinrich, Andreas Schiffer. A wealthy man, he is the protagonist with the most to lose in terms of social standing and respect. Having groomed Heinrich to follow in his footsteps, Schiffer not only grieves the loss of a talented, favourite child but takes the youth’s homosexuality as a personal injury. This self-pitying agitation gradually fosters a paranoia that poisons his relationship with the rest of the family without him understanding why things are going wrong. His multiple flaws and the direct access the reader is allowed into his feelings and thought processes made him a highly interesting character to me: he was the least predictable of the protagonists. Unfortunately, when he finally has a light-bulb moment, the effect it has on him seemed embarrassingly contrived to me because the build-up simply was not there to shore up his transformation. In fact, as I was nearing the last pages I increasingly worried about how the author was possibly going to have time to wrap everything up. In Herr Schiffer’s case, I feel it was not altogether successfully achieved.

Finally, I perceived a gap of logic that pushed the externals of the story even deeper into the realm of a fairytale. Zirndorf is described as a very small town that is suffering from economic depression, and its isolation from centres such as Nuremberg and Munich is stressed. Yet every day Abelard Bauer’s toyshop is shown to be full of customers and business exceeds his wildest hopes; over and over again he and his assistant grow (happily) exhausted from the hectic pace. I did not really mind, though: with his unselfish grief, warmth, and regrets, the vividly portrayed Abelard Bauer is my favourite character in the novel, and I was glad to see his shelves empty so fast. What did disappoint me a little was that although he is a toymaker and creator of blown glass ornaments he is only shown selling his wares, not manufacturing them. Even the making of the glass minstrel is described with a technical vagueness that gives not the smallest insight into glassblowing and not even a visual introduction to Bauer’s workshop. Nor was any clear mention made of the novelty Christmas ornaments fashioned from glass blown into moulds represented in 1850. From what information I was able to collect, it appears the technique had been invented only three years earlier.

All in all, however, this was a lovely way to begin my holiday-themed reading. The sparkling positives in The Glass Minstrel far outshone any shortcomings for me. The author and genre are new to me, but one of my book-related Christmas wishes will be that a large publishing house quickly snatches up Hayden Thorne. This author’s style has mainstream appeal. While not perfect, The Glass Minstrel is nothing less than exquisite. I hope it gets into many stockings and peeks out from underneath countless trees this Christmas.

 

Excerpts can be found here and in a post on the author’s blog.

 

France: The Devil’s Door by Sharan Newman

Set in twelfth-century France, The Devil’s Door by Sharan Newman is the second installment in the historical mystery series featuring Catherine LeVendeur, one-time novice at the Paraclete, the monastery founded by Peter Abelard and now ruled over by the learned Abbess Heloise. While the plot is hobbled by somnolent pacing and convoluted by artificial twists and turns that draw out the mystery far longer than its simplicity warrants, the mindset of the characters and the intellectual and religious moorings of the setting are strongly enriched by the author’s doctoral background in mediaeval studies. Another feature which makes this series particularly noteworthy is that mediaeval Jewish society is brought out of the shadows it usually is relegated to in mainstream historical fiction: the perspective is fresh, multi-layered, and inclusive.

 

A missing noblewoman is found fatally beaten and brought to the Paraclete for succour. But when she takes the veil before she dies, donating a piece of forest land to the convent, her outraged relatives accuse Abbess Heloise and her fellow nuns of conspiracy. Grief is in short supply as the seemingly worthless plot of land suddenly attracts interest from near and far.

Only convent boarder Catherine LeVendeur, daughter of a Parisian wine merchant, questions the general assumption that the assailant was a jealous neighbouring landowner, now fled. Her determination to ferret out the truth meets with resistance on all sides and conflicts with the promise of marriage made between her and Edgar of Wedderlie, the young Scottish nobleman for whose love she has decided to refrain from taking monastic vows.

Edgar is not about to have Catherine cantering alone across Champagne in her quest to aid Abbess Heloise and discover the real killer. But even he does not foresee quite how prone Catherine is to ending up in the midst of murderous trouble.

 

Series adherents sometimes wonder why someone would pick any other book than the first in familiarising themselves with a new series. In my case, the closure standalone stories bring contributes to a satisfaction I seldom find in novels with plot threads that develop over several books. Since I am not fond of being bound to a series for its own sake, I select as my introductory sample the installment with a storyline, setting, and characters that intrigue most in order to use the book as an indicator of whether the series will carry enough appeal to justify a bigger investment. Cliffhanger endings, unresolved major plotlines, and character relationships that can only be deciphered by reading previous entries cause quick rejection even when the rest pleases.

The Devil’s Door displays none of these disadvantages, yet when I pulled it out of some rearranged bookshelves earlier this month I was astounded at the pencilled notes which recorded that I had read the book in 1996 (my edition: Forge mass market paperback, 1995). I had not the slightest recollection of the story, nor any inkling of why, with my partiality for things mediaeval and French, I had abandoned or forgotten about the series (10 books now). A week of struggling between admiration and frustration and another to convert the ambivalent experience into a coherent post gave me the answer.

I have striven to avoid spoilers that might ruin the first book, Death Comes As Epiphany, for those who would prefer to start there.

The good first, and there is plenty of it to entertain mystery lovers, historical enthusiasts, and romantics alike. Multiple plot strands combine into a complex tale that transcends genre expectations. The Devil’s Door can of course be read as a straight mystery, but through events both fictional and historical and a multitude of vigorously-drawn characters from every layer of society a simultaneous (and in my opinion more rewarding) examination emerges of mediaeval family, marriage, love, religion, power, and powerlessness.

Newman’s mediaeval France has texture and substance. It is also free of fictional sanitation. Lice is seen in the hair of one character, smiles reveal rotting teeth , and rats scurry in unchanged bed straw. Everyday people regard prejudice and discrimination as their Christian duty, while educated characters scoff at the superstitions of the ignorant even as they themselves harbour beliefs that we smile at today. The precarious existence of those who live on or outside the margins of acceptability is not exploited to showcase the admirable virtues of protagonists with modern values. Although I would have preferred less vague visual descriptions of places such as Paris (map of the town c. 1200), Troyes (map of the twelfth century town) and its palace, where much of the drama takes place, the atmosphere of all locations, including the forest of Othe and the monastic community of the Paraclete, does come adequately alive through the characters that inhabit them.

The cast of characters in The Devil's Door is a dynamic mix of historical and fictional. The former group includes luminaries such as Heloise (Héloïse d’Argenteuil), Peter Abelard, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The one-time lovers, Abelard and Heloise, are described as having matured into commitment to their separate roles in life while continuing to share an unbroken affection for each other. I enjoyed the author’s take on them both: Abbess Heloise as humbly and penitently striving to fulfill God’s will but secretly doubting He listens to her prayers; and Abelard, the aging scholar too harassed by charges of heresy – the developments surrounding the Council of Sens forms one of the subplots – to dwell on their past history but unhesitatingly turning to Heloise for spiritual comfort. Less is known about their son, Astrolabe, but the author turns available material into a sympathetic characterisation of a man caught between the fame of his parents yet tenderly supportive of both. (Even Eleanor of Aquitaine puts in an appearance at Sens – as King Louis’s queen – but the mention is so fleeting that I bring it up only as a piece of trivia for readers who enjoy fictional encounters with her.)

The relationship between Catherine and her teacher, Heloise, derives poignancy from the similarities and differences between their lives and choices. Protective and proud of her charge, Heloise has become a mother figure for the younger woman who, while intensely caring and determined, is impetuous and has not yet fully mastered the discipline to respond rationally. The troubled marriage of her parents, her mother’s illness, and newly revealed family secrets have seared self-doubts into Catherine that are not shaken off by the love she shares with Edgar. Her mind and heart tend to analyse and question everything; she calls these contrary thoughts “her voices”, and they sometimes lead her to fearing that she will one day succumb to the insanity that runs in her family. Although the silliness of her actions toward the end cross deeply into TSTL territory (with the help of equally idiotic decisions made by those who should possess a more mature judgment), I found Catherine an engaging and very appealing character with her physical clumsiness, kind heart, intellectual hunger, and devotion to ensure justice for the wronged.

Despite hints that neither the reader nor Catherine knows everything about Edgar’s Scottish family, his subservient role in the dominant mystery prevents him from developing into something more interesting than an occasionally frustrated companion and eager love interest. But he is a nice foil for Catherine, and together they make a sweet couple.

With so much to praise about this novel, it is time to look at why my reading experience was not more enjoyable. Accuracy in historical fiction is sacrosanct to some readers, and to others, merely an interesting bonus. When the historical record is silent about a person or event, writers, like readers, take different paths in deciding how the missing information should be dealt with. Sharan Newman’s philosophy differs from my preferences, and so, when she takes genuine historical characters about whom virtually nothing is known and invents histories for them that serve her plot purposes, it poses a problem for me. In more than one case I felt the treatment of these characters seriously overstepped reasonable artistic license. It made me crabby, distracting me from the story and steaming me up about the ease with which some authors abuse historical record for the purpose of masking up entirely fictional creations in borrowed authenticity. As Newman’s erudition ensures that judicious portrayals of major historical characters and events intensify an already realistic setting, I cannot acknowledge any need for pretend-historicity. This author possesses all the knowledge and skill required to create believable fictional characters that blend seamlessly into her historical tapestry. History in historical fiction does not become more more legitimate through distortion, however clever.

I wish the prose and pacing in The Devil’s Door had been as competent as the characterisations. Smooth passages are suddenly punctuated by awkward paragraphs and confusing sentence constructions that I sometimes had to re-read until my eyes glazed over, muddled about who exactly was saying or doing what. Moreover, at the beginning of the story quite a few names and pedigrees are tossed about in a manner that repeatedly required me to leaf back and search for some information about who these people were and what their connection was to the subject under discussion.

The acceptance of the mystery and the time it takes for the protagonists to uncover the truth relies heavily on the reader’s willingness to respect, along with the characters, the sanctity of a certain religious practice. I did, but looking back I have to say the premise is an extremely flimsy foundation on which to carry an entire mystery novel. It is perhaps fortunate that the story takes several detours from the mystery. The downside is that although the subplots integrate admirably with the main plotline they inevitably slow down an already gentle pace. I grew impatient with clues and twists that are meted out too infrequently and laboriously to sustain narrative tension, and ended up shrugging at the mystery finale due to its lacklustre handling of what should be a shocking revelation. I also questioned the logic of certain crucial actions and decisions committed by several key characters.

It is obvious that no one can be an expert at everything, although many writers make heroic efforts to eliminate errors and inaccuracies. Even The Devil’s Door is not devoid of one or two cringe-worthy blunders. In one instance, a poor but compassionate hermit is able to casually dispense packets of peppercorns to sufferers who consult him for minor ailments. (Peppercorns were a luxury spice coveted by the wealthy, and worth gold in mediaeval times). More significantly, the central plot point regarding female inheritance gave me considerable pause. I am reluctant to conclude a scholar like Newman got something so basic wrong, but the assumptions the plot makes seem to me to be in conflict with local practice. (See, for example, the Champenois custom of partible inheritance discussed in Theodore Evergates’s The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100-1300; alternatively see the 1212 statute of Blanche of Navarre, Countess of Champagne, which deals with feudal inheritance by women in Champagne. A translation can be found in Evergates’s Feudal Society In Medieval France: Documents from the County of Champagne.)

Finally, a couple of minor grumbles. The inconsistent naming conventions for French characters irritated me. We have some anglicised names such as Walter and William and Peter, while others follow Old French spellings (Thibault, Mahaut, Jehan, Alys), Latin forms (Gaufridus, Paciana, Johanna), or even, in the case of one noblewoman, something Italianate (Constanza). Similarly, while I enjoyed that the French phrases and epithets occasionally exchanged by the characters are in Old French (“Diex te saut”; “C’est mes acors”; “Avoutre!”), the old lay brother at the Paraclete, a former crusader, rather inconsistently shouts “Montjoie et Saint Denis” instead of “Munioie! Saint-Denys!” (“Montjoie et Saint-Denis” appears to be a modern corruption of the battlecry.)

Although the issues I experienced with The Devil’s Door eventually dampened my enthusiasm (the pacing was the death knell) and I sadly concluded that Sharan Newman’s style is not a stimulating match for me, I do hope other readers are inspired to give the series a try. Reviewing my post I find I have almost persuaded myself to give it a second (third) chance... This is solid historical fiction that belongs on the shelf next to Elizabeth Chadwick and Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter’s depictions of the twelfth century. I hope I will one day find another mediaeval mystery series that carries its scholarship as gracefully.

 

Books of related interest: Rabbi Solomon bar Isaac or Rashi, who was one of the most important scholars of the Middle Ages, is closely associated with the Jewish community of Troyes, which plays a part in The Devil’s Door. The stories of his daughters, who were famed for their learning and married students of their father, have been novelised by Maggie Anton in four books: Joheved, Rachel, Miriam, and The Secret Scholar. I have not read them but plan to do so now. Among non-fiction, The Jews of Medieval France: The Community of Champagne by Emily Taitz seems particularly relevant. My 1970s edition of The Letters Of Abelard And Heloise, translated by Betty Radice, includes, among other things, seven letters, the Historia Calamitatum, and a 45-page introduction to their lives, works, and legacies. The revised 2004 edition seems to have been slightly expanded. Heloise’s surviving correspondence is also available online, as are, I believe, many of Abelard’s writings. Michael T. Clanchy’s 1999 biography of the latter, Abelard: A Medieval Life, challenges some of the received truths about Abelard and Heloise, asserting that the latter’s contribution to the former's philosophy is much more significant than previously assumed. And finally, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100-1300 by Theodore Evergates, provides an analysis of “one of the more vibrant principalities of medieval France“.