The Romantic Armchair Traveller

Canary Islands: The Wind Off The Small Isles by Mary Stewart

 

In an essay published in 1973 Mary Stewart calls The Wind Off The Small Isles “a kind of coda” to the ten gothic and romantic suspense novels that precede it and “a bridge” to The Crystal Cave, her first historical novel (“Teller Of Tales” in Techniques Of The Selling Writer, edited by A. S. Burack, p.42). Now that I have finally had a chance to read the book, I think I can see what Stewart means. A novella of less than a hundred pages, The Wind Off The Small Isles can be inhaled in one quick, casual sitting. But in doing so one risks overlooking the allegory hidden within the simple story of lovers lost and found. For this is Mary Stewart’s dialogue with her own work, a meditation on the writer’s craft and a summing up of her philosophy.

 

A dramatic cliffside property on the coast of Lanzarote seems the perfect location to inspire Cora Gresham’s latest pirate novel for children. But the house is already taken, her secretary, Perdita West, discovers, and by none other than playwright James Blair, the mentor of Cora’s son, Michael. Over drinks on the terrace overlooking the bay the quartet discuss the mystery associated with the place’s history. None of them realise just how harrowingly past and present are about to meet.

 

In several respects The Wind Off The Small Isles is vintage Mary Stewart: the brisk pace, the prose full of flair, the charming characters, a first-person young female narrator (Perdita), romance, danger. There is even a spider-thin connection with This Rough Magic. Above all, there is Stewart's hallmark, the lively setting which is not only integral to but typically the actual inspiration for the story: “This was old lava, from long-ago eruptions, nothing more nor less than a plain of dusty, broken black rock with cutting edges, lightened here and there by the brilliant yellow-green sponges of some succulent, and the phalli of the candelabra cactus, like clustered stands of organ-pipes acid with verdigris” (p. 24). Not even the sunbaked starkness of Stewart’s Grecian settings is as strikingly intense as the primordial alienness of Lanzarote’s volcanic landscape. As Perdita pointedly notes, this inhospitable barrenness with its black lava fields and still active Fire Mountains even attracted the makers of a certain motion picture epic whose title I did not find on IMDB but bears an unmistakable resemblance to One Million Years B.C. (a recent release at the time of Stewart’s novella and indeed filmed on Lanzarote). Whereas these days the Canary Islands have long been a major holiday destination of sun-seeking Europeans, Stewart’s Lanzarote retains a wild, deserted atmosphere, the story having been written shortly before tourism on this easternmost island began to take off. Tellingly, however, a nightclub or restaurant is about to be developed at the far end of the hitherto isolated bay that both Cora and James have identified as an ideal writer’s hideaway. But such signs of taming can be dangerously lulling in an environment where humans remain largely at the mercy of nature. The direction of the wind, for example, affects which way the smoke and ash of volcanic eruptions will blow. (The novella’s title alludes to the islets in the Chinijo archipelago at the northern tip of Lanzarote. In the local vernacular, “Chinijo” means “small”.)

 

At the same time, this is undeniably Mary Stewart in condensed, episodic form. Its brevity means that if one rushes through the book, bent on the resolution, one will get only the bones of a composition that has pleasing symmetry and poetry but in terms of plot and characterisation is slighter than any other fiction Stewart has written for adults. The narrative voice is another difference, beginning to change from the brightly sensible lightness of tone that characterises her early novels. It still recognisable in the brisk and cheery notes of the novella’s contemporary storyline but a clear shift occurs when events deal with the historical subplot. Flippancy and banter disappear, replaced by a graver, solemn tenor and a sharpening focus on the intensely human – rather than the thriller-type – experience of tragedy and violence. (Notice how the cover art displays a more artsy, pared-down variation on the woman-in-jeopardy that in some incarnation or other appeared on almost all editions of Stewart’s books until this one?) Glimpses of this thoughtful sobriety have already been seen in the nostalgic The Ivy Tree and will surface again in her next romance, Touch Not The Cat (1976), a paranormal that in significant ways is more earth-bound than Stewart’s other gothics. Above all, however, the changes in tone herald the voice in Stewart’s Arthurian cycle.

 

So is there any real meat to The Wind Off The Small Isles? Oh yes. As sometimes is the case with books that appear lightweight, the careful reader is rewarded with something quite unique. Every element of this novella appears steeped in symbolic meaning, presenting the reader with an allegory of the creative process. Stewart is not being coy: she makes two of her characters writers and places them on an island where intermittent volcanic activity continues to violently shape and reshape the landscape. Writerly metaphors related to birth and creation are rife, some subtle, many surfacing plainly (of his current script James Blair says: “at present it’s quite hideously in embryo, all beginning and no end” (p.45)). Landscapes, actions, and events build strong symbolism beneath the surface story: our characters motor along bumpy, untravelled roads, admire plants being coaxed from ashen soil, physically knock on doors that do not open. Other symbolism relates to caves that are blindingly dark; traps and dead ends and the digging oneself out from these as from a chrysalis; the struggle for enlightenment; the breakthrough that ignites life and passion. But is this Stewart’s personal commentary on her own work so far or a general assessment of the craft? The answer may lie in a comparison between The Wind Off The Small Isles and Stewart’s interviews and articles.

 

In some of the the exchanges between Cora and Perdita one seems to catch a dialogue between a mature writer and her younger self; in the collegial conversations between Cora and James, the doubts and fears that haunt all authors (or those who have humility), whether literary or popular. “Mrs Gresham”, Perdita muses, “who is nothing if not clear-sighted, once called herself ‘the clown with the normal clown’s urge to play Hamlet’, but this didn’t seem to me to fit the bill. I called it her ‘Sullivan act’ – a finished master of light music breaking his heart to be Verdi. I said: ‘I wish you’d stop tormenting yourself because you’re not Graham Greene or James Blair or Robert Bolt* or someone. The number of people who’d miss ‘Coralie Gray’ [Cora’s pseudonym] if you stopped writing could be laid end to end – ’” (p. 21-2). When Cora disparages her protagonist, James defends the worth of her stories with his childhood love of Beatrix Potter. Mary Stewart, too, has written stories for children. And in her interview segment in Counterpoint (Rand MacNally hardcover edited by Roy Newquist, 1964), she repeatedly mentions her admiration for Graham Greene: “I know I’ve mentioned him before, but he always comes to mind first because he’s the maestro” (p. 568) and “There’s no difference in kind, really, in quality, between Greene’s serious novels and his “entertainments” [...] I certainly don’t put myself in Greene’s category” (p. 564). (Other writers she speaks of with respect range from James Baldwin and Mary Renault to Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean.)

 

Acknowledging their different treatment by the critical establishment, Cora says to James, “This is one of those coincidences that nobody would believe if you or I put it into print – at least, if you did, they’d say it was a subtle denial of causality, and if I did they’d say it was romantic nonsense ... ” (p. 44). In the Counterpoint interview, Stewart explains “To my mind there are really only two kinds of novels, badly written and well written [...] I do the best I can with material that excites me” (p.564). Her choice of themes are a reflection of her values: “I am first and foremost a teller of tales, but I am also a serious-minded woman who accepts the responsibilities of her job, and that job, if I am to be true to what is in me, is to say with every voice at my command: ‘We must love and imitate the beautiful and the good.’ It is a comment on our age that one hesitates to stand up and say this aloud. But looking back now on the way I was thinking over these fifteen years as I wrote, it seems to me that this above all else is what I have affirmed” ("Teller Of Tales", p.47).

 

Deep-seated fears are less easily dismissed than superficial criticism: James Blair confesses that “For the last few years I’ve been lucky, one thing so to speak begetting the next as I worked, but after Tiger Tiger the vein ran out. [...] It never happened before, and it frightened me to death” (p.45). Interestingly, The Wind Off The Small Isles marks the point where Mary Stewart’s career takes off in a new direction. Some appear to treat this switch as her maturation into a literary writer; in these same circles, her romantic entertainment novels are generally written off as formulaic if polished fluff for the (female) masses. It is a distinction that her assessment of Greene’s output indicates she would politely reject. As she has remarked elsewhere, “one can build a second time, successfully, albeit a different structure and with different materials, but only if one has kept faith with oneself” (“Teller Of Tales”, p.46).

 

And there you have it. The Wind Off The Small Isles is many things: a haunting novella about love, a deftly written allegory, and a simple but confident summing up of one writer’s view of her craft. Readers hoping for the classic, involved fiction of Mary Stewart’s full-length novels will probably feel less enchanted than those familiar with her larger oeuvre and interested in the storyteller herself. Still, even read as a straightforward little tale of love and mystery the novella has artistic merit and emotional impact. Unexpectedly, tears sprung up in my eyes on reading the last page. I know I will revisit this surprisingly lovely book again. For the first time I am also inspired to finally familiarise myself properly with Stewart’s Arthurian cycle, something I always ended up putting off in the past because I could not find a way of bridging the gap between Stewart’s contemporary and historical voices. The Wind Off The Small Isles has shown me the way.

 

*Blair is fictional but Bolt is the author of A Man For All Seasons, the wonderful play about the confrontation between Thomas More and King Henry VIII of England that pitted the former's conscience against the latter's will and command. In the late 1950s Mary Stewart herself authored (at least) four radio plays. Again, in 1964 when asked about her ambitions for the future she replied, among other things, that she would “like to write a play” (Counterpoint, p. 571).

 

Excerpt

(Hodder And Stoughton hardcover, with illustrations by Laurence Irving, 1968, p. 47-8):

 

“Mr Blair took the glass. ‘Yes, I suppose the phrase “the small isles” suggested itself because it was familiar, though heaven help us, we might be on a different planet here.’ He sipped the wine absently, both hands cupping the cool glass, his gaze slowly travelling over the green bubbles of cactus, the black basalt, the glittering sea, the cloudless blue, focussed seemingly not on them or beyond them but on some sharp point of light thrown by them inward into himself, as by a burning-glass. But his voice was ordinary, even faintly apologetic. ‘The story ... As a matter of fact, it’s hardly a story at all, and what there is of it is so ordinary, so much the classic cliché of a love story, that told baldly like this it hardly bears repeating. But there’s something there, if one could find the treatment.’

We all sat watching him. I thought to myself, there’s always something there, if one can find the treatment. The same old material, the same old line, the same old setting – all that counts is the quality of the mind that processes them. And this was the man – I looked up suddenly and caught Mike Gresham watching me. His eyes flickered and he looked away quickly.”

 

Sahara: The Salt Road by Jane Johnson

 

A romantic novel of belonging and identity, The Salt Road by Jane Johnson immerses the reader in the world of a marginalised culture, the Sahara of the Tuaregs* (Kel Tamasheq/Kel Tagelmust). While the ingredients are those of a kitchen-sink melodrama, Johnson’s anthropologically detailed depictions of tribal life carry such esoteric allure that her fiction often – and beautifully – transcends predictability. Featuring an emotional mystery and a phenomenal Targuia protagonist whose journey along the proverbial and literal Salt Road of life and death is the strong heart of the story, Johnson’s novel offers exceptional thrills for armchair travellers.

 

A silver amulet inscribed with cryptic signs inspires a set of events that leads Isabelle Treslove-Facett on a climbing trip to Morocco. The accident that disrupts her plans plunges her into the midst of people and places that force her to examine why she has always felt an outsider, and what happened to change her from a free-spirited child to an adult constricted by fears.

In the Sahara, Mariata ult Yemma ult Tofenat of the Kel Taitok (Taituq/Taïtoq) is fiercely proud of her descent from Tin Hinan, the queen the Tuaregs revere as “The Mother Of Us All”. But the changes that sweep the Sahara are beginning to encroach on a nomadic lifestyle previously taken for granted, and when the freedoms traditionally guaranteed her as a Targuia become threatened, she embarks on a journey that will lead to passionate love and and violent tragedy.

Separated by time and distance, only when the right connection is made can either woman find the answers they seek.

 

The Salt Road epitomises the concept of place as character. A naturalised resident of Morocco, author Jane Johnson incorporates her observations of landscape and culture with a command of prose and technical skill that builds a dynamic, fully-realised world as opposed to a prettily described travelogue (a trait of the previous Sahara-set novel I posted about, Footprints In The Sand). The story grows organically out of the setting, a meshing that makes The Salt Road a heady experience for the fiction reader who relishes locales so vividly rendered they give documentaries a run for the money. The wealth of places that play a direct or indirect role does cry out for a map which unfortunately is not provided in my edition (Doubleday Canada hardcover, 2011); they include numerous locations in Morocco, Alger, Niger, Mauritania, and Mali. For example, by studying an ethnographic map of the Tuareg heartland as well as its distance to Morocco the true enormity of Mariata’s treks becomes much clearer. (While the shadowed areas on the map on the left indicate Tuareg areas in Mali and Niger, all names on the map starting with "Kel" denote Tuareg confederations.)

 

The plot opens with a multi-part mystery and evolves through dual storylines that are fitted together with great intricacy. The novel is structured in a way that presumably is intended to keep the reader in suspense about the connection between the amulet and the two principal protagonists until the end. A tinge of mysticism suggests possibilities related to time-slips or reincarnation. However, too much is telegraphed in the opening chapers, and when in addition close reading reveals clues that place Mariata in a specific time period, the veil of intrigue surrounding the plot is removed before the story has reached the halfway mark. It is therefore a credit to Johnson’s storytelling abilities that while the dénouement may be short in surprises she makes the journey there enthralling enough to be a satisfying end in itself. Moreover, anti-climactic or not, it is a neat - if a little breathless – conclusion that sweetly fulfills the story promise. (Unless, in concert with some of the reviews I scanned before acquiring my copy, you have been led by Johnson’s literate prose into believing that you are reading unsentimental literary fiction, in which case certain fairy-tale elements may drive you to feel the ending is tragic for all the wrong reasons.)

 

The novel’s set-up can be separated into three parts: Isabelle’s storyline, which is narrated in first person and after an intriguing start begins to read like generic women’s fiction; Mariata’s storyline – told in third person-point of view – which, were it to be detached, could easily function as a solid, multi-faceted novel in itself; and the mystery which forms a frame and joins the two halves together. Unfortunately, the contrast in interest and power between the storylines produces an effect similar to fitting a quality frame around a glowing original oil, then sticking in an inkjet print to complement the whole. On its own, there is nothing awfully wrong with Isabelle’s story. Yet compared to the vitality of the indomitable Mariata, Isabelle appears pouty and vapid, and the banality of her growth arc flattens a plotline that relies on coincidence and improbability to keep up with the excitement of the discovery-factor inherent in Mariata’s adventure-filled tribal life.

 

It seems the lot of Isabelle to be chastised throughout the story. Raised by parents who caused her to feel like an intruder and crushed her spirit, it is in the act of pursuing the one activity where she feels in control of her fears that she is dumped – painfully - into the lap of an alien culture she does not understand and that judges her for her Westernness every step of the way. (Cultural prejudice is a motif in this book full of confrontational characters, and not limited to any one group). With her horribly dysfunctional childhood (there is even more darkness to it than it as first apparent) and her initially unwilling pilgrimage of the soul, she should be as fascinating as Mariata. Her sense of self is deeply buried within a past she exerts all her power to forget, refusing to face how trapped it holds her until an accident makes her restless body, too, a prison. The gradual loss of various freedoms that forces her to re-examine her identity is an intriguingly conceived plotline. I only wish the rest of her character development had been as convincing. However, since her problems are largely blamed on Western selfishness there is no reason for her character to work on toxic personality traits. Instead, it is her awakening to the virtues of another culture that achieves her transformation. Now, my scepticism is certainly not directed against the idea that experiencing other cultures can have a transformative influence on a person. But Isabelle, a successful corporate tax accountant, turns out to be a frustratingly dim traveller whose personal insecurities leave her flailing and spineless in the face of adversity. There is a blatant stageyness to the way in which she is made to see the error of her ways (such as having chosen a job which involves finding tax loopholes for rich corporations that prey on the poor). Thus, when this wealthy woman gives away her luxury watch to a nomadic child to use as a plaything in a “poignant” scene that marks how she has progressed and started to re-evaluate what truly matters, this reader’s response was rather uncharitable.

 

Overall, the political elements in the parts of the book dealing with Isabelle have a one-dimensionality that put me in mind of the zeal of the newly converted. This being a novel, its handling is perhaps more a problem of technique than of political or social subtext, although well-motivated reasoning tends to carry more weight than random claims. (The narrative's position on slavery in Tuareg society, for example, is very defensive and dismisses any debate.) The elegiac passion for the Berber and Tuareg cause that infuses the book eventually, in the plot involving Isabelle, ramps up from an appeal to respect and preserve a civilisation in trouble to a finale so crammed with clumsy information dumping that plot temporarily disappears into a political manifesto.

 

By contrast, Mariata’s storyline virtually bursts with colour and joy of storytelling. Full of exhilarating twists and turns, of passion and strength and drama, it exudes everything that is fun, touching, and satisfying about the best commercial fiction. With outward stoicism and internal fire, Mariata never gives up. She finds inspiration in her noble ancestor, and fights tooth and nail for her dreams and those she loves. No humiliation or injustice she experiences ever induces her to feel inferior or unworthy. In every way that matters to her she is a free woman, the opposite of Isabelle who feels trapped every way except financially. Remarkably, Mariata’s independence is no mere fictional invention by an author caught up in romantic fantasies about Tuaregs. More about this further down.

 

The fluency with which Johnson weaves complex social, political, and cultural strands together in The Salt Road is one of the novel's most notable achievements. To get an idea of what this entails it is worth taking a moment to condider the socio-political context for the story. The following is my beginner’s attempt to summarise points that have bearing on Johnson’s narrative. Please note, however, that the interpretation is my own, not an account of views or opinions expressed in the novel.

 

Particularly in the last half century Berber (pl. Imazaghen, sing. Amazigh) identity in western North Africa (Tamazgha/Maghreb) has been suppressed by a cultural and political system of domination referred to as Arabisation. The problem is not with Islam, which has been adopted by many Berbers, including Tuaregs (there are Jewish and Christian Berbers, too). Historically, Arabs are relative newcomers (late 7th century) to an area inhabited by ethnically-varied, non-Semitic indigenous peoples collectively known as Berbers. Berber assimilation of a long line of foreign conquerors (Romans, Vandals, Christian Eastern Romans (i.e. Byzantines), Arab Bedouins, French, and Spanish) ultimately led to a situation where the Berber language (dialects grouped together as Tamasheq/Tamazight) and customs became treated as if their practitioners were a minority. For example, it was only in 2003 that Morocco officially approved the teaching of Tamazight in schools. The written form of the language, Tifinagh, has been a contested issue as some Moroccan groups have pushed for Tamazight to be taught using the Arabic or Latin alphabet instead. Arabic is still the only official language of the country in spite of estimations that Tamazight is in fact spoken by around half the population.

 

Among the most marginalised are the Tuaregs, that is, Berbers who nomadised the Sahara. Once powerful trans-Saharan traders of luxury goods and slaves, travelling caravan routes (such as the Salt Road) from north-western Africa to cosmopolitan towns along the Mediterranean, they are now among the poorest groups in North Africa. Romanticised in the West as the noble and mystical Blue People, caught up in conflicts with Saharan governments in a deadly morass of mutual accusations of racism, violent persecution, and barbarism, one of few things that seem to be agreed upon by outsiders is that Tuareg numbers have dwindled (estimates range from about one to three million). Desertification, including severe droughts in the twentieth century, as well as the imposition of border controls that disrupt nomadism, have done their part in causing migration to urban areas. Even so, some observers detect small signs of revival, noting that it is an ancient and hardy culture capable of intelligent adjustment.

 

These tensions colour the narrative in The Salt Road and contribute to its rich, authentic feel, particularly in Mariata’s storyline. For example, Tuareg customs and the nobility of her maternal heritage support Mariata’s independence. It is a partially matrilinear society in which status is inherited through the maternal line and women have no obligation to wear veils (links to an interesting but dated article, so read with caution) but modesty and respect require men to cover their faces. Women own and dispose over their own property, and retain custody of their children after divorce, which they can initiate. Johnson shows them doing this and more, including choosing their own husbands, for example, and that before marriage, if done discreetly, it is acceptable for girls to have lovers. It is modern society, including the pressure of institutionalised religion, that threatens to take these rights and privileges away from Mariata by diminishing the status of women in Tuareg society.

 

Mariata’s poetry illustrates the prominence of women in Tuareg oral traditions and music (the Imzad, a single-stringed violin, is reserved for female musicians). Incidentally, I was amused to discover, in Art Of Being Tuareg (see books of related interest, below), which contains a chapter each on poetry and music, to find a poem in which a woman by the same name is mentioned: “Manta and Halban of the long braids/and Mariata, beloved by the young/is frugal with herself, with that which pleases”. The description fits.

 

Meanwhile, Taïb represents the sedentary Berber. Surprisingly, although he is a principal character and Isabelle’s eventual love interest, we learn less about his background than about many secondary and minor characters. An international businessman, he carries on the traditions of his Tuareg forebears, but as an urban dweller his knowledge of his nomadic heritage is vague and theoretical, not practical. Unlike the Tuareg characters, he and several other citified Berbers are known to the reader only by their first names, not their lineage (ag (son of) [father], ult (daughter of) [mother]) or family name. It may be intended to symbolise how cut off or alienated they are from their heritage, but in Taïb’s case it also accentuates the slenderness of his characterisation.

 

As Isabelle’s de facto guide, Taïb lacks flavour and individuality. In fact, I would argue that the way he is used, or rather unused, makes his presence in the story superfluous. If one were to replace him with one or more stock characters of either sex who air the same generic sentiments and let them drift, like he does, in and out around the periphery of the plotline, the trajectory of Isabelle’s development and the outcome of the mystery would remain substantially unaffected. Whatever your genre of fiction, literary or popular, if you have a mission to inform or educate readers, you either need, at a minimum, to carefully explore events that illustrate the point you are trying to make, or create characters whose personal struggles embody the issue. Mariata is a case in point of successful application of this principle; Taïb, the pallid opposite. An intermediary who facilitates Isabelle’s interactions with more creatively imagined characters who unlike him actually hold clues and answers and do things that drive the plot forward, he seems there primarily to allow a pretty bow to be tied around the resolution of Isabelle’s storyline.

 

Even there, however, as the couple of a “love builds bridges where there are none”-romance - if the perfunctory development of a romantic subplot so nebulous can be called that - the two fail to convince. Worse, the flimsiness weakens the persuasiveness of Isabelle’s storyline. Putting Isabelle really on her own in Morocco could have forced something more interesting out of her, or, alternatively, giving her an active, insightful partner or other intelligent foil could have resulted in real conflict that demonstrates issues of colonisation, exploitation, and marginalisation. But instead of a romance that deepens characterisation and interaction that forces debate we are stuck with two people who rather than communicate spout preachy slogans or combative opinions in snapshot fashion. It was difficult for me to grasp what exactly Taïb admires or respects in a woman who protests, complains, distrusts, and shies away from everything that is new or unexpected to her – and as an ignorant, impatient first-time tourist in Morocco, possessed of a petulant nature, who puts herself at the mercies of local strangers, that pretty much encompasses every moment of every day. It was equally unclear to me why Isabelle falls for this particular man, not merely for his culture.

 

Then again, none of the male characterisations in The Salt Road reach anywhere near the substance or complexity of Johnson’s female creations, even the secondary ones. This story belongs to its women, young and old. (Belief in spirits has a prominent place in the culture the story explores, and that is what the male characters often resembled: wraith-like creatures in a world of wonderfully real, strong-willed women.) Even so, The Salt Road is deeply romantic in its approach to the place of love in a person’s life and its healing effect. Rather than taking the customary approach of condensing romance/love to specific courtship/family scenes, the author often makes its effect come vibrantly (and touchingly) through in character attitudes to the tribulations that buffet their lives and the strength they find in hope.

 

Jane Johnson is a happy author discovery for me. With The Salt Road she has crafted literate entertainment that excites the senses even as it informs. In other words, pure wish fulfillment for armchair travellers. Still, whereas the fascinating descriptions of Tuareg life, the careful unfolding of intense private dramas, and the poignant puzzle all crackle with storytelling vigour, if you are of the opinion that details bog down a story and you primarily require a snappy tempo and flashy mystery, then this may not be the book for you. The thoughtful but interest-filled pace echoes the musings of an elderly character in the novel: “all stories have their own way of being told and can never be hurried” (page 288). The Salt Road heeds the advice, and I am glad that it does.

 

^*Tuareg (sing. Targuia (f), Targui (m)) is the most widely used term for groups of people who call themselves Kel Tamasheq (The Free People), Kel Tagelmust (People Of The Veil), or Imazaghen (Berber). While the origins of ‘Tuareg’ may be pejorative, Jane Johnson uses the term as a modern shorthand.

 

A lengthy excerpt from The Salt Road (chapter five) can be read at Johnson’s website. It introduces the reader to Mariata and is an excellent representation of the author’s style.

 

Non-fiction of related interest: The inclusion of works in French in the appended reading list in The Salt Road reflects the relative scarcity of quality printed sources and Internet articles in English, a difficulty I encountered when researching links for this post. The blog Tuareg Culture And News comments on the proliferation of popular myths in the media and recommends The Pastoral Tuareg: Ecology, Culture, and Society (Carlsberg Nomad Series) by Johannes Nicolaisen and Ida Nicolaisen as “the most authoritative, comprehensive ethnography on Tuareg culture in English” despite the fact that its original publication dates back to 1963 (latest printing by Thames and Hudson, 1997). Since that post, however, Tuareg Society Within A Globilized World: Saharan Life In Transition (Tauris, 2010) edited by Anja Fischer (German site, but lots of photos) and Ines Kohl has been released. The publishers claim “this book is the first comprehensive study of the Tuareg today”. The apparent companion book to a noted exhibition, Art Of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads In A Modern World, receives at least one mixed review: “the title is not only ethnocentric, it is misleading: The book is not really about today's nomadic Tuareg in the Sahara. It is rather a book about sedentary silversmiths, their families, and their crafts in a place called Agadez, Republic of Niger”. The reviewer goes on to points out that “In their foreword, Thomas K. Seligman (interview), director of the Cantor Arts Center, and Marla C. Berns, director of the UCLA Fowler Museum, thank Hermès, the famed French couture house, for its support. Hermès, as a global player, is commissioning silver pieces from silversmiths in Agadez for the Paris-based fashion house. This is a positive development, as it provides skilled craftsmen with a secure income. In practice, however, the silversmiths are dependent on some French intermediaries who do the designs and who have established ties with Hermès. Another problematic story concerns the printing of images of classic Berber jewelry and Tuareg leather bags on Hermès silk scarves. Are they "Tuareg-inspired designs," (p. 265) or are they copies of Tuareg designs, taken, and reproduced for Hermès' commercial benefit? Does Hermès pay any copyright fees to the Tuareg community?” I have quoted this part of the review in full because there are tangents to characters and developments in The Salt Road. An important secondary character is a smith (enad), and this person's arts and craftmanship play an interesting role in the novel. But the novel’s last chapter also makes positive mention of another character’s “thriving trade in commissioned artefacts for the American and European collectors’ market”, and there is no commentary that would address the concerns raised by the reviewer of Art Of Being Tuareg. Finally, a comprehensive, non-analytical summary and brief review note of The Tuaregs: The Blue People by Karl-G. Prasse concludes that this book serves as a useful general introduction; it is also one of the sources listed by Johnson.

 

Wales: A Christmas Beginning by Anne Perry

If one considers reasonable the expectation that the theme or spirit of the holiday season be present in a book titled A Christmas Beginning, Anne Perry’s low-key historical mystery is bound to fall short. The story could be set during any season without altering the plot in any way. Since, furthermore, the novel’s skeletal composition under-utilises the historical and geographical setting, any enjoyment hinges on the characters and the mystery. I believe those able to derive most satisfaction from A Christmas Beginning are readers familiar with the author’s William Monk series who may be disposed to treat this restrained little drama, centered upon a recurring character, as an enlightening vignette.

 

Circa 1864. Feeling he has made a mistake in spending his lonely Christmas holiday on the bleak Welsh island of Anglesey (Ynys Môn), London police superintendent Runcorn is shocked out of his gloom by the discovery he makes on a morning walk. Sprawled among the gravestones of the Beaumaris church is the body of the vicar’s sister, viciously stabbed to death.

A peaceful community, the  islanders desperately want to believe the crime was committed by some lunatic outsider, resenting the dour Londoner’s suggestion to the contrary. Nevertheless, the local authorities have no experience in murder investigations and reluctantly accept Runcorn’s offer of assistance.

The case has personal significance for Runcorn since the victim strongly reminds him of a woman he knows he can never have. Her presence on the island is both an inspiration to do well and a constant ache. But the one thing his humble roots have never stood in the way of is the truth.

 

The dedication page of A Christmas Beginning reads, “To all those who dream impossible dreams”. The sentiment alludes to the hopeless love that haunts the book’s principal protagonist, Runcorn (if his first name is stated anywhere in the novel, it has eluded me). Although the simple plot is held together by a murder mystery, it primarily functions as a character sketch of an introspective, pragmatic, middle-aged career man who learns to “play second fiddle” and in the process has a moral epiphany which enables him to rediscover what truly matters to him.

Runcorn’s internal dialogue and emotional responses are recorded in minute detail, to the extent that I feel the story is less about the  murder – front and centre though it is in the plot – or its impact on the shocked, grief-struck community (the word ‘grief’ is used with noticeable frequency) than on Runcorn’s development arc. While I know nothing about the William Monk series (the blurb did not state that the book ties in with it) other than what I afterwards found while trying to establish a time frame for the action, Perry provides the details necessary to form a rough idea of Runcorn’s background. Where the matter grew confusing for me was in the disjuncture between the person he appears to be in A Christmas Beginning and the spare facts I was given about his professional life in London. I had trouble making the sensitivity, caring, and discomfiture he shows in A Christmas Beginning fit the attributes implied by what I was told about his career personality: aggressive, unpolished, and tactless. I assume the intention was to flesh out a prominent secondary character by making known a previously unimagined dimension to that character, thus providing illuminating entertainment for readers who may have thought of him only as Monk’s disagreeable supervisor. I came to the book with no preconceptions in this regard and ended up quite fond of his ill-at-ease manner, rough honesty, and tongue-tied passions.

Where I keenly felt the lack of context that comes from being an outsider to a well-established series was in the omission of period detail. So vague and thin is the historical setting that I quite forgot the first page’s mention of hansom cabs and gaslight – which are not exactly the most helpful markers anyway – and for a good part of the story kept visualising characters in 1920s-1930s garb as the mood seemed in line with a vintage story from the golden age of mysteries. This haziness translates to the location, which is outlined in the thinnest of strokes, place names and object names often standing in for description.

Emotions run high in the story but oddly did not engage me. I felt like an observer, politely sympathetic but too wary of the scenes played out before me to actively feel much for the plight of the characters. Partially, I suspect, it is due to the theme of repression and the manner in which Runcorn and others try to stifle their natural reactions. More than the much-touted grief, many scenes bristle with anger that rarely spills out in full force. If the author’s idea was to make the reader feel the effect of living in such an environment, I have to say it worked on me. However, the general mood it establishes is sombre; I came away subdued, but not in a humble, spiritual way. Despite an ending designed to lift hearts, this is not the book I would choose to reread in order to invoke a warm, joyful Christmas spirit.

A brief note on a few other characters. As the well-born woman from whom Runcorn is divided by Victorian class barriers and money, Melisande Ewart is benevolent but nebulous as a protagonist; she comes across as a Victorian man’s idealised vision of womanhood, vaguely angelic. The reason for this impression is that she is more vividly realised in Runcorn’s emotions than in the brief encounters the reader is allowed directly with her. Runcorn’s reactions to her inform and guide his every action in the novel whereas any independent glimpse the reader is given of her personality is severely limited. Sir Alan Faraday, chief constable and Melisande’s putative fiancé, seems far more substantive in his abrasive snobbery, just as John Barclay, the brother of Melisande, is in his unremitting hostility toward Runcorn.

An interesting issue raised by the plot is the restrictive condition of unmarried Victorian gentlewomen. Barred by social codes from making a living and made to understand that remaining at home beyond adulthood would constitute an unacceptable financial drain on the family, they were expected to do their duty by treating marriage as a career. Therefore – as long as the class she belonged to was not shamed – who a woman married was not nearly as important as the imperative that she do marry. The choice not to marry or to marry for love represented a freedom few gentlewomen dared hope for. By contrasting the lives of two characters in this situation, characters who opt for differing paths, A Christmas Beginning examines the difficulties faced by women who attempted to defy the expectations of society and their families. The novel’s treatment of the subject was easily the most absorbing part of the narrative for me, but the space allotted to it precludes true depth, if not feeling. Ironically, this plotline initially perplexed me as I had not consciously grasped that the story was set in Victorian times (and certainly I never suspected, even after stumbling over a second mention of carriages, a period set as far back as the 1860s). I kept thinking, isn’t this a bit too old-fashioned even for a remote corner of Britain in the early twentieth century?...

I am grateful that A Christmas Beginning was not the first novel by Anne Perry that I read. A monochromatic sketch of repressed passions, its bland setting and austere mood resulted in a dreary reading experience for me. To be fair, my annoyance at the extremely tenuous connection with Christmas unquestionably played a part in this. In any case, unlike The Sheen On The Silk, which turned out to be one of my favourite reads this year, its meagre satisfactions would probably not have inspired me to explore the author’s work further. Still, Anne Perry writes too well for A Christmas Beginning to be considered a bad read;  I simply expected more.

 

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“.

 

Ottoman Empire: Tears Of Pearl by Tasha Alexander

The sleuthing heroine of Tears Of Pearl sweeps through the Ottoman imperial harems of late nineteenth-century Constantinople (Istanbul) with an ethnocentrism reminiscent of Anna in The King And I. With a mystery that relies on coincidence and tampers with a historical figure, Tasha Alexander’s fourth entry in her series featuring Lady Emily Bromley, now Hargreaves, employs heightened romance and a setting that has long titillated Westerners to bolster excitement, not always successfully. But delve underneath the excess of ingredients and a sombre theme emerges that gives the novel its poignant emotional core: Tears Of Pearl proves aptly titled, for the plot deals with parenthood and loss.

 

1892. The honeymoon plans of Lady Emily and Colin Hargreaves go awry almost from the moment they step off the Orient Express in Constantinople. Instead of proceeding on a leisurely tour of classical sites in the Levant the pair find themselves embroiled in Ottoman intrigue when the kidnapped daughter of a British diplomat turns up murdered in the sultan’s gardens.

Since the imperial harem, where the young woman had been an inmate since childhood, her tragic origins unknown, is closed off to male outsiders, Sultan Abdül Hamit II grants Emily permission to conduct an investigation on behalf of British authorities. But the women prove reluctant to share what they know, each seemingly having her own agenda to protect. Nevertheless, on one thing almost everyone, from the rivalling adoptive mothers of the sultan to the unhappy concubine Roxelana and the forceful palace eunuch Jemal, seem to agree: the girl was troublesome. Not as troublesome as Emily can be, however, when she sets her mind to something. Only this time her defiance of warnings may not come without personal cost.

 

I think Tears Of Pearl would have benefited from an increased page count. Tasha Alexander crams a lot of story into 306 (trade paperback) pages of spacious text and the result is enforced shallowness. Since the sadness of the theme I mentioned carries through many aspects of the story and creates narrative tension with the pleasures of the honeymoon, the superficiality detracted more from my reading experience than is common with escapist mysteries.

In addition to the expected romance and multiple murders, the myriad elements I contended with include an examination of parental grief, comparisons of the rights and restrictions between women in Ottoman society and their counterparts in Britain, reflections about the limits of Emily’s freedom to follow an independent course, the doubts and uncertainties of motherhood, desperate worry about a pregnant friend back in England, a long-term visit from another friend in the midst of said honeymoon, and the moral and ethical pros and cons of concretely interfering with a different way of life.

With so many components to juggle, it is to the author’s credit that I did not feel I had lost anything by skipping the first two books of the series and leaving the third, A Fatal Waltz, unfinished. Certainly a greater familiarity with Emily and Colin’s backgrounds would have helped to flesh them out as characters, but as their past neither impacts the mystery nor complicates their relationship, I experienced no gaps of understanding. Alexander inserts sufficient information in the first few pages for anyone to catch up on relevant details.

Tears Of Pearl may play out during the protagonist’s honeymoon, but the emphasis is where it should be, on the mystery. In the case of A Fatal Waltz, I foundered on the narrator’s voice (Emily, first person POV), which to me read as paper-dry, cool, and aloof, before the mystery even had time to mature. In Tears Of Pearl, which I read from cover to cover despite continued reservations about an undisciplined prose style that fluctuates between elaborate Victorian formality and modern American colloquialisms, the execution of the mystery plot is defective, and again the trouble is related to Emily, this time her incompetence as a problem solver.

Amateur sleuths are an honoured tradition in mystery writing, and I often enjoy their curiosity and common sense more than the trained skill and Holmesian intelligence of professional types. Emily’s detective work in Tears Of Pearl is enthusiastic, but based on her methods I cannot share the flattering opinion of her talents displayed by Colin and herself. Her most aggravating failing is to develop a pet theory, which consistently leads her to try to fit the facts to her theory rather than develop a theory from the facts. It is Not A Good Thing when a mystery reader is mentally shouting at the protagonist to please, for mercy’s sake, ask the obvious questions and connect the obvious dots. From picking out the villain/s to unravelling the motives and actions of players in the subplots, I was chapters ahead of Emily, a novelty that grew tiresome remarkably quickly (although I like mysteries, they stump me more often than not). On page 258, Emily finally realises an all-changing fact and is “Filled with new enthusiasm at this revelation – for I considered it nothing short of just that”. I felt pained.

There are a few eyebrow-raising plot coincidences and implausibilities. Several have to do with the curiously named Ceyden, the girl kidnapped at age three but immediately, in a night-dark garden, recognized by her father in her adulthood. The circumstances surrounding the search for her, the fact that her name was never changed, the place where she ended up and where her father was known, the benevolence of her custodians, and the language she spoke at the time, all made me question her supposed untraceability. (As a side note, Ceyden appears to be a Turkish name, not Algerian or British in spite of her parentage.)

It is a shame, because implementation blunders aside, the ideas behind the plot are sound. The mystery gets off to a swift, intriguing start, builds steadily, and by being intricately layered continued to grip my interest even after I had began sighing about the shortcomings of the oblivious protagonist. Subtler clues, much more sophisticated red herrings, a greater variety of complex suspects with believable motivations, combined with rational deduction – instead of false turns generated by impulsive jumping to conclusions – could have built an admirable mystery.

With the exception of Emily, characterisations in Tears of Pearl fall on the sketchy side. Her secret personal fears are explored with a care and thoughtfulness not given any other subject in the novel, and this both deepens the serious mood into which the story descends after its lively beginning, and inspires some genuinely affecting scenes. I wish this quality had been extended to other parts of the story. It gave me clearer understanding of why this historical mystery series has many loyal followers, and persuaded me to acquire Tasha Alexander’s next, French-set book (Dangerous To Know).

Colin Hargreaves is described as an enlightened and supportive Victorian husband in the sense that although he respects Emily as an intellectual equal and there exists an understanding that he wants to “give [her] the freedom [she] need[s]”, legally he is under no obligation to do so. An agreeable stock figure rather than a compelling character in his own right, after getting Emily to Constantinople and opening diplomatic doors for her, his function in the story seems reduced to acting as an inadvertent catalyst for one of Emily’s worries and sending her glances that make her body tingle. The door is closed on their physical relationship, but an abundance of innuendo shows it is mutually happy and satisfying.

Mystery series or not, for a couple on their honeymoon Emily and Colin spend remarkably little time in each other’s company once they leave their bedroom. Although their relationship has evidently played an important role from the very beginning of the series, and both are involved in the investigations in this book, we don’t see them exploring side by side or working together to solve the murders. Indeed, while they brief each other on their progress, so entirely separate are their investigations that they make a bet about which of them will solve the mystery first. Furthermore, in the second half of the story Emily’s accomplice around Constantinople is an American friend who has blithely intruded on the honeymoon without causing either spouse observable regret beyond their initial surprise. As this friend serves a negligible role in the plot before, for all intents and purposes, bowing out off-stage at a critical point in order to raise the stakes for Emily, and as there is no foreshadowing indicating that the series will ultimately prove Emily’s marriage to be a disappointment, I was puzzled by the author’s choice to play up (the otherwise welcome emphasis on the importance of) female friendship at the expense of deepening the newly formed marital bond in a honeymoon-set novel.

I can see the plot reasons for making Emily feel, in one regard, emotionally on her own. Unfortunately, since she keeps silent about an arguably significant personal concern it paints her as something of a hypocrite when, in a scene that invites an exchange of confidences, she reminds Colin that they have always been open with each other. Apparently she requires open-heartedness from Colin but is unwilling to reciprocate. This distrust makes her seem lost and less mature than Colin, at the same time as it undeniably gives her characterisation a complexity that is lacking from his. In Tears Of Pearl the two seem better matched physically than emotionally. While Emily’s needs are discussed by them both, Colin’s (non-physical) personal life receives no attention, and they don’t conduct conversations that meaningfully probe and develop their relationship.

The arrival of the American friend, Margaret, and the letters from England that are regularly interspersed throughout the novel, seemed to me a clumsy way of maintaining reader contact with recurring characters. It put me in mind of the family reunions that romance authors seem overly fond of placing in their series books. Their artificiality tends to disrupt the narrative flow. Using another technique to integrate the news and issues raised in the letters to Emily would have eliminated disjointed storytelling. Another thing that could have been handled more smoothly is the way that physical setting is detailed. Descriptions are often inserted in chunks that resemble paragraphs from a travel guide. They convey interesting information but sometimes feel like more like mini-lectures about architecture, for example, and rarely evoke the deeper spirit or atmosphere of a place. The research was there, but its application was lacklustre. I would like to think this author is capable of better.

This leads me to the depiction of Ottoman society. Despite a half-hearted attempt at a balanced presentation, issues arising from cultural differences receive only the most superficial treatment. Both the relatively powerful Valide Sultans, Bezime (Pertevniyal) in Topkapi and Perestu (Rahime Piristû or Perestû) in Yildiz, and powerless harem inmates come across as orientalist stereotypes, scheming, deceitful, and greedy. The one partial exception happens to be a secretly converted Christian. Harems are the family quarters, but we see no children running about. There is some talk of perceptions versus reality, and in one emotional scene the author does show Muslim women in a lovely, warm light, but in the end the scales tip rather strongly against a society about which Emily herself admits she knows little. Lady Emily shows herself to be not so much an explorer of another culture but an imposer of her own values. In this, she is much closer to Anna Leonowens than to Gertrude Bell or even Isabel Burton.

In the interview printed at the back of my edition (Minotaur Books trade paperback, 2010), in answer to a question about historical fact the author states that she is “fanatical about accurate details”. Tears Of Pearl is not the best example of this. For example, as she acknowledges in the afterword, Alexander twists the known facts about Bezime to accommodate the plot. The changes are not in regards to some trivial detail but amount to rewriting history. Secondly, the diplomatic language of Europe and the Ottoman Empire at this period was French, not English, and this is nowhere apparent. Emily comments on the fluency or inability of various people to communicate with her in English, using this language in her interviews with the Sultan and his family, without the (etiquette-decreed) presence of an interpreter. In line with custom, however, the languages spoken by Sultan Abdül Hamit II do not appear to have included English. Thirdly, basic Ottoman protocol for audiences with anyone from the royal family is utterly ignored, allowing Emily to be on first name basis with the Valide Sultans, and in speech and manners behave towards them and the Sultan – ruler of an empire and the Caliph of Islam – as if they are her country cousins. Fourthly, the decline of the Ottoman Empire is commented on with the most stunningly offhand remark: “’Due in large part to the excessive and obscene spending of Abdül Hamit’s predecessors. They’ve done more palace building than prudent this century – and that went a long way to bankrupting the empire.’” (page 33). What about the Crimean War? The Balkan rebellions? The Russo-Turkish War? The Treaty Of San Stefano? The Treaty Of Berlin? Fifthly, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (the Porte) at this time was Sir Francis Clare Ford, who appears to have presented his credentials to the Sultan in March 1892, not Sir William White, who had died in December 1891. Sixthly – oh, never mind.

Usually when I encounter this many problems with a novel I conclude the author’s style and my preferences are incompatible. But in Tasha Alexander’s case I am intrigued because in spite of my criticisms I remained absorbed and entertained throughout. The very human dilemmas and pains that lie at the heart of Tears Of Pearl give the mystery a compassionate dimension. The prose is articulate and on the whole the characters display attitudes and sensibilities that pleasantly evoke the late Victorian period. I liked the serious side of Emily’s nature and the sweetness of Colin’s. Although I do not by any means regard Alexander’s use of her Ottoman setting as an unqualified success, I appreciate that she took on an historically and culturally exciting location and tried to turn its potential into a vibrant mystery. Now I itch to find out whether Dangerous to Know follows in the footsteps of A Fatal Waltz or builds on the promise of Tears Of Pearl.

 

The line of poetry quoted by Colin in Tears Of Pearl is from William Butler Yeats’s "When You Are Old" (originally published in 1893; Colin mentions that Yeats showed it to him in Dublin in its pre-published state). Here are the first two stanzas (W.B. Yeats: Selected Poetry, edited by A. Norman Jeffares, Pan Books, 1974, page 17):

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

I will leave out the final quatrain, as it is not suited to a honeymooning couple!

 

Books of related interest: First published in 1915, A Turkish Woman’s European Impressions details the exchanges between Ottoman Zeyneb Hanoum and English Grace Ellison. Through Hanoum’s letters and Ellison’s commentaries the book provides insight into the shared hopes and cultural differences between Eastern and Western women at a time when both were struggling for emancipation. The frank and intelligent discussion in the excerpts I have read promptly inspired me to put the book on my TBR list. The Concubine, the Princess, and the Teacher: Voices from the Ottoman Harem by Douglas Scott Brookes (2008) offers the newly translated memoirs of three Ottoman palace ladies, all writing at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century: “Filizten, concubine to Sultan Murad V; Princess Ayse, daughter of Sultan Abdulhamid II; and Safiye, a schoolteacher who instructed the grandchildren and harem ladies of Sultan Mehmed V.” The lengthy introduction is available online. Oriental panorama: British travellers in 19th century Turkey by Reinhold Schiffer (1999) seems an incredible resource with its wealth of detail about everything from court protocol to eating habits; as I browsed through its pages I became more interested in studying it than in finishing this post! Additionally, for anyone interested in Tasha Alexander’s sources, a selection of suggested reading is appended among the bonus material at the back of the (2010) paperback edition of Tears Of Pearl; it includes the journal of Lady Layard.