Review 2712: The Teutonic Knights

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really remember what led me to read With Fire and Sword years ago. It is the first book of a trilogy by Henryk Sienkiewicz, a writer of historical fiction and Nobel Prize winner who was publishing around the turn of the 20th century. While I was reading that book, a friend who was born of Polish parents in England just after World War II told me that Sienkiewicz’s books were the books of her childhood, although they are certainly meant also for adults.

I found With Fire and Sword to be exciting and interesting and went on to read the whole trilogy, although my blog just has the review I wrote for Nancy Pearl‘s blog about the first book. And then just recently I came across a used copy of Sienkiewicz’s The Teutonic Knights, which he considered to be his best book.

You might think that a book entitled The Teutonic Knights would have them as heroes, but you would be wrong. In fact, although Sienkiewicz’s portrayal is more nuanced, many of them are quite dastardly.

The novel is set 150 years before With Fire and Sword, beginning in 1399. The two main characters, the knight Macko of Bodaniec and his young nephew and squire Zbyszko are returning from war in Lithuania against the Teutonic knights. The knights were invited into the Baltic area many years before to keep the Prussians in line, but since then they have expanded to an order with incredible power and have been making incursions on the neighboring areas of Poland and Lithuania, using as an excuse conversion to Christianity. The only problem with this is that Poland is already Christian and Lithuania has been converted as a result of the marriage of the Lithuanian King Jagiello with the Polish Queen Regnant Jadwiga. Teutonic knights who are beginning to see a loss of their purpose have been refusing to convert their neighbors, preferring to enslave them and take their property.

Macko and Zbyszko have stopped at an inn when likewise the entourage of Duchess Anna Danuto stops for a rest on the way to the royal birth of King Jagiello and Queen Jadwiga’s first child. In her train is a beautiful young girl, still a child at 12, Janusia, the daughter of Count Jurand of Spychow, a hated enemy of the Teutonic knights, who killed her mother. Young Zbyszko is so taken with her that he makes her a knightly vow to present her with three peacock feathers that Teutonic knights wear in their helmets, which means he has to fight them.

Macko and Zbyszko are invited to accompany the duchess, and as they approach Cracow, Zbyszko sees a knight wearing peacock feathers. Thinking God has answered his prayer to meet his vow, he dashes at the knight and is only stopped when a Polish knight breaks his lance, because the man is Kuno Lichtenstein, an envoy to the king. Attacking an envoy is punishable by death.

So, Zbyszko is imprisoned while various important people try to get him off, pleading his extreme youth and impetuosity. But Lichtenstein insists on his punishment, and King Jagiello feels he has no other option.

On the day of the execution, an old custom is invoked. Janusia throws her veil over Zbyszko and claims him as hers. This saves his life and engages them to be married.

Macko and Zbyszko finally make it home to Bogdaniec, which was destroyed before they left and their entire family killed. Zbyszko is only returning temporarily, intending to go meet his vow, while Macko has now enough spoils from war to begin returning the estate to prosperity. But now we meet Jagienka, the neighboring damsel, who is healthy and beautiful and can use a crossbow or kill a bear with the best of them. She was Zbyszko’s childhood friend, and now she falls in love with him. This made me very curious about what would happen, as Zbyszko is also attracted to her.

And I’m not going to say much more except that this novel, although 780 pages long, rattles along at a pretty good clip and features kidnappings, knightly deeds, dastardly acts, fights unto death, and climaxes with an enormous, exciting battle. In amongst the action, Sienkiewicz shows a great deal of knowledge about Medieval history, dress, and customs.

This is another page turner, and I have already put another book by Sienkiewicz on my next Classics Club List.

P. S. Sienkiewicz is most well-known for Quo Vadis, his novel about Christianity in Ancient Rome. This is just my opinion, but I think his Polish novels are a lot better.

Related Posts

With Fire and Sword

Quo Vadis

The Scottish Chiefs

Review 2711: Operation Nassau

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Dr. B. MacRannoch has had to leave her satisfying medical research job to take a job in a hospital in Nassau because of her father’s asthma. But they have an ongoing dispute. Her father, James Ulric MacRannoch, has researched who will take his place as Chief of the Clan MacRannoch if she doesn’t marry and discovered it’s a Japanese man, T. K. MacRannoch of Tokyo. Her father wants Dr. MacRannoch (Beltanno) to get married to keep T. K. from inheriting. In response, Beltanno has made herself as prickly and unattractive as possible and declares she is going to marry T. K. or preferably no one.

Returning from New York to Nassau, she helps a passenger who is taken ill, Sir Bart Edgecombe. Although his ailment appears to be food poisoning, Beltanno is doubtful and takes a sample of his stomach contents. He turns out to have been poisoned with arsenic.

Edgecombe wants her to come stay with himself and his wife and in the meantime she agrees to take a message to the famous portrait painter, Johnson Johnson. From him, she learns that Edgecombe is a British agent whose life is in danger, presumably from someone on the plane. The passengers are Wallace Brady, a young American engineer; Krishtof Bey, a flamboyant Turkish ballet dancer; and Trotter, an army sergeant who is going to run the Tattoo for her father’s MacRannock clan gathering.

Feminists—if you can handle a plot equivalent to the scenes in old movies when the plain, serious girl takes off her glasses to be revealed a beauty, and can just put a few things down to the times, this novel is still an entertaining fast mover, intricately plotted, that balances repeated murder attempts with the more amusing dispute with Beltanno’s irascible father. For once she makes her transformation, Beltanno finds she has three suitors, including T. K. MacRannoch.

Related Posts

Rum Affair

Ibiza Surprise

Tropical Issue

Review 2710: Heartwood

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

Hiker Valerie Gillis has vanished in the Maine woods while hiking the Appalachian Trail. She has failed to check in with her husband at the agreed-upon location for a few days before he reports her missing, because she has often been late. Did Valerie wander off the trail or has something else happened?

This story is narrated from the viewpoints of several characters. Valerie herself is keeping a journal that eventually reveals what happened. Lieutenant Bev Miller is the game warden in charge of the search. Santo is a black New Yorker who was Valerie’s hiking buddy on part of the trek. Finally, there is Lena, a retired wheelchair-bound scientist who sees something online that helps the search.

This novel is interesting on several fronts. Readers get to know these main characters very well and feel affection for some of them. There is a lot of detail about the wildness of the Maine forests and how searches are conducted. And the tension mounts as the search continues well beyond the usual time it takes to find someone. The book is fairly hard to put down.

Finally, it has a touching ending.

Related Posts

The Berry Pickers

This Other Eden

A Walk in the Woods

WWW Wednesday!

~ whatmeread ~ 9 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

I’m reading Precipice by Robert Harris. It’s about British Prime Minister Asquith at the start of World War I and his affair with a much younger woman, Venetia Stanley (a descendent of the Venetia Stanley who was the main character in Viper Wine, by the way). Usually, his books are well researched and quite suspenseful, but I’m finding this one slow to get into and so far not that interesting. We’ll see if it improves. It seems like a similar subject to his book Munich, which was about Chamberlain trying to fight off World War II, but so far I found that novel a lot more compelling.

What I just finished reading

I just read Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish by Francesca Peacock. I’m not quite sure what possessed me to read two biographies of the same woman so close together (I read Mad Madge by Katie Whitaker last year), but I still found it interesting. This one is more academic than the other.

What I will read next

Now, that’s the question this time. I periodically look for books for my projects at the library first, hoping not to have to buy them, and this time four of them arrived at the same time. (I put them on hold and go pick them up when they’re ready.) I had been waiting for Telephone by Percival Everett for months. For the second time, it looks like the library gave up on it being returned and bought a new copy, because I was first in line for the hold and it took me several months to get it, and it looks new and unread. Once I read it, I will have finished the shortlist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize. It’s about a geologist who doesn’t seem to know how to deal with his family’s problems. If it’s anything like the others by him I’ve read, it’s funny and angry.

Also for my Pulitzer Prize project is The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen. It will be the first book I’ve read from the 2022 shortlist. I don’t usually check out two books for the same project at once, but I had been waiting so long to get Telephone and had no idea it would arrive at the same time. This book is supposed to be funny, so I might read it last. It seems as if my sense of humor is out of sync with other people’s these days.

The book that sounds most interesting to me is These Days by Lucy Caldwell, about two women living in Belfast during World War II. It’s the last book I have to read for the 2023 Walter Scott Historical Fiction prize shortlist, so that’s another reason to read it first. It hasn’t been available from the library until now.

Finally, there’s Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, which combines two things I’m not terribly interested in, coming-of-age novels and sports (although I used to follow tennis, which is the sport in the book, and yes, I have reviewed two tennis books on this blog, Open by Andre Agassi and Levels of the Game by John McPhee). It’s the last book I need to read for the 2023 shortlist for the Booker Prize, though. That’s three books that are the last ones I need to read for a certain year and prize, which makes it harder to pick. It has one advantage over the others. It’s very short (although I notice the print is tiny).

Which one would you pick? Maybe I’ll let my commenters decide. And what have you been reading lately?

Review 2709: The Town House

~ whatmeread ~ 11 Comments

The Town House is the first book in Norah Lofts’ Suffolk Trilogy. Fairly early in the book, a 14th century serf, who later calls himself Martin Reed, escapes from his manor with the knowledge that if he can live in a walled city for a year and a day without being captured, he is free. With him is Kate, the young woman he intends to marry.

The novel follows three generations of Martin’s family. At first, everything he tries comes to nothing. Already trained as a smith by his father, he serves an extra year of apprenticeship only to have the guild decline to make him a member, which means he cannot be a smith. Hired by a carter and asked to privately shoe horses, his work is discovered and the guild attacks him and leaves him for dead. All these years, his family lives in abject poverty. It is not until he does a favor for the church that he finally gets an opportunity, but it is too late to save his family from tragedy.

The book is divided into five parts, from the point of view of different characters. The first is Martin himself. The second is Old Agnes, a homeless woman he takes as housekeeper after the tragedy. The third is Anne Blanchefleur, the young woman of good family but no fortune who marries Richard, the now wealthy Martin’s son. The fourth is Maude Reed, Martin’s granddaughter. The fifth is Nicholas Freeman, Martin’s secretary.

Although the beginning of this book is almost identical to that of Cathedral of the Sea (The Town House is written earlier), I was more involved in The Town House. Martin’s prosperity and home are built on tragedy and betrayal. This is a story of complex characters, many with deep faults. I found it interesting in both the story it told and in the background details about Medieval life, especially in the section narrated by Maude, who goes to live for a time in the household of a wealthy and noble cousin. I have already ordered the second book in this series.

Related Posts

Cathedral of the Sea

Here Was a Man

Lady Living Alone

Review 2708: #ReadingIrelandMonth26: The Land of Spices

~ whatmeread ~ 7 Comments

The Land of Spices is my final book for Reading Ireland Month, and it’s a novel about two females—the Mother Superior of an Irish convent and Anna, a young girl who comes to the convent school as a student several years before the school usually accepts students.

Marie-Hélene, the Mother Superior, was very happy in her convent in Belgium, but feels isolated in Ireland. Some of the higher-ranking nuns in the convent find her cold and detached, although the ordinary nuns like her. And the Bishop doesn’t like his lack of authority over the order or that she is English. In the beginning of the novel, she has written a letter to the Mère Générale asking to be transferred when she notices Anna.

Anna at six is the youngest child ever admitted to the school. Her parents feel that their household is unsettled enough that the children are better off at school. The Mother Superior sees something pure and attentive in Anna, so she makes a point of having her memorize poems and come to her to recite them when she is young to help in her reserved way make Anna more comfortable.

This novel follows the lives of these two, Anna as she grows and develops intellectually and the Mother Superior as she does her best to guide the school and convent. It is said to be quite autobiographical, Anna being the stand-in for O’Brien herself.

I couldn’t always follow the subtleties of the Mother Superior’s devotion. As a girl, she had no intention of being a nun but turned to it after what she considered a betrayal by her much-loved father. However, she slowly finds herself suited to the life.

Religious devotion isn’t my thing, so I found Anna’s story a little more appealing. As the novel comes toward completion, though, it becomes more obvious why the two are paired, even though most of their lives at the convent are separate.

This novel is more about character and intellectual ruminations than plot, and so it’s a bit slow moving.

Related Posts

Mary Lavelle

That Lady

Black Narcissus

Review 2707: #ReadingIrelandMonth26! Oscar Wilde

~ whatmeread ~ 12 Comments

This book isn’t written by an Irishman, but since it is about an Irish writer, I think it qualifies for Reading Ireland Month. Thanks to Dean Street Press for providing this interesting biography of Oscar Wilde, originally published in 1976.

Oscar Wilde has always seemed to me a fascinating and tragic figure. He was well known for his wit and perfect sentences. I have often considered whether his remarks were studied, but contemporaries seemed to believe that they were all extemporaneous, which is amazing.

Sheridan Morley’s biography of Wilde is not the exhaustive kind that ends up submerged in trivial details. Instead, it is short, appears to be aimed at the general public, and provides just enough information along with a few quotes from his work or writings about him. It’s well written and moves along nicely.

I have read details of his disgrace before, but this novel deals a lot less harshly with Lord Alfred Douglas’s part in it. It makes a point that Wilde had been behaving recklessly, apparently under the impression that he was so popular he was untouchable.

Of course, Wilde’s trial and imprisonment are great travesties of British justice and losses to British literature. As he wrote in the years before the event four major comedies (the point made that they were the only major English comic plays written in the 100 years before), who knows how many other works—and what kind—he could have produced?

This is an enjoyable and interesting book about a man who was determined from a very young age to be either famous or infamous, so he said, and achieved both.

Related Posts

Victorian Fairy Tales

The Children’s Book

The New Life

Review 2706: Classics Club Spin Result! Love’s Labour’s Lost

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Love’s Labour’s Lost is the work I drew for the Classics Club spin, and it seems like a bit of a curiosity. Despite having taken several Shakespeare courses during my academic days and having attended quite a few performances, I have never read this play or seen it performed.

My Riverside edition says that the play is Shakespeare’s most Elizabethan, with lots of wordplay and references to current events and people. It also has hardly any plot. It is certain that it is meant to be a romp and that lots of things went over my head.

The King of Navarre intends to found a learned Academe in his court. To kick it off, he has got three noblemen of his court to join, and part of this is a vow to only study and fast, and to stay away from women for three years. This silly idea is already threatened, because the King has forgotten he is to receive a state visit from the Princess of France.

There is a lot of tomfoolery with the Clown and a boastful Spaniard, but the thrust of the story is that of course as soon as the young men see the Princess and her ladies in waiting, they all fall in love. But they have already made a bad impression by receiving the Princess in a field (so as not to have broken the vow to have no women at court) and the ladies are not disposed to take them seriously.

In general, I tend to get along a little better with Shakespeare’s tragedies than comedies, except that I love Much Ado about Nothing. I also think the comedies are much more effective when played than read. Sections of this play are almost all punning and wordplay, but Shakespeare has been able to introduce some beautiful lines in the form of love billets. In any case, this wasn’t my favorite of his plays.

Related Posts

All’s Well That Ends Well

Antony and Cleopatra

Othello

Review 2705: The Funeral Party

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

I don’t often get gifts of books anymore, so I was delighted to receive this novella at Christmas.

Alik, a charismatic Russian emigree artist, is dying in his New York City loft apartment. He has been overwhelmed by a mysterious complaint that has robbed him of his muscle control, limb by limb. Soon his diaphragm muscles will stop working and he’ll suffocate.

Surrounding him are his friends, people from all walks of life, from several countries, but mostly Russians. It’s 1991, a very hot summer. As Alik is dying, we learn about the people there, how they met Alik, and what he has meant to them.

Irina, Alik’s old school friend, is a circus performer turned lawyer who is suing a gallery for not returning some of Alik’s paintings after a show. Her teenage daughter has developed an immediate affinity for Alik.

Nina, Alik’s slightly dim partner, has been convinced by a healer that her cures for Alik will only work if he is baptized. Alik is an atheist, but he was raised Jewish, so he tells her he will only see the Russian Orthodox priest if he can see a rabbi, too. When they arrive at the same time, it makes for an interesting encounter.

Now I get to talk about book blurbs again, because one quote on the book calls the novel “riotously funny.” It is so not riotous that it makes me wonder about the NY Times reviewer that supposedly wrote that. I agree more with the quote from The New Yorker, which refers to its “quiet humor.”

During the novel the attempted coup against Mikhael Gorbachev takes place, and the Russians are glued to the TV. It made me wonder what they would think about the situation in Russian today.

I liked this novel, which is more about its characters than its plot. It explores some ideas about love, death, and identity while minutely observing life in a more bohemian neighborhood (Chelsea) of Manhattan.

Related Posts

The Gathering

& Sons

4321