Tag: 17th century

Day 358: People of the Book

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Cover for People of the BookBest Book of the Week!

I read People of the Book several years ago and remembered that it was good, but when re-reading it for my book club, I enjoyed it even more. The novel is based on the history of a Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. Part of the novel is envisioned based on what is known of the book’s history, while the rest is invented.

In the immediate aftermath of the Bosnian war, Hanna Heath, an expert in the restoration of old books, is asked to restore the priceless Sarajevo Haggadah, a famous book believed twice to have been destroyed by war that was both times rescued by Moslem museum curators. The book is especially important because of its beautiful illustrations, as before it was discovered, scholars believed that old Hebrew books did not contain such illuminations.

While Hanna is working on the book, she makes observations and collects artifacts that will help trace its history. She notes that the book once had clasps that are now missing, collects an insect wing, and scrapes residue from staining.

Hanna also becomes involved with the man who rescued the book, Ozren Karaman, whose wife was killed during the war and whose baby son is in the hospital with a brain injury. As Hanna was raised by an aloof and competitive mother, though, she is poor at forming attachments.

When Hanna finishes restoring the book, she follows up with research into the clasp and the artifacts she collected. As she finds out about each item, the novel goes farther back in time, explaining what happened to the book and telling the stories of the people involved with it, until the creation of the book in 15th century Spain.

A poor Jewish girl named Lola works for the partisans in the forest outside Sarajevo during World War II after the Jews are expelled from the city by the Nazis and her family is shipped off to camps. Later she is helped to safety by the Moslem curator of the museum, who also has a book to hide. A 19th century Viennese bookbinder who is dying from syphilis steals the beautiful silver clasps from the book to exchange with his doctor for treatment. In 1609 Venice, a priest working for the Inquisition saves the book from burning but confiscates it from its owner. A young girl saves the book as the Jews are expelled from Spain in 1492.

These are just the bones of some of the absorbing stories that draw you along as Brooks imagines the history of the book. Each tale is vividly imagined and skillfully told, and they are all held together by Hanna’s experiences. People of the Book is a gracefully written and imaginative novel that emphasizes the contributions of multiple cultures and religions to the book’s creation and safety.

Day 328: Hamlet

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Cover for HamletMy husband likes his jokes. When I told him I was re-reading Hamlet, he said, “It’s full of clichés, you know.” But it was amazing to see how many lines from this play are so familiar to all of us, have almost entered our societal DNA.

Everyone is familiar with the plot. Hamlet’s father, the King of Denmark, has died, and Hamlet’s mother Gertrude has married his uncle Claudius, his father’s brother, who is now king. Hamlet is in grief and dismay at his father’s death and his mother’s quick remarriage. In the first act of the play, Hamlet meets the ghost of his father, who tells him that Claudius murdered him by pouring poison in his ear as he slept. The ghost orders Hamlet to avenge his death.

One of the puzzlers for me about this play is the reason why Hamlet then chooses to fake insanity. It allows Hamlet to continually bait Claudius and Gertrude without consequences, but otherwise does not make sense to me.

An interesting point raised in the introduction of my version of the Collected Works is that Polonius, in appearance and behavior, is meant to be William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth I’s chief minister. The claustrophobic feeling in the play of not being able to trust anyone, of being spied on (depicted marvelously in the 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company production, starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart), reflects the paranoid nature of Tudor society because of the prevalence of espionage at that time.

Of course, Hamlet’s musings on suicide, death, and the nature of revenge are a major focus of the play. An undoubted message seems to be of the unintended consequences of actions, particularly of revenge. Hamlet and Laertes are bent on revenge, but in obtaining it, they manage to wipe out both their families.

I have seen Hamlet played as a drooping figure of indecision, but I don’t think this is a correct interpretation. Hamlet is caught on the crux of a dilemma. He wants to do what is right but knows that whatever action he chooses, the results will not be pretty. Hence, the inaction.

Day 249: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

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Cover for The Physick Book of Deliverance DaneBest Book of the Week!
Connie Goodwin has just passed her orals in history at Harvard and is one thesis away from her doctorate when her advisor, Manning Chilton, challenges her to find an undiscovered primary source on which to base some subject about Colonial America. She is almost immediately side-tracked in her research by a request from her mother to sort out her grandmother’s long-abandoned house in Marblehead and sell it to pay off back taxes.

Connie finds a very old, filthy house with a gate so overgrown with vines that it’s hard to find the house. Almost immediately she has a few odd glimpses, as if she can vividly picture her grandparents and other people in the house.

While sorting through the objects and papers in the house, she finds evidence of a woman named Deliverance Dane, who was found guilty of witchcraft in the Salem trials and left behind a “recipe” book, possibly of spells. Chilton immediately begins putting pressure on Connie to find the book, as it could provide the first evidence that people were actually practicing witchcraft at that time in Massachusetts. As Connie searches for the book, she makes some astonishing discoveries about her family and herself.

Back in the 17th century, Deliverance Dane, a wise woman or healer, is called to attend a child she cannot save. When the child dies, her father accuses Deliverance of satanism.

Some small things at the beginning of the novel irritated me. In laying the foundation of some basic history, I think Howe condescends to the reader a bit too much. For example, she finds occasion to tell us what a familiar is. Although many people may assume that all familiars are cats and find out differently from this novel, I would be surprised if people didn’t know what they were, if only from remembering their grade school lessons about the Salem witch trials. But perhaps I’m wrong.

There are also a couple of instances where Connie takes awhile to figure out something that she, as a graduate history student, should already know. For example, she doesn’t immediately know that “receipt” is another word for “recipe,” and then she has to explain this term to her professor, supposedly an expert in Colonial America. I am no historian or even generally interested in this period of history, but I knew immediately what the word meant. She does the same thing with figuring out that “Deliverance Dane,” mysterious words on a piece of paper, is someone’s name, as if in all her studies of the period she never encountered such an unusual name.

It is also very easy to see where the novel is going and who will turn out to be a villain. However, I still found it interesting enough to regard it as a strong first novel, especially if you enjoy the mixture of historical fiction and the supernatural. The characters are believable, and both story lines kept my attention. The historical portion seems solidly researched.

And I won’t mention the tomatoes, because it’s just too picky.

Day 235: The Eloquence of Blood

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Cover for The Eloquence of BloodIn the second of Judith Rock’s series, the Louis le Grand school run by the Jesuits is under financial hardship in this cold winter of 1686. On a visit to Monsieur Callot to ask for a contribution to the alms budget, rhetorician Charles du Luc meets a lovely young woman, Martine Mynette.

Martine’s mother Anne has recently died, and Martine is very concerned, because Henri Brion, a notary and Monsieur Callot’s nephew, has been unable to find a copy of Martine’s donation entre vifs. Because Martine is adopted, according to French law of the time she cannot inherit, so the only way her mother could leave her an inheritance is through this document. The copy usually hidden in the house is gone, and M. Brion is looking for his own copy.

When Charles relates this story to the school’s rector, Pére le Picart, the rector is dismayed because the Jesuit order was expecting the money through a bequest by Anne Mynette’s father. If a donation entre vifs exists, the school will not be entitled to the bequest. Another concern is that M. Brion is the same person who has supposedly been following up on the order’s claim. The rector sends Charles to the Brion’s house to find out what is going on.

Charles finds the area in disorder. Martine–a neighbor of the Brion’s, and Isabelle Brion’s best friend–has been murdered. No one has seen M. Brion. Isabelle is concerned because her father was trying to force her brother Gilles to marry Martine, which gives Gilles a motive for murder.

In addition to finding out about the bequest, Charles is assigned to follow the investigation into Martine’s murder. There are rumors on the street that the Jesuits murdered Martine for the money, and Paris seems to be entering one of its periodic convulsions against the Jesuit order.

As usual for the two books in this series, the historical details seem convincing and interesting. The novel is well written and keeps you involved. One very small caveat that I did not notice in the first book–Rock explains even the simplest French, which is annoying.

Day 205: The Journal of Mrs. Pepys

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Cover for The Journal of Mrs. PepysI began reading Samuel Pepys’ famous diaries years ago, but found it difficult to understand many of the oblique references to events of the time and found many of the entries very trivial. There was also a whole lot of drinking going on. However, I thought I’d give the fictional journal of his wife a try by reading The Journal of Mrs. Pepys: Portrait of a Marriage by Sara George.

The journal follows the course of the Pepys’ marriage and their rise in prosperity. George was careful to follow closely the events related in Samuel Pepys’ diary, which somewhat hampers the plot. The novel looks at these events from the point of view of Elizabeth Pepys, particularly how she reacts to her husband’s frequent absences and philandering.

The novel provides an interesting insight into the events leading up to and during the Restoration–particularly the eagerness with which the populous welcomes Charles II to the throne and the rapidity with which they tire of the court’s profligacy and debauchery.

Also of interest are some of the customs observed. I was intrigued by how freely the Pepyses behaved with their servants, treating them as if they were friends and then getting into spats with them for taking liberties. Also of interest were some of the social behaviors, like the celebration of Valentines Day, where women picked their valentines, who then had to buy them expensive gifts. And then there were the freedoms of male friends to walk up into ladies’ bedrooms or of both sexes to share bedrooms on a trip away from home without any indication of scandal.

Written mostly in modern English, the novel manages a fine balancing act between understandability and the correct use of outdated terms or terms that have changed their meanings with time.

Although I found the novel interesting enough, by nature of the concept, it could not follow the traditional plot structure of a series of building climaxes. There is a climax at the end, but generally the novel stays fairly level.

Day 201: The School of Night

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The School of NightCoincidentally, this summer I read and reviewed Shadow of Night, and The School of Night by Louis Bayard is another novel that deals with the School of Night, a group of Elizabethan scholars who pursued forbidden knowledge. Its members were Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, and Kit Marlowe, among others. The School of Night follows events in two time periods, the present and 1603.

Ten years ago Henry Cavendish was an Elizabethan scholar with a promising future, but he was disgraced when he accepted as legitimate a forged letter supposedly by Sir Walter Raleigh and presented it at a conference. Since then, he has barely eked out a living, teaching part-time, doing editing work, and taking whatever jobs he can get. His only true friend is the eccentric Alonzo Wax, a collector and purveyor of rare books.

But Alonzo is dead, having drowned himself after trying to contact Henry, and Henry finds himself the estate executor. Shortly after the funeral, Henry is contacted by another collector, Bernard Styles, who shows him the second page of a letter by Raleigh that he alleges Alonzo stole from him. This letter makes a rare reference to the School of Night. Styles offers Henry a lot of money to find the letter in Alonzo’s papers and give it to him.

Henry also meets Clarissa Dale, who claims to have made Alonzo’s acquaintance after a lecture about the School of Night. Although she is not an academic, she has been having visions of Thomas Harriot and an assistant named Margaret and wants to find out why.

Henry has barely begun to work with Alonzo’s papers when Alonzo’s secretary, Lily Pentzler, is murdered and all of Alonzo’s books are stolen. This incident makes Henry and Clarissa wonder if Alonzo was murdered, too. Soon, Henry and Clarissa find themselves investigating the secrets of the letter.

Alternating with the present-time story is that of Thomas Harriot, the leader of the School of Night, as he explores Virginia and later works on his forbidden experiments while hidden away on the estate of the Earl of Percy. Finding that his maid servant Margaret can read, he begins to train her to assist him in his experiments.

Although I guessed one important secret early on, I found this novel deeply satisfying. It is full of twists and betrayals and has interesting characters. It treats the historical plot intelligently, and although this comment is not meant as a criticism of Shadow of Night, it deals more seriously with the School of Night than does Shadow of Night (which of course has a completely different focus).

I had not read Bayard before, but he is known for writing historical mysteries that feature such characters as a grown-up Tiny Tim (Mr. Timothy) and Edgar Allan Poe (The Pale Blue Eye). I am interested in reading more.

Day 188: The Nature of Monsters

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Cover for The Nature of MonstersClare Clark seems to be fascinated with shit. Her first book, The Great Stink, featured a mystery during the digging of the London sewer system, and it seemed to revel in descriptions of filth. The Nature of Monsters also spends a great deal of time describing the sanitary conditions of 18th century London.

The novel begins with a description of the 1666 Great Fire of London and the subsequent birth of a disfigured child. This opening is perplexing, and it takes you awhile to figure out the connection to the rest of the novel.

It is 1718, and Eliza Tally has essentially been sold by her mother to a wealthy man’s son, although they first perform a semi-legal marriage ceremony. When Eliza gets pregnant, her mother goes to the man’s father to negotiate a settlement. The results are not what she expects, as Eliza is sold into servitude in London as a maid for an apothecary, whom she thinks is supposed to rid her of her child. But he has other plans.

Eliza is trapped in a bizarre household. She is never allowed to see the apothecary. His wife, Mrs. Black, is intimidating and maintains an iron control over the household. The apothecary has a slimy assistant, and the only other servant is Mary, a mentally handicapped girl. The atmosphere of the house is dark and creepy.

Convinced that he is a scientist and that he is making scientific experiments, the apothecary believes that what a pregnant woman experiences determines the formation of her child. Since he has a handy pregnant woman in his house, he decides to use her for his experiments. Clark has written another disturbing but well-written and suspenseful novel.

Day 184: Caleb’s Crossing

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Cover for Caleb's CrossingBest Book of the Week!

Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks is a wonderful novel about life in 17th century Martha’s Vineyard and Cambridge. The novel is focused around Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, the first American Indian to take a degree at Harvard. It is narrated from the point of view of Bethia Mayfield, a girl whose thirst for knowledge is only slaked with great difficulty in Puritan New England.

Bethia meets Caleb when they are both twelve. She is wandering around the beaches of her home island, Noepe, later to be called Martha’s Vineyard, in a small act of rebellion because she is not supposed to be alone. She has already been halted in her education by her father, a minister and missionary to the Indians, who sees how her superior abilities humiliate her brother Makepeace.

Caleb is not one of the “praying Indians” who have adopted Christianity and moved closer to town. By all rights Bethia should avoid him. But she loves nature and is happy for Caleb to teach her about the island’s wildlife and learn his language while she teaches him English, reading, and writing. Although their relationship is perfectly innocent, it remains a secret and is naturally broken off as they grow older.

In learning more about English ways, and particularly about writing, Caleb decides he can best help his people by becoming more educated. His path continues together with Bethia’s, as a series of tragedies result in Bethia’s agreement to sacrifice herself for Makepeace’s tuition by working as an indentured servant for the teacher who is preparing Caleb, his friend Joel, and Makepeace to enter Harvard. As Caleb struggles with his adoption of the English culture, Bethia struggles with her own desires for an intellectual life in a culture that only recognizes one path for her–marriage and motherhood.

Although a few historical figures appear in the novel, little is known of Caleb and Joel–both historical figures–so the account is completely fictionalized. For example, Bethia’s father Thomas Mayfield is based on Thomas Mayhew, Jr., who did not have a daughter.

This is an enthralling novel, an evocative picture of the place and times, and Bethia and Caleb are memorable characters.

Day 145: Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

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Cover for MayflowerMayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War is an eye-opening history of the Pilgrims, starting with their journey to America in 1620 and ending roughly 50 years later with King Philip’s War. King Philip’s War began as a small local conflict between the Plymouth Colony and King Philip, the sachem of the Pokanokets, and ended as a regional war that killed, author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals, a higher percentage of the population than any other American war.

What makes Mayflower most interesting is how Philbrick takes on the old myths–Plymouth Rock (if a rock was used, it wasn’t that one), the first Thanksgiving (actually begun by Abraham Lincoln, although there was a feast in early fall), Squanto (not such a nice guy), the courtship of Miles Standish–and provides new ways of looking at what happened.

Although the book touches on many aspects of the Pilgrims’ lives, a major theme is their relationship with the native people. The very bonds formed when Massasoit and the Pokanokets saved the original settlers from starvation and illness, when broken by the Pilgrims’ sons, are those that resulted in the destabilization of the entire New England region for years to come.

The book provides fascinating insights into these people, who had a mission for their own lives but little tolerance for others, who bravely founded a successful colony but fathered offspring whose greed, rigidity, and racism almost destroyed the results of those efforts. With his focus on relations with Native Americans, Philbrick skims over some other important elements, for example, the Pilgrims’ dissident faith, the expulsion of Roger Williams, the relationship between Plymouth and the colonies founded by Puritans and others. However, the book is focused on a topic that is interesting to a 21st century audience and has not had much discussion.

Day 135: The Sun King

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Cover for The Sun KingThe Sun King is an interesting biography of Louis XIV and a history of his court, although it occasionally assumes a level of knowledge about French history that I do not have. It is also not terribly revealing of the personality of Louis XIV, who was apparently a very guarded person. For example, the book contains no revealing quotes from personal letters or anything similar.

I was interested to read that Nancy Mitford originally envisaged the book as a description and discussion of the architecture and gardens of Versailles rather than a biography, which perhaps partially explains the focus.

The book starts with the beginning of Louis’s reign, so there is no information about his early life. Chapters are organized around incidents during his reign rather than periods of history. The book describes the opulent court and details intrigues and power struggles within it. The chapter about poisoning was shocking. It is easy to see why the French court of the time had such a reputation for decadence.

The edition that I read (not the one pictured) is full of beautiful pictures of Versailles as well as sketches of the architects, artists, and gardeners responsible for creating the palace. However, there are no good pictures of Louis, presumably because none exist. He is always depicted as a tiny figure in large historical paintings of some event, so it was hard to see what he actually looked like.

Of course, the book is well written and witty. Although Mitford is best known for her humorous novels of sharp social commentary, she also wrote several well-received and thoroughly researched biographies.