“The Historian”, by Elizabeth Kostova

 

642 pages, Little, Brown and Company, ISBN-13: 978-0316011778

Lots of new authors get loads of attention and praise when their first book gains the interest of the right people – like, for instance, Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, first published in 2005. Basically, our author blends the fictional Count Dracula with the very real Vlad Țepeș (The Impaler) with the story of Paul and his (unnamed) daughter and their quest to find the tomb of everybody’s favorite 15^th Century Romanian Tyrant – who may or not be extant and unliving it up. To do so the novel ties together three separate narratives using letters and journals, much like the original Dracula: Paul’s mentor in the 1930s; that of Paul in the 1950s; and that of Paul’s daughter in the 1970s, with the last being the principle narration.

These letters and journal entries, written by earlier Dracula hunters and being read by later ones, form the basis of the book; so what we have, then, are one set of scholars reading an earlier scholar’s account who in turn read from this other scholar’s work which references an even earlier piece of work…layer upon layer upon layer of scholarship and research to read and sift through, and you the Reader are along for the ride through it all (it was, I think, an homage to Stoker’s original novel, which was structured in much the same way). But I often had to remind myself that I was reading a character’s letter…that went on for page after page after page with a level of detail that was…um, interesting. Yeah, let’s go with that.

And the pacing reflects this scholarly hunt, for even when a character is being hunted by the denizens of the dark, they still manage to tear through whole sheaves of paper and record how “I can hear them right now, outside my window, they are coming for me” and so on and so forth. Very thoughtful of them. And…well…unrealistic, for while, for the most part, I enjoyed Kostova’s writing, it was events like this that made me realize that I was reading a novel and not a record of events, which took me quite out of the fantasy. I get wanting to show off and write these wonderful passages in which the world in described minutely, but come on, already; does one write a 10-page (or more) letter while the forces of evil lurk outside your door?

And, well, there are other issues, not least the original MacGuffin that sets the plot in motion: a mysterious tome, consisting of empty pages but for a dragon woodcut in the center, is given to a character and, no matter what they do, they just can’t get rid of it. Following the clues of the woodcut should lead them to the mystery at the heart of The Historian – and here is where my first real problem with the book comes into focus, for as MacGuffins go this one is weak. I mean, a blank book with one woodcut? That’s it? No rhymes, or poems, or archaic words to set one off on a life-or-death quest? And why a book? Wouldn’t a broadsheet work just as well? There are better, more satisfactory ways to get a plot rolling.

As for the quest, there, too, we have issues. The scholars, spurred on by the book and disappearance of one of their own, begin their investigation, only to be checked by shadowy forces who assault, intimidate, steal, vandalize and even kill all who would oppose them (it’s never stated, but its vampires). Their motivation – and the appearance of the mastermind – are finally revealed at the end of the book and…man, was it dumb. DUMB, I tell ya. I’m really trying not to spoil it for you but you’d have thunk that an immortal would have thought up a better plan or have had loftier goals. After wading through 600+ pages of, admittedly, mostly artful prose to end her book so stupidly was the ultimate Lucy-and-Charlie-Brown-Football-Yank.

The Historian was, then, LONG, beautiful, intriguing but, ultimately, disappointing. I wish I could recommend it but the conclusion just left too bitter an aftertaste, even after page after eloquent page.

“Girl in a Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait”, by Carola Hicks

 

256 pages, Vintage Books, ISBN-13: 978-0099526896

Girl in a Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait was the last work by the British art historian Carola Hicks (indeed, it was published posthumously) and concerns one of the most popular and enigmatic paintings of its time. Painted in 1434 by Flemish artist Jan van Eyck in oils rather than tempera – and measuring a mere 3’ tall – the Arnolfini Portrait is regarded as the first work of art which simultaneously celebrates both middle-class comfort and monogamous marriage, although the subjects of the portrait are in dispute; it is assumed that it shows Giovanni Arnolfini and his probably pregnant wife at their home in Bruges.

What Hicks has written is a kind of double-portrait of this most enigmatic of works: numbered chapters that trace the provenance through the centuries are interspersed with non-numbered chapters that detail the painting itself and all of the hidden meanings of the same. She explores not only who owned this painting and where it travelled, but also all of the hidden details and meanings that may be found dispersed throughout the whole, often hidden in plain sight (unless you didn’t know what you were looking at). Overall, through her vivid descriptions and apt writing, it is obvious why Hicks was such a popular and well-regarded historian.

I like art as much as the next fella but can’t honestly say that I could tell Alla prima from Underpainting. But with Hicks you don’t need to; everything is described in clear language and a detail that doesn’t get bogged down in academic jargon. She “shows” you this detail or that, walks you through its significance and wraps it up with its importance, when she isn’t tracing the history of its owners and place in the world. While doing so, the reason for the importance of this seemingly minor work of art becomes evident to even the most cretinous Cretan. A rare double-feat and more evidence of why Carola Hicks will be missed.

“The Woman in the Window”, by A. J. Finn

 

 

448 pages, HarperCollins, ISBN-13: 978-0062678416

Another book I assigned for the Fraser Public Library’s Mysteries & Munchies book club, The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn (that would be Daniel Mallory to his friends) features another unreliable female narrator. Dr. Anna Fox, a once-successful child psychologist, finds herself a prisoner in her own home suffering from agoraphobia. She spends her days drinking (too much) wine, playing online chess, counseling patients on the ‘net, watching old movies, recalling happier times with her husband and daughter – and spying on her neighbors. The way in which Finn unrolls the clues of Anna’s life and condition, and how she got here from there, really draws one in and hooks them from the beginning – as does her voice; Anna’s near-constant irreverence and snideness drew me in ever-deeper until I found myself devouring page after page, wanting to learn more and more about her and what drove such a bright woman into such dire circumstances. I was hooked from the get-go.

I admit, the number of thrillers out there that involve an unreliable woman whom nobody believes because she drinks too much, or pops too many pills, or both, is becoming rather tedious (see my review of The Woman in Cabin 10 from coming soon as an example). But this unreliability is central to the plot (and, probably, to all the other plots driving all those other books). What makes Anna stand out so is her voice as, trained child psychologist that she is, she dissects everything she sees with a scalpel and then minutely observes the results. And in a voice that is as acerbic as rubbing alcohol on sandpaper. As the book rolls out its facts in dribs and drabs, you learn that this observational technique is used on herself, as well – only you don’t know it. I have read other reviews that claim that the plot is obvious and predictable, but I found this not to be so; the writing is such that each revelation was a surprise that made me reread what I had read and to admire Finn and his technique.

Whether or not The Woman in the Window is derivative, I thought that Finn wove a mystery that kept me guessing for most of the book. The facts I found to be excellent accessories to the tale, with details from old movies and references to Hitchcock and Christie adding to the story; furthermore, Finn did so in such a way that the end result was not some slavish imitation of past masters of the art but rather an homage to the same. But it all comes back to Anna, as compelling a Train Wreck as one could hope for. While the revelation as to how and why her agoraphobia took over her life changes your view of her, it adds rather than detracts; she is no saint and knows it, once again bringing her therapist eye to a subject close to her – herself. None of us is perfect and most of us don’t like reading about flawless, impossible characters; it is our faults that make us human and, by extension, relatable to each other. And Anna is no different, God bless her.

If you have read other books that I have heard resemble The Woman in the Window – Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train come to mind – then perhaps you will not be so enamored with Finn’s efforts; IF, however, those other books are mysteries to you, then this one will rope you in and keep you hooked from start to finish. In this regard, ignorance truly is bliss.

“Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” by Patrick Süskind

 

272 Pages, Knopf Doubleday, ISBN-13: 978-0375725845

I read Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind for a history course on the French Revolution; my Prof. assigned it not so much for its subject matter – more on that in a minute – but because of how the writer described pre-Revolutionary Paris, especially its awful slums. And make no mistake, Paris under the ancien régime comes to life once more under Süskind’s pen (keyboard?) in all its filthy glory. It turns out that Perfume was also Kurt Cobain’s favorite book, and upon completion of this bleak work I could see why. In the man’s own words, “I’ve read Perfume about ten times and I can’t stop reading it. It’s like something that’s just stationary in my pocket all the time. It just doesn’t leave me. I read it over and over. It just effects me”. Depending on what you think of Cobain, this is either an echoing endorsement or a resounding rejection.

Perfume follows the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a person born with a seemingly supernatural sense of smell in a world in which he is forsaken and unloved. Given birth by his mother at a market stall among rotting fish guts and the stench of corpses – she even uses a fish knife to cut the umbilical cord – Grenouille is eventually discovered in the street, covered in flies and offal (his mother is found and executed for infanticide). Thus orphaned at birth, he is passed between wet nurses, one of whom, Jeanne Bussie, saying of him: “He’s possessed by the devil…This baby makes my flesh creep because it doesn’t smell the way children ought to smell… like fresh butter”. Loved by none and unwanted by all, Jean-Baptiste grows to hate humanity as much as humanity hates him. In so many respects he was damned from the very beginning.

Eventually, Grenouille lands an apprenticeship with a perfumer where that remarkable nose of his can truly come into its own. As he learns his craft and eventually eclipses his employer, he aspires to become the greatest perfumer of the age, an olfactory artisan par excellence whose creations move their wearers like no perfume ever has before. Indeed, it is Grenouille’s ambition to create scents that are so overwhelming that they will allow him to control them and bend them to his will even – and this is key to his motivation – force them to love him. But in order for this godly scent to come into creation, Grenouille must harvest the most pure, delightful and innocent scents from their source – and that source is living, virgin girls. The lengths he goes to in order to bring forth his obsession are monstrous, but what obsessive can corral his demons?

This is grim stuff, and so I find it eminently believable that Kurt Cobain drew inspiration from it for Nirvana’s 1993 album In Utero; the second song, Scentless Apprentice, draws directly from the novel with lyrics such as, “Like most babies smell like butter/His smell smelled like no other/He was born scentless and senseless/Every wet nurse refused to feed him” and a chorus that shrieks “Go away/Get away”, coming from a line in the novel in which “Grenouille no longer wanted to go somewhere, but only to go away, away from human beings”. On could easily argue that many more songs on In Utero were inspired by Perfume, but I won’t belabor the point. As I said above, Cobain’s love of this novel may serve either as a recommendation or a damnation; for me it was neither, as I viewed the thing through its own prism.

Perfume is one of those books that sticks with you, whether you want them to or not. There can be no doubt that Süskind’s descriptive powers are second to none, and that the character he created and the tale he crafted affects one for their sheer detail if nothing more. Paris under the kings comes alive, Grenouille himself virtually walks off the pages and the scents he creates virtually waft around the reader as he takes it all in. And the murders…the murders of all of those young girls strike at one’s heart, so much so that you wish you could reach into the page and throttle Grenouille before he can harm anyone else. I guess I can see how Cobain was inspired by this dark work, but as to why he carried a copy with him everywhere always escapes me – then again, I’m not a drug-addled manic depressive with black thoughts.

“Byzantium”, by Stephen Lawhead

 

645 pages, Zondervan, ISBN-13: 978-0061092961

Stephen Lawhead’s Byzantium tells the tale of Aidan, a 10^th Century Irish monk sent to take the Book of Kells to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople. During his quest he becomes separated from his fellow pilgrims and undergoes a variety of exotic adventures, from being captured and enslaved by Vikings, to engaging in political intrigue at the court of the Byzantine Empire and enslavement (again) in the caliph’s mines. Throughout it all his faith in God and Man are tested, and whether or not he comes to the end of his journey a better, bigger man – well, you’ll just have to find out, wontcha?

Byzantium is one of those books that, while I read it lo, many moons ago, has stayed with me ever since. The tense situations Aidan are thrown into time and again are well drawn and fairly exciting, especially the sea battle towards the end of the book, a battle that hums with energy and tension. Throughout each event, Aidan must rely on his wits and various abilities to stay alive and hope to complete the mission he set out on. Lawhead certainly has the ability to create intriguing set pieces, whether in a Danish festhall, an Arab palace, or the city of Constantinople itself. An excellent piece of historical fiction.

But there is more to it than that, for Byzantium is also a tale of a Christian man whose faith is tested time and again. As Aidan is tossed upon the seas of faith, his trust in God is likewise tossed about, and as he witnesses Man’s inhumanity towards Man, that faith becomes ever-more frayed until – to repeat myself, you’ll just have to find out, wontcha? It is to Lawhead’s credit that his writing never turns into preaching, and that his message is delivered with the subtlety of a brushstroke rather than of a sledgehammer. And Aidan’s encounter at the end of the book with the Viking who enslaved him at the beginning…there is no finer example of a Christian apologia in popular fiction.

So Byzantium is great historical fiction with a subtle Christian message that is all the more powerful for being so. It is also great entertainment that kept me engrossed the whole time I was reading it, a rare trifecta of literary skill that Lawhead should be applauded for.

“The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes”, by Arthur Conan Doyle, illustrated by Sidney Edward Paget

 

636 pages, Castle Books, ISBN-13: 978-0890090572

I got the omnibus The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes from…hell, I don’t remember, but it is every Sherlockian’s dream, collecting as it does 37 short stories originally published in the famed British magazine The Strand and later collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and The Return of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles (I just wish it contained the stories collected in His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, but oh well). This edition was originally published way the hell back in 1976, so I’m sure I must have picked it up from a used bookstore or a garage sale or something like that – but no matter; it was this edition of the classic tales that launched my Sherlockmania and got me interested in reading and whatnot, so there’s that.

If you’ve read these classics or, at least, have seen their interpretations on television – Jeremy Brett being the best Holmes – THE BEST, I tell ya – although there are many more to choose from – then they will all be familiar to you, from A Scandal in Bohemia to The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, from The Adventure of Silver Blaze to The Final Problem, from The Adventure of the Empty House to The Adventure of the Second Stain – and, of course, The Hound of the Baskervilles. After reading each story you will be reminded why Conan Doyle’s creation left such an indelible mark on the public’s imagination (much to his later chagrin), as Holmes, using his prodigious mind, depthless knowledge and observational magnificence solves the most intriguing and vexing mysteries using only reason and the scientific method.

One mustn’t forget Sidney Edward Paget, the original illustrator of these tales for The Strand and the man just as responsible for the look of Holmes as his creator was. The illustrations presented in this volume are all reproductions of the artist’s original drawings and, by default, the template from which all subsequent interpretations of the character are based upon. While one, of course, must not discount Conan Doyle’s descriptions of his most famous creation, without Paget’s pen the imaginations of most people would not be able to conjure up what this most peculiar of detectives was supposed to look like. While lacking a gourd Calabash (but not the deerstalker), the way in which Paget drew Holmes is the way in which the world will always remember him and in which actors the world over will portray him.

I’m sure that there have been many more such omnibus’ that have been published since this one – which, hopefully, include the last two collections and maybe even the other novels. But when I was a kid The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes was all I needed to get me started on my reading and love of this strange, driven, dedicated and utterly unique crusader for justice.

“American Gods”, by Neil Gaiman

 

750 pages, William Morrow, ISBN-13: 978-0062472106

Ostensibly, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is a blend of Americana, fantasy and strands of ancient and modern mythology in which one Mr. Wednesday (note that name, will you?), aided and abetted by Shadow, a recently released convict, attempt to recruit others like him – that is, Old Gods – in order to fight in the war that is coming against the New Gods – the American Gods of the title. The book was first published in 2001 and won the 2002 Hugo and Nebula awards; my copy is the Tenth Anniversary Edition that contains the Author’s Preferred Text – kinda like the Director’s Cut of a movie, if you like, so this is the tale that Gaiman really wanted to tell. As to what it’s really about…well, why don’t I let Neil tell you himself:

It’s about the soul of America, really. What people brought to America; what found them when they came; and the things that lie sleeping beneath it all. That was the goal. That was the destination… [that he set his story] in a country where the message on the Statue of Liberty was something you could take seriously was as uncontroversial as making sure people of all races and skin colors were represented in a book about America… [where the decision to make Shadow a] mixed-race hero feels so apolitical as to be obvious…I had wanted it to be a number of things. I wanted to write a book that was big and odd and meandering, and I did and it was.

So…yeah. This book is more than just fantasy or philosophy or what have you. It is a take on America from the viewpoint of a transplanted English author – again, in Neil’s words:

I moved to America in 1992. Something started, in the back of my head. There were unrelated ideas that I knew were important and yet seemed unconnected: two men meeting on a plane; a car on the ice of a frozen lake; the significance of coin tricks, and more than anything, America: this place I now found myself living in that I knew I didn’t understand. But I wanted to understand it. I was an immigrant, although a reluctant one, and I was living in a huge strange country that resembled the America I’d encountered in books and in films so much less than I had expected. The place was filled with oddness and, it seemed to me, with the kind of hubris that gets authors into trouble, that I thought I ought to point out to Americans how very odd it actually was.

Thanks, Neil, for pointing out our oddness from a country in which blood pudding is a thing, everyone is emotionally repressed and drive on the wrong side of the road…but I digress. Because American Gods is not what it seems, as misdirection is the name of the game, something that Shadow knows about and is displayed while teaching a young boy a coin trick: “After several attempts the boy mastered the move. ‘Now you know half of it,’ said Shadow. ‘Because the moves are only half of it. The other half is this: put your attention on the place where the coin ought to be. Look at the place it’s meant to be. Follow it with your eyes. If you act like it’s in your right hand, no one will even look at your left hand, no matter how clumsy you are.’”

That’s American Gods for ya: a con game in which misdirection is as important to the story as the plot and the prose. Throughout most of the book Gaiman has us looking in one direction when we should be looking elsewhere – has us looking at his right hand when we should be looking at his left – until the big reveal at the end. And when you understand just what has been going on in the story and why, you want to kick yourself for not seeing it sooner, after all of the hints and clues that Gaiman scattered throughout. It’s enough to make one think that it is Neil Gaiman who is the natural-born son of Mr. Wednesday, the master trickster and father of the con. But it’s a believable con that validates the story and makes you glad you read it.

But why? Why did we keep looking in the wrong place at the wrong time? In a word: Faith. Too many people are susceptible to the siren call of faith – whether religious or secular, mind you – and, thus, easy marks for the Mr. Wednesdays of the world. Gods Old and New are sustained by faith, but people only worship gods they believe in, and so all of these gods have become consummate grifters, forever trying to get ever-more believers to sacrifice and sustain them. Most people, I think, would argue that faith is a positive virtue, but in Gaiman’s telling, it is currency to be accumulated, invested and then spent – whether said currency is positive or negative (or both?) Gaiman doesn’t say (although it’s probably both).

American Gods, then, is many things, but it is first and foremost clever, especially in the way it breathes life into Old Gods – and New – and makes one believe that they live still.