CONCLAVE - Book review

Robert Harris’s novel Conclave was published in 2016 and became a ‘major motion picture’ in 2024. 

I haven’t seen the film yet but certainly enjoyed the book. Harris has a writing style which draws the reader in, no matter what the subject – and, let’s be honest his subjects have been remarkably varied over many novels.

When not employing the omniscient viewpoint we get 75-year-old Cardinal Jacopo Lomeli’s. He’s the Dean of the College of Cardinals in the Vatican and is responsible for organising the upcoming conclave following the recent death of the Pope.

There are 118 cardinals allowed to vote – that is, those who are under eighty years of age.  As is the case today following the demise of Pope Francis, there is a handful of front-runners who are likely to figure in the final voting.

Besides the concerns for the imminent conclave, there were worries about the reporting of the Holy Father’s death. ‘Once, God explained all mysteries. Now He has been usurped by conspiracy theorists. They are the heretics of the age.’ (p16).

Lomeli’s ‘guilty recreation was detective fiction.’ (p40). Certainly there are mysteries for Lomeli to tackle before the final vote and the white smoke is released to announce a new Holy Father has been selected. Lomeli is feeling his age, too. ‘Once, in his youth, Lomeli had enjoyed a modest fame for the richness of his baritone. But it had become thin with age, like a fine wine left too long.’ (p115).

The cardinals are locked in during the day to cast their votes. After which they are transported to accommodation where they can eat and sleep, abiding by the injunction not to discuss the vote in the hearing of outsiders such as drivers. The food is served by nuns. ‘If anything forces this Conclave to a swift conclusion, thought Lomeli, it will be the food’ (p100).

The Sistine Chapel is taken over for the Conclave.  ‘The freshly laid carpet smelled sweet, like barley in a threshing room.’ (p32).

Lomeli does not wish to be Pope yet he appears to be a good contender. ‘Once we succumb to “the dictatorship of relativism” as it has been properly called, and attempt to survive by accommodating ourselves to every passing sect and fad of modernism, our ship is lost. We do not need a Church that will move with the world but a Church that will move the world.’ (p152).

(I always use a bookmark when reading and in this case it proved useful. At a glance I could see the tabulated vote score for a half-dozen cardinals on the page but before actually reading it I covered it up with the bookmark until reaching that point in the narrative.)

There is a poignant interlude when a nun is holding a precious photograph of a boy: ‘The creases where she had folded and refolded it over the past quarter-century had cracked the glossy surface so deeply it looked as if he were staring out from behind a latticework of bars.’ (p218).

As certain revelations surface, the voting alters and it is obvious that it will take several days to reach a ‘winner’. ‘If it drags on much longer, I wonder what the actuarial odds are that one of us will die before we find a new Pope’ (p237).

Inevitably, there is intrigue and squabbling and a few skeletons emerge from the past. The final vote does indeed come as a surprise.

Dan Brown’s thriller Angels & Demons (2000) relates some of the aspects of a conclave; however, Harris goes much further – and depicts it more accurately. On the face of it, writing a mystery/suspense novel about the selection of a pope shouldn’t be riveting, and yet it proves to be so.

If you’ve seen the film then I suspect that the surprise ending (if it’s the same!) won’t work; however, the narration itself is a pleasure and doubtless the reader can superimpose the actors on characters while reading.

Recommended.

THE SECOND SLEEP - Book review

Robert Harris’s 2019 novel The Second Sleep is most intriguing and certainly kept me reading.

It is set in 1468 when we meet the young priest Christopher Fairfax on his way to the remote Exmoor village of Addicott St George. The local vicar, Father Lacy has recently died and Fairfax is to conduct the funeral rites and sort out the dead clergyman’s possessions.

‘(Fairfax) was always hungry, yet he remained as thin as a stray dog. His body seemed determined to make up for all the food it had missed during the years when he was at the seminary’ (p41).

Fairfax is disturbed to find that Lacy was not only an amateur archaeologist investigating fragments from the pre-Apocalypse time, which is deemed heresy by the powerful Church, but also harbours a large collection of forbidden antiquarian books.

Worse, in the dead vicar’s display cabinet were examples from his unearthings: ‘coins and plastic banknotes from the Elizabethan era... a plate commemorating a royal wedding, a bundle of plastic straws... toy plastic bricks all fitted together of vibrant yellows and reds... one of the devices used by the ancients to communicate...He turned it over. On the back was the ultimate symbol of the ancients’ hubris and blasphemy – an apple with a bite taken out of it’ (p23).

‘Centuries earlier, as part of its rejection of scientism, the Church had rooted out the heretical modernised texts of the time before the Apocalypse’ (p32).

Fairfax discovers a letter written by a Nobel laureate, Morgenstern, written in 2022 – a pre-Apocalypse date. In this missive he warns that civilisation and science-based life could collapse if any one or more six catastrophic events occurred, among them climate change, a nuclear exchange, a pandemic... ‘All civilisations consider themselves invulnerable; history warns us that none is’ (p58).

By now, Fairfax is sorely troubled. ‘He wished he could unsee what he had read, but knowledge alters everything, and he knew that was impossible’ (p62).

It’s clear that Fairfax is in our future, following an apocalyptic event that destroyed most of science as we know it. The calendar was reset after the Apocalypse so that it started in the year 666, the number assigned to the Beast of Revelation. Eight hundred years in our future.

There is a standing army, in conflict with the Northern Caliphate, an Islamist enclave; but this is not really touched upon in any detail...

‘The drive was a track, no better than the lane. Waterlogged potholes, smooth as mirrors, held blue fragments of sky, and curved in a glittering archipelago for a hundred yards until they disappeared behind a pair of ancient cedars’ (p92).

‘As it opened, (the door) dragged in tendrils of ivy that clutched at the doorposts as if the house was reluctant to allow these rare visitors to escape’ (p114).

Fairfax teams up with Lady Sarah Durston, a widow. Her husband, Colonel Durston, had also been interested in excavating items owned by the ancients, notably near the mystical Devil’s Chair on a nearby hill. Sarah has an unwelcome suitor, the gruff mill-owner Hancock.

These three hook up with a heretic, Shadwell, who provides his version of the past: ‘these devices were small enough to be carried in the palm of one’s hand; that they gave instant access to all the knowledge and music and opinions and writings in the world; and that in due course they displaced human memory and reasoning and even normal social intercourse – an enfeebling and narcotic power that some say drove their possessors mad...’ (p158)

Perhaps the message here is that, despite human hubris, no matter what the calamity that befalls, humanity will survive.

As ever, Harris’s prose is a delight to read, and, for me, his characters came alive, especially with regard to the relationship of Sarah, Fairfax and Hancock. There are other individuals in the tale, all finely drawn, perhaps with a nod or two to Thomas Hardy. And there is a twist or two in the plot.

Sadly, I found the ending disappointing. But that cannot detract from the pleasure of meeting the characters and of the actual journey the book took me on.

Editorial comment:

Visually, we should have been aware of Fairfax’s beard on the first page, rather than the third.

THE BURNING BRIDE - Book review

Margaret Lawrence’s final book in her Hannah Trevor historical trilogy, The Burning Bride, was published in 1998. I have been remiss in not reading it until now. 

This tale takes place between 6 November and 24 December 1786.

Widow midwife Hannah Trevor has always been an independent soul, even when wed to her unsavoury husband. So, even though she is pregnant by Daniel Josselyn, Major of the Continental Army, and a landowner, she is not committed to the betrothal. Yet, as circumstances begin to crush them all, she relents: ‘If marriage be a bond, I am ready to bear it. If love be a fire, I am already burnt’ (p269).

Daniel had once been the friend of Hamilton Siwall, but that was a long while back. 

Siwall is a land merchant, moneylender, magistrate and member of the General Court. When he tries debtors, he often acquires the offender’s land in settlement, continually extending his power and prestige. It seems that Siwall is keen to lay blame on Daniel for the slightest perceived infraction, and it is not long before the opportunity presents itself.

Marcus Tapp is the High Sheriff of the county and a creature of Magistrate Siwall. ‘Tapp’s eyes scanned the yard, missing nothing…Strange eyes, they were, so pale they seemed in daylight to have no colour at all, glass eyes that the world passed through without effect, to be recorded by the raw ends of his nerves’ (p23).

At this time there is a big issue regarding taxation among the townspeople of Rufford, Maine: ‘Tax upon tax had been laid on them, debts from a war that set rich men free to get richer, but ground out all hope from the labouring poor’ (p2). There are too many debtors; often the prison is bursting at the seams.

‘Rich men elected other rich men and they scratched one another’s backs like sleek cats and did not understand why poor men resented them, and any who resisted the growth of their power was labelled as traitors and fools. So it would be under governors and presidents, as it had been under kings and popes and caesars’ (p235). Anarchy does not seem too far off…

Another of Siwall’s creatures is the town’s local doctor, Samuel Clinch; he is a drunkard and a misogynist: ‘These country midwives are no more skilled than a witch with a broomstick, with their pawings and strokings! What does a woman know of such matters? Can she spell, sir? Can she read and write and cipher Latin like a man? No, she cannot! Women are soft for our pleasures, but they ain’t got the brains of a sheep where Science and babies is concerned!’ (p128). As implied, he is not averse to taking payment for his doctoring of female patients with pleasures of the flesh. Until, that is, he is found murdered in the forest. A mystery surrounds the violent death.

For different reasons, both Siwall and Tapp soon accuse Daniel of the murder, though there is little conclusive proof.

Hannah is kept busy with her midwife role. ‘It was always there at a borning, the spectre of dying, the other side of the treacherous coin of hope’ (p335). Yet, in reality, she would prefer to spend her time quilting and finally preparing for her wedding to Daniel. Several quilt patterns are named throughout the book: Bridges Burning, China Dish, Cross and Crown, Cradle in the Wilderness, Flame in the Forest, and Star of the Forest. Instead, she finds herself puzzling over the unpleasant doctor’s murder. That is, when she is not laying out the men who’d been sentenced to death by the loathed magistrate.

‘This is her work in the world, to reconcile living and dying. To wash away fear and shame and loneliness with a touch the dead must somehow feel where they stand watching, invisible, behind their window of clouded glass’ (p244).

Again, we meet Hannah’s deaf mute daughter Jennet, always depicted with compassion and eloquence. As before, Lawrence’s prose and imagery suck you into the story, and into the period:

‘A woodpecker rattled in the crown of an oak tree, and a flock of kinglets chattered as they flew from one tree to another, their scarlet crowns a flash of fire against the heavy hung branches. And now and then a limb creaked with the weight of slowly melting ice, and a burden of wet snow fell with a plop to the ground…’ (p398)

Here you will find poignancy, cruelty, anger, despair, injustice, love, hate, suspense, and tension aplenty.

A fitting end to an engrossing historical series. 

THE MANDELBAUM GATE - Book review

 

Muriel Spark’s novel The Mandelbaum Gate was published in 1965; my copy was dated 1985, following five other paperback reprints.

‘The Mandelbaum Gate was hardly a gate at all but a piece of street between Jerusalem and Jerusalem’ – at the time of the story, 1961, it was a crossing point from Jordan to Israel. This was also the first year of the Eichmann trial. 

Freddy Hamilton is a diplomat for the Foreign Office: ‘he hated wearing sunglasses. which made one look so much like a rotten gigolo or spy’ (p54). He is friends with the Ramdez family (father, son and daughter) who work both sides of the border. Abdul Ramdez is a fascinating character: Freddy had asked Abdul about his English schoolmistress (when he was fifteen) who was the daughter of a colonel in the British Army. And asked, did she plant wild-flower seeds in the countryside, (a trait endorsed by some of Freddy’s friends)? Abdul replied: ‘I don’t know. But I planted Arab wild-flower seeds in her. She was my first woman’ (p85).

Abdul knew of the Palestinian refugees massed along the border; ‘he discerned then what a foreigner could not so accurately foresee, that there was a living to be made out of the world by preserving a refugee problem’ (p100).

Freddy made friends with Barbara Vaughan, a tourist. ‘They took her home to lunch, treating her as rather more than a new acquaintance, not only because she was Freddy’s friend, but because one always did, in foreign parts, become friendly with one’s fellow-countrymen more quickly than one did at home’ (p75).

Barbara was visiting the Holy Places and often used a guide, but not always: ‘she was tired of the travel agency guides. They had plenty of good information to offer, but they offered it incessantly. Through the length and breadth of the country the Israelis treated facts like antibiotic shots, injecting them into the visitor like diligent medical officers’ (p22). She’d had a love affair with Harry Clegg who is now on a dig in Jordan: ‘It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist. Over at the Dead Sea, she thought, just over there, he is ferreting about in the sand or maybe he has discovered an inkwell used by the Essene scribes or something’ (p48). She intends to interrupt her pilgrimage to cross the border to join him.

There is more than one mystery. A main character suffers memory loss – a blank space for a few days only. The doctor is not happy about resorting to a psychiatrist:  ‘In fact, I haven’t got a great deal of time for them, myself. They all hold different theories. There’s hardly two who would treat a patient in the same way… They’re a lot of bloody robbers…’ (p123). [Having previously read a novel about Jung (The World is Made of Glass), I can see where the doctor – or the author – was coming from!]

To complicate matters, Barbara goes missing! Her pilgrimage becomes a flight, because she is half-Jewish (though converted to Catholicism) and would therefore be persona non grata in Jordan. The Ramdez family is involved, including Abdul’s sexy sister Suzi, and to complicate matters spies are discovered working for the Arabs… And there will be blood spilled – from a surprising angle, too!

The author seems to have captured the febrile times perfectly, treating all nationalities with empathy and humour. Perhaps there is a little too much religion thrown in (Muriel Spark became a Roman Catholic in 1954). Even so, sometimes tongue-in-cheek and droll, there’s a serious aspect to the whole adventure.

Editorial comment:

This is omniscient narrative. Frequently, the thoughts of more than one character are shown in the same scene, and speech of more than one person will be within the same paragraph. Past and present are interwoven – as in real life – through thoughts, yet the reader is never lost or confused.

THE LITTLE WALLS - Book review

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Winston Graham had a number of suspense novels published. The Little Walls was published in 1955; my copy is the fourth impression, 1972. (Those were the days when you could see how often a book was reprinted!)

It’s written in the first person and I found it comparable to Hammond Innes in style and tone, though perhaps less technical. Philip Turner’s older brother Grevil’s body was discovered in a canal in Amsterdam. Suspected suicide. Philip can’t believe it and sets out to determine that it was murder. Apparently, on Grevil’s body was a letter from a woman called Leonie, breaking off their relationship. Philip still did not believe his brother would take his own life. Grevil had been on an archaeological dig with a mysterious adventurer called Buckingham.

Philip takes leave from his business in America and enlists the help of Martin Coxon, someone who knew Buckingham some years ago.

Grevil’s death occurred in the insalubrious district of De Walletjes – which translates as ‘the Little Walls’. ‘At one place, in a cellar decorated with modern murals which would have left Freud practically nothing  to interpret…’ (p50).

Dutch Inspector Tholen fears Grevil was involved in some shady dealings and ran foul of local villains. Philip’s investigations take him to Naples and Capri, where he links up with a group of rich individuals with intriguing back-stories and a liking of cocktail parties, which normally were anathema to Philip: ‘The buzz of voices, introductions forgotten as soon as made, remarks which meant nothing drowned by others which meant less…’ (p129).  

Reading the story, one could almost believe it had happened – always the sign of a good narrator. The descriptions of the scenery and characters are well done, and there is a burgeoning romance, a betrayal, a fight to the death, and a twist towards the end.

The cover is one of several that feature a character’s facial close-up, all of which are eye-catching. (Though in this case the female protagonist is fair-haired in the book!). These other covers of books I still have to read are: Greek Fire (1957), The Tumbled House (1959), and After the Act (1965).

THE LAST ONE LEFT - book review

It’s a long time since I read a John D. MacDonald novel. This one was first published in 1967; my edition is the 2014 Random House copy, recently purchased. Amusingly, MacDonald dedicated the novel ‘to Travis McGee who lent invaluable support and encouragement’.

It begins and also ends with the boating couple Howard and June Prowt off the Gold Coast off Florida. Anyone who has read MacDonald will be familiar with his knowledge of sailing craft, which shows in his description of both the vessel and the state of the sea. They thought they saw a boat adrift but were unable to go alongside and then it was gone.

Staniker has survived an explosion at sea; he’d been hired to captain the boat for the Kayd family. He’s the last one left, the rest of the passengers have perished. He is being nursed back to health.

Sam Boylston, a Texas lawyer, is mourning the death of his sister Leila – she was one of the passengers on the Kayd vessel.  Leila’s husband Jonathan was convinced she was alive and planned a hair-brained search for her in the vast ocean.

Chrissie Harkinson is pleased to bed the young boat boy Oliver for she has a use for him. She also knows Staniker so naturally she visits him, just to see how he’s doing…

And so begins a convoluted but easy to follow plot that is pure MacDonald. His descriptions of characters, minor and major, and the locales are spot on, as ever. Oh, yes, indeed, there’s certainly something not right. There’s the question of a considerable amount of cash involved which might be missing… There’s also a beautiful Cuban maid with an interesting back-story, and she is involved with Raoul Kelly, an investigative reporter.

The characters are set up, the plot is unfolding and it all falls into place. And as you’d expect with one of John D.’s mystery thrillers there are murders and betrayals.

Loved it. Good to reacquaint myself with you, John D. You might have died in 1986, aged seventy, but you still excite your readers three decades later.

Shuttlecock - book review

I’ve come late to Graham Swift’s 1981 novel Shuttlecock. I’d bought it on paperback release when I was studying psychology with the Open University, as it was labelled ‘a psychological thriller’; but I never got round to reading it then.

 

The book is narrated in the first person by Prentiss who works as a senior clerk in the ‘dead crimes’ department of the police archives.

There’s a Kafkaesque tone to it, a dreamlike quality that lingers even after the last page is turned.

We’re not exactly sure of the narrator’s reliability regarding his observations and conclusions.

His boss is Quinn, who remains aloof and has a tendency to psychologically and verbally bully the office staff. Then Prentiss begins to realise that some files once requested by Quinn are never returned, while others are tampered with.

Prentiss is a bit of a bully himself, domineering towards his wife and hypercritical of his two sons, Martin and Peter. It is possible that this is relevant to his childhood. He makes twice weekly visits to his father in a mental institution, following the old man’s breakdown. Prentiss is obsessed about his father’s wartime memoir, Shuttlecock, about his spying exploits in France for SOE and his subsequent capture and torture. Gradually, Prentiss questions his father’s alleged bravery, perhaps recognising that he himself is a coward. But he finally plucks up the courage to confront Quinn about the missing files.

The narrative is riveting, despite the unappealing nature of Prentiss, and offers insightful parallels about father and son relationships. It is not all grim; there is humour to be found, notably his references to his sexual antics with his wife Marian, though nothing graphic. An editor might have pointed out the possible reader confusion of using two female character names beginning with the same letter, Marian (his wife with pert breasts) and Maureen (she with big breasts from the typing pool), but that’s of no real consequence. 

This is not a thriller, but that dubious description is no fault of Swift but rather the publisher. Certainly it is suspenseful and continually intriguing with countless behavioural observations.

Book review - Joseph Barnaby

Sue Roebuck’s 2018 novel Joseph Barnaby is an engaging romance set on Madeira. It begins with a prologue flashback to March 2016 when Joe Barnaby is offered a lucrative job as a farrier to a successful trainer, Bobby Shaw. The chapter ends with a friendly warning by an acquaintance for Joe to ‘watch his back’… 

The story then shifts to August 2017 and we meet Sofia who lives with her aunt and uncle on a small island off Madeira itself. She’s twenty-six, sure-footed like a goat on vertiginous cliff faces, tends a number of bee hives, is beautiful, and is deaf. She communicates with her family by sign, though she can speak; her affliction was as a result of contracting meningitis when she was eight.

Working on the island as labourer and general helper is Joe, who has escaped from England for some reason still to be revealed…

For several months Joe had worked in a bar in the Madeiran town, quickly learning Portuguese. He proved popular with the regulars and made the acquaintance of a distinctive lady called Lua: ‘Her hair had always looked like unruly red serpents as if she used the same hairdresser as Medusa’ (p110). And then Joe was hired by Sofia’s uncle.

The scene is set. Gradually, and enchantingly, the pair get to know each other – the reticent Joe and the strong-willed Sofia. A fly in the ointment is Dário, who wants Sofia as his sweetheart. But he doesn’t like to hear her speak, and would rather she stuck to gestures, though he never bothered to learn sign-language. Sofia wasn’t comfortable with using basic gestures ‘because it amused onlookers and made her feel like an amateur Marcel Marceau.’ (p14)

Dário is deluded, however, even as he wondered why Sofia would be reluctant when he was such a good catch. ‘They were made for each other, soul-mates, kindred spirits. She’d soon realise her mistake, he was sure.’ (p106)

There are light-hearted moments and humour as well as mystery and suspense. When Joe is being driven by a local doctor with a car-load of deaf passengers, he foolishly asks a question. Whereupon the doctor takes his hands off the steering wheel to sign to his passengers! ‘Joe decided that if he valued his life on this twisty road, then he wouldn’t ask any more questions.’ (p186)

It’s also a book about relationships – not just the Joe-Sofia pairing. The Joe and Lua scenes are at turns mysterious and amusing. The fondness of Sofia’s aunt and uncle for Joe is exhibited subtly, with a light touch.

The accomplished storytelling of Sue Roebuck is bolstered by her strong affinity for Madeira and its people which shines through in descriptive passages that put you in the scene. And as a result I definitely cared about the characters.

Highly recommended.