A PLACE IN THE HILLS - Book review

The novel A Place in the Hills is Michelle Paver’s second book, published in 2001.Though 523 pages, it’s a quick read. It’s a time-slip novel paralleling lives in Rome in 53 BC and in France in the 1980s.

It begins in 53BC in Rome during the festivities of the Day of Blood: ‘The air was thick with the smell of balsam and trampled roses, and the salty, metallic undertow of blood’ (p12). Among the crowds are a Roman officer, Gaius Cassius Vitalis, who is also renowned as a poet. His eye has caught the attractive figure of a young woman, Tacita, daughter of Publius Tacitus Silanus, one of the oldest clans in Rome. There is a mutual attraction, though a relationship is quite impossible due to their different stations in society. ‘One long look and I was brought down. She entered my blood.’

Then we briefly shift to 1972 in the French Pyrenees where Toni, eight-year-old daughter of archaeologist Charles Hunt is being bloody awkward, unlike her sister Caroline. Charles is determined to locate clues to back up his theory that the poet-soldier Cassius lived here, at the so-called Source. A book quotes Cassius writing ‘I know a place in the hills where the gods walk the earth’ (p334). In a lucid moment Toni realises that the only way she can win her father’s devotion is by becoming an archaeologist herself.

Next, we move to 1988 and meet a poor American, Patrick McMullan, who is joining his rich university friend Myles Cantellow. Myles is with Antonia Hunt, working on an archaeological site with her father, Charles. Also on the site is eight-year-old Modge (short for Imogen) and Antonia’s half-sister Nerissa.

Myles is not a likeable character. He ‘belonged to the fast set, which took hard drugs, was far too cool to do any work...’ (p51).

Against her father’s wishes, Antonia wanted to prove that Lycaris – the woman Cassius referred to in his love poems – ‘was not some dry poetic construct, but a living woman whom he had loved with all his heart’ (p365).

The dig is claustrophobic, passions are in conflict, there’s a love triangle, a misguided Modge who has a crush on Patrick, an intransigent father, and a tragedy that changes everything, and all seems lost for almost fourteen years.

The parallels between the past and the book’s present are mainly quite subtle – whether that’s a love-bite on Cassius’s neck, a piece of broken pottery in Tacita’s hand, or the convoluted relationships of the characters.

Perhaps there was too much gratuitous swearing. Despite that, the characters’ emotions and the (admittedly all-too brief) slices of ancient Rome are well realised. The writing style is good and Paver’s descriptions put you in many a scene.

And there’s a satisfying end.

 

Jory Sherman, R.I.P.

‘Since 1965, the phenomenal Jory Sherman has published over 400 novels and 500 short stories and is currently writing books in several western series for Signet and Berkley.’ – Write a Western in 30 Days, p8 (2013).

Jory Sherman has died after valiantly fighting many ill health issues for well over a year. He was a writer through and through. Earlier, even when his eyesight was failing, he continued to write, embracing the new technology and utilising large print on his computer and, despite pain, communicating with fans, friends and social media contacts.

 

He was not only a writer, a poet and an artist (his paintings graced some of his later reprinted e-books), but he was more importantly a generous and kind man. I was in contact with him only fleetingly through a couple of writing groups. But I gleaned the kind of man he was from the many anecdotes and comments from fellow writers as the seriousness of his latest illness became common knowledge.

Jory was born 1932 (possibly, according to a scant Wikipedia entry) and began his literary career as a poet in San Francisco in the late 1950s, in the midst of the Beat Generation. His poetry and short stories were widely published in literary journals at that time. He won awards for his poetry and prose and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Letters for his novel Grass Kingdom. He won a coveted Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for The Medicine Horn.

In 1995 Jory was inducted into the National Writer’s Hall of Fame.

Throughout his career, he conducted writing workshops and was always happy to offer advice to budding authors. His writing guides are definitely worth studying, no matter how much writing experience you have under your belt. Indeed, it’s impossible to measure how many writers of today owe something to Jory’s tutelage, advice, friendship or, simply, his poetry and prose (they have to be grouped together, as his prose was often poetic).

In 2012, he received the Western Fictioneers Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2013 he was the recipient of the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature.  

A couple of days ago, one of his friends announced via Facebook that Jory had asked to leave hospital, no longer wanting to undergo the painful procedures. He wanted to see his last sunsets from his home, with his family. I truly hope his last sunset was a splendid one that would appeal to the artist and poet in him. Truth is, the sun won’t set on his work; it and he will live on through his prodigious output of writing and through the many friends and acquaintances he touched.

 
Rest in peace, Jory.

My condolences to his bereaved family and many friends.