Stonehenge: A Novel, by Bernard Cornwell

Stonehenge: A Novel

Bernard Cornwell

One special pleasure of reading historical fiction is getting to see how different authors, such as Edward Rutherfurd and Bernard Cornwell, deal with the same historical events. In the case of the building of the great Bronze Age temple called Stonehenge there is a lot of room for interpretation since little, if anything, is known beyond the basic archaeological findings. I can barely recall Rutherfurd's version in Sarum: The Novel of England , so it obviously did not cement itself in my mind. I am afraid that Cornwell's novel was not, in my mind, all that compelling either.

Stonehenge tells the story of the presumed architect of the awesome edifice, Saban, the son of a chieftain of Ratharryn in what would someday be Wiltshire. He has two brothers, the warlike Lengar and the creepy, lame Camaban. When Lengar kills their father and takes over the tribe, he makes Saban a slave to Haragg, a traveling trader. It turns out that Camaban engineered the enslavement as a way of preventing Saban's death at their older brother's hands. Camaban has plans for the brother that had treated him kindly. Saban goes with Haragg to Sarmennyn where he falls in love with Aurenna, the Sun's bride, and is instrumental in ensuring that she does not die in the consuming fire of sacrifice. When Camaban orders Saban to bring a large number of colossal stones by sea to Ratharryn to build a "sky temple", with the lure of a sort of Revelations-style transformation of the Earth to a land of no winter and death, he goes along with the plan. When this seemingly impossible task is accomplished, he and Aurenna move back to Ratharryn with their two children. It is then that everything goes to hell in a hand basket. The Sarmennyn stones are too small for the vision Camaban, who just gets weirder and weirder, he and Aureana, um, ally, and the demands for the new concept of the temple to which Saban has dedicated himself, should chill the heart of anyone working in a corporate setting today. He is given daunting tasks, which are regularly made more and more difficult to achieve while the deadline stays the same. It becomes obvious that the peaceful paradise the temple is meant to usher in will only be completed with the shedding of a great deal of blood.

You all know I just love Cornwell's novels. They are well written and exciting. This novel lacks something of the intensity and tautness of the author's usual style. Most of his historical novels are about one remarkable soldier, whether Sharpe, Uhtred, Thomas of Hookton, Nick Hook, or another, striving against political odds to achieve whatever victory he seeks. Saban is more of an architect and engineer, and the spark found in Cornwell's usual heroes is missing. This is simply the story of a bunch of entirely fictional characters building a historical monument. There is not much sense of the placement in history, not very much suspense, and only a modicum of creativity with interpretation of what life may have been like for the people of that time.

Here again is the sinister disabled character. Here is the sort of archetype that critic Leslie Fiedler would recognize, the single brilliant male mind responsible for an astonishing achievement. It seems that our desire for a Messiah is present in this otherwise acerbic commentary on religion. This is, in fact, the central theme of Stonehenge, how religion, which originates from fear and superstition, can be manipulated into intolerant orthodoxy, screwed into the antithesis of its own stated object. In no other novel has Cornwell had such a blank canvas to make this point.

My husband and I read this novel together, having bought a used copy at a local bookstore. It is available from the National Library Services for the Blind. You can check out other sources using the links in the right-hand column of this page.

The Toss of a Lemon, by Padna Viswanathan

Th Toss of a lemon

Padna Viswanathan

I try to include novels that take place in and are preferably written by authors from non-Western cultures for the Let's Read Historical Novels group (for which this novel is scheduled for discussion on 2 March.). Of course, my purpose is to explore the literature of other lands, to learn about them, and I definitely accomplished both with this novel. It is a family saga following a Brahman widow and her descendants in the Madras region of India. It takes place from 1896 to well into the second half of the 20th century, from the marriage at 10 of Sivakami, the main character, through to her passing in 1966.

The persistent theme of The Toss of a Lemon is the slow breakup of the caste system. Sivakami's family is Brahman and, for the most part, quite happy to remain part of a society that regards this privileged caste as deservedly superior. In spite of harsh traditions of their caste, such as the widowed nineteen-year old Sivakami being required to live out of sight in her own home, ample evidence that individual worth is not dependent on caste heritage, and the growing shift away from caste in Indian society, Sivakami and later her granddaughter Janiki, cling to social standing. In contrast Sivakami's son, Viron, who learned when still small what his mother and niece never do, rejects caste and makes his way in the world as a highly successful 20th century businessman who can never forgive his mother's adherence to, as he puts it, "8000 year old superstition".

Sivakami chooses, after her young husband's death, to move back to his home and raise their two children. At her side, so long as he stays in the courtyard, is Muchami, a lower caste servant who had considered himself as widowed as she at the beloved husband's and employer's death. Sivakami cannot go outside her house, for the very sight of a widow is bad luck. She cannot speak directly to men other than her servant. Though she is an able manager of the lands her husband left to their son, she can only visit them on a map he made her before he died. One fascinating aspect of the novel is the view that comes from that single house, though when the point of view shifts to other characters, that unique aspect is lost. Sivakami permits her daughter to marry a cad, an example of just how arbitrary value derived from class can be. The contrast between the son in law and the faithful Muchami with defiant Viron in the middle says it all. Viron, childless, winds up having to raise his brother in law's and sister's children, a painful irony for him, and this simply heightens his anger.

In the background is the movement for independence from Great Britain and the class warfare as democracy takes the place of the rule of the Brahmans. One thing I learned was that, in spite of American's image of Mohandas Gandhi as a hero of the people, the fact was that he was Brahman and detested by the people in most of the castes. India's experience of the World Wars is at a distance, and technology seems to be decades behind. If anything, Sivakami and her family are content and even in favor of maintaining the virtually medieval life that imprisons them.

The prose in the book took some getting used to, being accustomed to English and American novels for the most part. The Toss of a Lemon slips from past tense t present tense constantly, which I assume reflects Tamil patterns. The superstitions Viron decries seem at least in some cases to be facts, with events being influenced by paranormal factors. The most troubling character for me, and I do not doubt this was the purpose of Muchami, was the gay servant who valued Brahmans almost more than they did themselves, and while living his clandestine life nevertheless at one point leads a vigilante effort to punish a low caste man for daring to have an affair with a Brahman widow. It was that situation that made me see Muchami as the reverse of Brahman claims to privilege, the lower class person who, like Mr. Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs passionately regards the Bellamys as his "betters".

This was the first book I read on my new digital talking book machine from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. I was able to download it to a special cartridge from the BARD site. The new machine and the service are extraordinary, and I am thrilled to finally be able to take advantage of it to read.

Did I mispell characters' names? I am legally blind and read everything in audio formats of one type or another. I don't have access to print to check the spellings. I would appreciate being told the correct spellings rather than being criticized, as I have been, for the mistakes.

Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas, by Morgan Llywelyn

Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas

Morgan Llywelyn

Gráinne Ní Mháille, whom the English insisted on calling  Grace O'Malley, has fascinated me for some time.  Even for a culture that gave women more rights, the Celts, she was an independent soul who defied convention.  She was a noblewoman and a pirate.  Perhaps the most tantalizing fact about Gráinne is that she was  contemporary to that other ground-breaking woman ruler, Queen Elizabeth I, and died the same year as the queen, and that she and Elizabeth actually met.  Yet there were aspects of Gráinne's character that troubled me.  I can thank Morgan Llywelyn for offering some possible explanations for Gráinne's apparent flipflops and collusion with the English during a time when Ireland lost what little independence it still had.  This novel, by the way, is what inspired my essay on historical fiction as speculative fiction on Booking History, What Historical Novelists Do.

Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas tells the story of Grania , which is an alternate spelling as well as a close appronimation of the pronunciation of Gráinne, from about the time she starts her own career as a seafarer and oftimes pirate.  She has been unhappily married to Donal O'Flaherty, and at his death in one of his constant battles with other clans she earns her reputation as a strong woman leader by retaking a castle he both took and lost.  It is her wise decision to halt the endless circle of attack, reprisal, retribution, and on that sets the stage for the high esteem in which she will be held for most of her life.  She returns to her childhood home, and though she is the only child of the O'Malley chieftain, she knows she cannot inherit the title no matter how much her people and she might want.  So she takes over control of an island fortress from which she can most securely ply her double trade of merchant shipper and waylayer of other merchant ships.

On this foundation Llywellyn  builds parallel stories, one being of the increasing stranglegold England has on Ireland during this era of the powerful Lord Deputies under whom innumerable Irish people are massacred, Ireland is deforested and Irish Catholic ownership of any land is lost and the last princes, Shane O'Neill, Hugh O'Neill, Red Hugh O'Donnell, the O'Sullivan, Desmond and the others who  make the last impossible stand.  While she desperately fights to hang onto her own "kingdom" Grania goes through a series of relationships with men, the fictional Welsh poet-novelman Huwm the very real Richard Burke whom she divorces after one year and keeps the fortress, and Tigernan, another fictional lover, a lower caste man who has loved her all their lives.  Throughout she is under threat from a vindictiv e Richard Bingham, an Englishman who blames Ireland and in particular Grania for his failure to make good in his career as a sea captain.  Rwligion plays a role in the novel as well, with Tigernan's ardent Catholicism contrasted with Grania's best woman friend, an ardent Pagan.  There is an abbot who strives to save his keep his abbey by colluding with Bingham.  Poet Sir Philip Sindney even gets a tumble with Grania.

In the essay referenced above I mention how the historical novelist strives to explain what the mere facts of a historical event and the people involved cannot, the why of the choices involved.  It appears to me that this was Llywelyn's major accomplishment in Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas besides simply bringing the time and this incredible personality to life.  Why did Grania appear to go from rebel and pirate tio collaborator?  What's more, why did she get away with it time and again?  Llywelyn shows the woman, impulsive when young, growing into a reflective, wiser woman as she ages.  The role of her various loves and her relationships with her children come into play, as well as her own strong personality, restlessness, reactions to imprisonment, and also her fascination with that other "she-king" on the throne of England.

Unfortunately the author's decision to follow Grania's life apparently episode by episode may have been a wrong one.  As novelists, we authors can choose what elements of a historical figure's life we need to portray to make our points and which to leave out.  Grania's life was repetitive enough that I think some of this novel could have been skipped.  Llywelyn did not, to my mind, explain well enough why the claustrophobic Grania would after having one experience of prison risk more nor how she got over it each time.  It appeared as well that though Grania wants to be seen as "as good as a man" (my quotes) she doesn't balk at using the fact she is a woman to gain either advantage or dispensation.

Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas starts with a scene when Grania is in her 80s waiting with anticipation for the arrival of an old friend, a man, so they can reminisce about the good old days.  Throughout the novel I waited to find out who that was, expecting some sort of epilogue to provide the final bracket of the storytelling.  There is none.  All there is is an author's note that too briefly sums up the rest of the woman's life, about ten or so years, without a definitive conclusion to the storytelling started with that first scene.

I purchased the novel as a Kindle book and read it using the Kindle 2 text to speech function.

Next: The Toss of a lemon, by Padma Viswanathan

Big Bernard Cornwall Fans Here!

The cat on the right actually prefers his Sharpe

novels.. more violence.

Further Adventures in Accessibility

Oh well. Remember back when that authors' group threw a fit because Amazon's Kindle 3 would allow readers to listen to their books converted by text to speech? And so Amazon said "OK, then we'll let the rights holders for books say no if they don't want their books available for text to speech?" And remember when I told you all about how Amazon promised blind people could apply for exemption from this disabling of the text to speech? [Kindle 3, A Brave new World... Almost May 2009]

Not so fast there, pardner.

A couple weeks ago I was asked to review a book called The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century by Ian Mortimer. They sent me a print copy, which I figured I would have to scan to read. Then I noticed the book was on Kindle! Wahoo! Oh, not wahoo! This is one of those books where the text to speech is disabled. Well, no big deal. I'll just call and find out how I register for the exemption for print impaired people. I call Amazon, ring ring, and get this nice fellow named Jim who has never heard about this exemption. He checks around and sure enough that exemption never was available. When I asked for the name and email of someone who is responsible for making materials accessible, he said there was no one like that at Amazon. He said I had to understand they really have a very small staff at Amazon. I told him, well maybe Amazon can't make the publisher accept an accessible version, but as a blind consumer, I can under the Fair Use provision of U.S. Copyright law.. in other words, I'll scan the dang book as I originally planned and share it via BookShare.org, as I also originally planned. So ha...

Of course this flip flop on Amazon's part is annoying. They said they would provide the exemption for people who need the text to speech. Now they are basically saying, "Who? Us?" It is true that neither Amazon nor the publishers have a legal obligation to produce books in accessible formats. They do however have to permit qualified organizations to do so. But if Amazon had just stuck to its promise
this wouldn't have been necessary.

On top of that, I continue to shake my head about the authors' group that complained that the text to speech would compromise their own audio books.

1. What audio books? I really wonder if any member of the group has produced an audio version of their books.
2. I said it before and I will say it again: no one who doesn't have to will listen to books on the Kindle when they could listen to a professionally narrated audio book. Why? I'll tell you why. Check out
these examples of how the Kindle's text to speech manages quite normal words.

• "He clutched the stump of his severed hand. " "Severed" is pronounced "se-VEER-ed.". That's not the adjective "severe", guys.. it's the past tense of the verb "sever".
• "I saw a figure silhouetted against the wall." The Kindle pronounces it "sil-HOW-et-ted.".

 One of my favorites is text to speech program's propensity to complete

what they perceive as abbreviations if followed by a period.

•  "It was the morning of the day Alice was to wed." "Wednesday."
• Even abbreviations no longer in use, like "It was hit or miss." "Mississippi".
•  It's downright worth it when you get a line like "It was like putting the fox in the chicken coop." It comes out as "chicken cooperative". And I didn't even realize chickens had organized. Must have missed the committee meeting to discuss it.

I know one author, Helen Hollick, who was none too pleased with how the device, which cannot, by the way, have pronunciation edited, handled her two main characters names in SeaWitch (Sea Witch Chronicles 1 .


Jesamiah - pronounced "JEZ-ah-MY-ah" - the Kindle reads it "je-SAY-me-ack". Yes, ACK. My sentiments exactly.

• Tiola - the poor woman is driven crazy when people pronounce her name "Tee-OH-la" when it is supposed to be "TEE oh la" but wait until she hears my Kindle pronounce it "SHY-la".

So tell, me O Mighty Authors who are so afraid your unborn audio books will suffer from the Kindle 3's text to speech.. you still think so???

The Last Seal, by Richard Denning

The Last Seal

Ricahard Denning

Take the biblical terrors of a Dan Brown novel, add a little Harry Potter, then set it in the time of the Great London Fire of 1666, and you have a snapshot of Richard Denning's suspenseful and exciting novel, The Last Seal.

14 year old Ben Silver has been disappointing his schoolmasters lately as a traumatic memory drives him away from his studies.  On one of his distracting trips around London he literally runs into Freya, a street thief his own age.  In no time the two are joined by a bookseller who is part of a secret society called the Presidium.  Add a doctor with modern ideas and follow the hunt as they try to prevent the cavalier leader of the Liberati as they seek to release the demon Dentalion into the world just three hundred years after Ben's ancestor imprisons the beast.  The Liberati, their well meaning dupes, and an increasing number of demon avatars set the fires in Pudding Lane that consume most of the great city of London in order to destroy the six seals that lead to the last, and most important, one.

The characters in The Last Seal are sufficiently archetypal and well rounded to provide the reader with plenty of material so you never quite know how each will decide to react in the many challenges they encounter.  Ben's trauma, watching his parents die in a housefire, constantly tempts him to use newly discovered powers to forget his pain.  The bookseller is frustrated by being possessed of only part of the knowledge he needs to fight his ancient enemy and must face his own guilt at past failures.  The doctor is bent on revenge for his own father's death at the hands of the cavalier,  while finding that the skepticism that drove him and his father apart was almost both men's undoing.  Matthias, the fire and brimstone preacher has been tricked by the power mad cavalier into believing the demon he is helping release is actually an avenging angel.  The king's spymaster and his quartet of heavies come in to symbolize both a search for truth and betrayal of that truth.

The last and decidedly not least, young Freya, is one of the more refreshing female characters I have run into lately.  She is street samrt, practical, cynical, sneaky, uncompromising, and possessed of a love for her city that surpasses all.  Denning's faithfulness in his portrayal of all these characters, as well as several lesser characters, extends beautifully to her as well.  She may be the only female character, but she is so strong and likeable, she's plenty.

The history revealed in this tale of the supernatural is fascinating, in spite of the demonic interpretation of real events.  The one fly in this ointment is that the pacing you would expect of a novel that follows something as relentless and threatening as a huge fire is not maintained throughout.  Too often the characters are stopped in their forward motion by simple necessity, to eat and sleep, for example, but also to talk over their respective traumas, on side trips, on capture by and escape from the spumaster, and unfortunately the reader loses the sense of impending disaster at times.

This is a clever, smart nd skillfully written story of temptation and redemption that should be a natural for a movie.  I can see the kid who played Harry Potter in the role of the dashing but sinister cavalier.  How about it, Hollywood?

The Last Seal is currently availabl as a downloadable ebook fromt Smashwords and is threrefore in an accessible  format for both sighted and print impaired readers.  Chrck the book's own web site for future publishing developments.