Reviews

Cabal of the Westford Knight by David S. Brody

Posted on by Jeff Grim / 0 Comment

In my previous post on The Road To Jerusalem by Jan Guillou I said that I am wary of reading books about the Knight Templars – my most recent read on this subject confirms my wariness.  David S. Brody’s Cabal of the Westford Knight takes Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code idea and puts a North American spin on it.

The book is basically about how a real estate attorney, Cam Thorne, and a Knight Templar expert, Amanda Spencer, try to prove that a Scottish prince tied to the Templar Knights discovered America before Columbus and that he brought many Templar secrets with him.  They try to prove their theory and get the “truth” out while a right-wing Vatican group tries to prevent them from doing either task.

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Reviews

The Road To Jerusalem by Jan Guillou

Posted on by Jeff Grim / 0 Comment

Continuing with my recent reading on the Crusades, I just finished The Road To Jerusalem by Swedish author Jan Guillou.  I am always a little wary of reading books about the Crusades, especially ones on the Knights of the Templar, because many of these books have been close to heresy.  However, I decided to give this book a try because it seemed promising.

This book is the first of three that chronicles the exploits of Arn Magnusson, a young Swede from a noble family.  Arn is raised in a Cistercian monastery and learns the finer points of the Christian life.  Along with his formal education, Arn is taught the art of war by a brother monk who was a former Templar Knight.  This combat training comes in handy when Father Henri, the head of the monastery thinks it is time for Arn to experience the world in order to ascertain God’s role for him.  Because of some carnal sins, Arn is forced into doing penance by going to Rome to join the Templar Knights – the book ends with him starting on that journey.

Guillou is a gifted storyteller.  The plot has many twists and turns that keep you guessing and wondering about where the story is headed.    Along with a great story, you get a piece of Swedish history.  As with many countries in these times, Sweden was divided into several different parts that were controlled by individual clans.  Arn’s clan – the Folkung Clan from West Gotaland – is cast in a deadly game of kingmaking.  I love reading about a country’s history in the context of historical fiction.  As an aside, Guillou tells a great story without much vulgarity – both in speech and actions – I mention this because many good books are ruined by trashy writing that does nothing to enahnce the story.

Guillou fully develops Arn’s character and has you believing in the naive and gullible young man.  Along with this deeply religious young man, Guillou includes a vast cast of characters – church men and nobles.  I particularly like the relationship developed between Arn and Father Henri.

The plot takes a while to develop – so have a little patience – in this book of 398 pages.  The action is slow at times, but the dialogue and thoughts of the characters are intriguing.  Your patience with the slow beginning will be rewarded with a great story.

Reviews

In the Mail: Weekend Edition

Posted on by Kevin Holtsberry / 0 Comment

–> The Stalin Epigram by Robert Littell

Publishers Weekly

Veteran espionage novelist Littell (Vicious Circle; The Company; etc.) trades cold war spies for interwar Russian poets in his wonderful new novel. In 1934, real-life poet Osip Mandelstam struggles to get published in the totalitarian state. A battered idealist who has witnessed his share of Stalin-orchestrated horrors, Mandelstam feels writers have an abiding responsibility to be truth tellers in this wasteland of lies. Much to the despair of his fellow poets, Osip writes an epigram likening Stalin to a ruthless killer, leading to Osip’s arrest, brutal interrogation and exile. The robust narrative employs an array of narrators, including Osip’s devoted wife, Nadezhda; his disloyal lover, actress Zinaida Zaitseva-Antonova; and Stalin’s personal bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik. The most intriguing voice heard is that of Fikrit Shotman, a weightlifter turned circus strongman who shares a cell with Osip and whose journey from Moscow prison to Siberian gold mine perfectly captures the absurdity of life under tyranny. Littell is unflinching in his portrayal of Osip’s tragic arc, bringing a troubled era of Russian history to rich, magnificent life.

–> Step By Step by Lawrence Block

Kirkus Reviews

The prolific crime novelist (Hit and Run, 2008, etc.) writes about his adventures as a racewalker. The author’s focus at first seems puzzling. Block chooses not to tell the story of his writing life-a project he began but abandoned after weeks of feverish writing-or his personal life (“if you wanted to know something about me, well, too bad”). Instead, the memoir focuses almost entirely on his distance walking. Generally these walks are competitive-marathons and 24-hour walks in which the globetrotting Block consistently ignores both the scenery (he leaves his glasses at home) and the other runners and concentrates on beating his shortest time and longest distance. When he’s not entering formal events-from which he took a hiatus for more than 20 years-he and his wife are driving across America in search of all the towns named Buffalo or traversing Spain on foot. Block occasionally goes off on amusing tangents. He writes briefly on the question of why even nonobservant Jews like himself don’t eat pork, the nature of his interfaith (make that interagnostic) marriage and his preference for trees over Porta-Potties. On the whole, though, this is an account of the author’s entering event after event, wondering why he keeps walking despite blisters and backaches. It’s telling that the only two books whose gestation he describes in any detail are his novel Random Walk (1988) and the present volume. Fans of Block’s fiction may be interested, but they should be prepared to skim the particulars of times and distances that the author assiduously records. A peripatetic but never pedestrian memoir.

–> The Night of The Gun by David Carr

Amazon.com Review

In his fabulously entertaining The Kid Stays in the Picture, legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans wrote: “There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.” David Carr’s riveting debut memoir, The Night of the Gun, takes this theory to the extreme, as the New York Times reporter embarks on a three-year fact-finding mission to revisit his harrowing past as a drug addict and discovers that the search for answers can reveal many versions of the truth. Carr acknowledges that you can’t write a my-life-as-an-addict story without the recent memoir scandals of James Frey and others weighing you down, but he regains the reader’s trust by relying on his reporting skills to conduct dozens of often uncomfortable interviews with old party buddies, cops, and ex-girlfriends and follow an endless paper trail of legal and medical records, mug shots, and rejection letters. The kaleidoscopic narrative follows Carr through failed relationships and botched jobs, in and out of rehab and all manner of unsavory places in between, with cameos from the likes of Tom Arnold, Jayson Blair, and Barbara Bush. Admittedly, it’s hard to love David Carr–sometimes you barely like the guy. How can you feel sympathy for a man who was smoking crack with his pregnant girlfriend when her water broke? But plenty of dark humor rushes through the book, and knowing that this troubled man will make it–will survive addiction, fight cancer, raise his twin girls–makes you want to stick around for the full 400-page journey.

Reviews

Crusader Castles in the Holy Land by David Nicolle

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Crusader Castles in the Holy Land: An Illustrated History of the Crusader Fortifications of the Middle East and Mediterranean by David Nicolle is a fascinating book chronicling the creation or renovation of the Crusader castles.

Here is a description of the book from the publisher:

The bloody crusades that swept across the Middle East in medieval times left their mark on the landscape, where fortifications which once acted as bastions of power for the beleaguered Crusader States now cast their ruined shadows over the earth.

These fortifications varied considerably in size, architecture and function from the mighty Crac de Chevaliers, the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller in Syria to smaller fortified dwellings and religious centers. With almost constant warfare between Crusaders and Saracens they were vitally important both as centers of defense and bases for the launch of offensive operations. Crusader Castles in the Holy Land is a beautifully illustrated guide to the development, construction, purpose and history of these castles. Examining the castles built in the Holy Land between 1097 and 1302 as well as the castles built in Cyprus, Greece and the Aegean between 1191 and 1571, this book provides a rare overview of the history and notably the evolution of fortresses and defenses during the Crusades. Contemporary photographs and the latest research resurrect these imposing reminders of over two centuries of conflict.

The book is divided into two parts:  Crusader Castles in the Holy Land (1097 to 1302) and Crusader Castles in Cyprus, Greece, and the Aegean (1191 to 1573).  The latter part of the book is relatively new to me – I knew about the castles in Cyprus and Rhodes, but I did not realize there were Crusader Castles in mainland Greece.  These were “appropriated” from the Byzantine Empire.

Each of the major, and some of the minor, fortresses are studied in detail.  Nicolle includes a description and the general surroundings of each fortification and whether it was built by the Crusaders or renovated from its previous Muslim owners.  An interesting point about this part is how the Crusaders adapted their European style of castle building with the Byzantine and Middle Eastern style to create a unique fortress in the Holy Land.

Nicolle does not just describe the brick and mortar of the castles, but also life in the castles.  The conditions that the occupants had to live under.  For example, a commodity that was not as important in Europe, but an important one in the Middle East was water.  Nicolle recounts that some castles capitulated to the Muslims relatively quickly because the water cisterns were almost dry.

As with other Osprey publications, this book would not be an Osprey publication without an excellent assortment of contemporary photographs of the various castles and full-color illustrations.  Many of the castles are brought back to their former glory through these illustrations – they help you to better understand the magnificence of the castles.

This book is a must-have for any enthusiast of the Crusader years in the Holy Land and beyond.

Reviews

Ten Questions with Laila Lalami

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I really enjoyed Laila Lalami’s new novel Secret Son and so inquired about having her answer some questions via email.  She graciously agreed.

Here is a brief bio for those who may be unfamiliar with her work or background:

Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco. She earned her B.A. in English from Université Mohammed V in Rabat, her M.A. from University College, London, and her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts grant and a Fulbright Fellowship. She was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing (the “African Booker”) in 2006. Her debut collection of short stories, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in the fall of 2005 and has since been translated into Spanish, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Norwegian. Her first novel, Secret Son, will be published in the spring of 2009. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California Riverside.

My questions and her answers are below.

1) What is the most challenging part about moving from the short story format to a novel and what is the best aspect?

The structure of my short story collection made it possible to take out one story and revise it, or even get rid of it and replace it with another, without having this affect the shape of the entire book. But with the novel, changes to one chapter inevitably meant changes somewhere else in the novel, so the revision process was much more labor-intensive. On the other hand, working on a novel really enabled me to stay with the same story for a long time, to inhabit it, if you will, and to keep adding layers to it.


2) How would you describe your writing style? What authors have influenced your writing?

Perhaps it is up to critics to describe my writing style. I have a hard time looking at my work with a critical eye, since there is no possibility of being completely objective. My favorite authors-and I think these are the people who have influenced me the most, since I go back to them often-are J.M. Coetzee, Chinua Achebe, Ahdaf Soueif, Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad, Leila Abouzeid, Mohammed Choukri, Tayeb Salih, among others.
3) What sparked the idea for the character of Youssef?

I think I started with this image of a young man walking back home to the slum where he lives, having just watched a movie. In some sense, this journey from idealized dreams to stark reality-from lies to truths, if you will-takes place throughout the book. For instance, when Youssef’s mother reveals to him that he is the illegitimate son of a wealthy businessman, she only gives him a small part of the story of his birth, and then she changes that story several times in the book. Or when Hatim promises Youssef that he will publish an article about what happened at the university, the piece that comes out bears only a small resemblance to the events as Youssef experienced them.

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