Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

Bearing the Saint, by Donna Farley

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Anyone with an interest in the Vikings knows of the island and monastery of Lindisfarne. The start of the Viking Age is generally dated to 793, when a devastating and unanticipated raid from Scandinavia brought about its sacking. After centuries as a place of sanctuary, the island became from that day on a target, getting hit again and again by plunder-hungry Northmen. In 875 the entire Lindisfarne community, monks, priests, and lay folk, packed up the monastery treasures, including the remains of Saint Cuthbert and a holy book (thought to be the Lindisfarne Gospels), and set off to find a safer place.

They wandered the land like the children of Israel until 882, when a new monastery site was found (it was relocated to Durham some time after).

Bearing the Saint by Donna Farley is a young adult novel dramatizing the adventures and sufferings of that company during its period of homelessness. As the story begins, the hero, a boy named Edmund, is mourning the loss at sea of his fisherman father. Soon he has much more to worry about as he becomes part of the exodus. Over the years that follow he grows up, becomes one of the bishop’s official “saint bearers,” suffers hunger and exposure, has adventures, falls in love, and comes to terms with Danish rule in Northumberland.

I found the book’s pace a little leisurely for my taste. It was episodic, but that’s the nature of this kind of story, so I can’t call that a criticism. The narrative engaged me, but I wouldn’t call it compelling. It did educate me on an aspect of the history of the Danelaw with which I hadn’t been much familiar.

The book is published by Conciliar Press, an Orthodox publisher, and was sent to me by an Orthodox friend. Considering that fact, along with the monastic elements of the story, I would have expected there to be a lot more promotion of monasticism in it than there is. In fact, none of the main characters becomes a monk or a nun in the course of the story, which surprised me. Evangelical readers won’t find the sacramental aspects offensive, I think (unless the idea of saints’ miracles offends them).

I’d say Bearing the Saint is a good, wholesome book that might be especially useful to homeschooling parents who want to teach their children some history.

Fiction

Noir Fiction Is About Sad Sacks

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Otto Penzler writes about noir fiction (via Joel Miller)

Look, noir is about losers. The characters in these existential, nihilistic tales are doomed. They may not die, but they probably should, as the life that awaits them is certain to be so ugly, so lost and lonely, that they’d be better off just curling up and getting it over with. And, let’s face it, they deserve it.

Fiction, Religion

Unconverted Rice

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NEW YORK - APRIL 25: Writer Anne Rice attends the opening night of 'Lestat' at The Palace Theatre April 25, 2006 in New York City. (Photo by Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images)

The big news in Christian popular culture today is that Anne Rice, the bestselling vampire author who announced her conversion to Christianity a couple years back, has unconverted.

The 68-year-old author wrote Wednesday on her Facebook page that she refuses to be “anti-gay … anti-feminist,” and “anti-artificial birth control.”

She adds that “In the name of … Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

There was a surge of debate about this on a Christian SF/Fantasy e-mail discussion list I subscribe to. Part of the scuttlebutt (who knows how reliable?) was that she had a bad business experience with a Christian company that planned to film her novels about Christ, and that that may have contributed to her disenchantment. If that’s the case, it wouldn’t be the first time. The history of celebrity converts in my lifetime hasn’t been a happy one. And it’s not just a matter of the celebrities’ immaturity. Christian enterprises are rather notorious for their shoddy business practices and promise-breaking. Sad but true.

But if the Facebook posting really reveals her heart, it would seem she simply found the gate too narrow and the way too straight. She appears to be one of those many who want a Jesus who’ll accommodate their preferences. Being in the church involves a certain amount of doctrinal teaching and accountability, which they find offensive and intrusive.

I think of the rich young ruler from Luke 18—“When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.”

Discipleship has a cost. The cares of the world often choke out the seed that has been sown.

Let’s pray for Anne Rice.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

Fiction, Reviews

Triple Crown, by Dick Francis

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A while back I reviewed Dick Francis’ mystery, Decider, and said I’d be reading more. So I picked up the collection Triple Crown (comprising Dead Cert, Nerve, and For Kicks) and read it last week. It was an intriguing reading experience for me.
I have a hard time pinning down what’s so compelling in a Dick Francis mystery. Most of the stories revolve around the sport of racing (with the corruption that racetrack betting invites), and that’s a field of endeavor in which I’ve never had much interest (though I’ll admit that if I have to watch a horse race, I’d prefer a steeplechase, which is the kind of racing Francis concentrates on, at least in the novels I’ve read). I can’t say that he’s a brilliant stylist—in fact I’d characterize him as the kind of author who disappears totally, which isn’t a bad way to get your reader invested in your characters. I can’t say he’s especially skilled at crafting vivid characters. And yet I found myself horizontal on the couch for hours, turning page after page, absolutely under the spell of the stories.
Dead Cert, I understand, was Francis’ first published novel. It’s good, but I think he was still feeling his way. Nerve was his second book, and by then he’d already found his pace. This was possibly the most satisfying tale of revenge I’ve ever read. And For Kicks amazed me. It was the compelling adventure of a man who takes a dangerous job for money, endures great suffering and violence, and in the end learns something about himself that changes his life.
I think what I particularly like is that Francis writes about manly men. Men blessed, and burdened, with strength, integrity, and courage, Churchillian in their resolve never to give up.
What a joy to discover an author you didn’t know before, who has a long list of published works you can look forward to!

Fiction

Not a Review

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close-up of a young woman reading a book

I decided not to review a novel a few weeks ago, because what I was reading got under my skin. Maybe I’m thin-skinned, or maybe I couldn’t adjust to the genre. I didn’t know it was a historic romance until a couple chapters into it. That’s entirely my fault. A few clues on the cover and in the general description should have been enough, but no, I thought it was historical fiction, maybe even a bit of fantasy. I even said to myself, “I hope this doesn’t become a romance,” a few pages before the book swatted me in the gut.

A woman, taken from her home as a child, raised by nurses in a distant land, and well-trained to survive and hide in the wilderness, sees a prince who is searching for her without a clear sense of her. She is hidden in the trees on the mountain side. The wind whips around the prince, pressing his cloak to his skin, and this medieval sylan thinks to herself (paraphrase), “Wow, is his face as handsome as his body?”

Maybe I’m a puritan, but this strikes me as completely out of character.

Later, when the prince is badly injured and she begins to nurse him back to health, the narration dwells on her need to wash him, and bodies have unseemly parts . . . It’s distasteful. It was all written indirectly, because it is a Christian novel, and maybe overall the story accomplished its goal, but I didn’t want to take it in. I’ve read worse, that is, more vulgar narration, but I wouldn’t have it this time. I’m not sure why.

Authors, Fiction

Where Are the Conservative Novelists?

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Reviewer Craig Ferhman writes, “Every so often, spurred by some kind of creative liberal guilt, someone will ask: Where are the conservative novelists?” He reviews a first novel from a conservative novelist, and I have to ask, looking at this review, if foul language is required for publishing serious stories today?

Fiction, Reviews

Critic, spare that bird!

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S. T. Karnick at The American Culture ably responds to Malcolm Gladwell’s recent attack on To Kill a Mockingbird.

Gladwell’s notion that To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in 1960, is insufficiently hateful toward white Southerners and is unsophisticated in failing to embrace radical politics is a truly breathtaking instance of ignorant bigotry. It is also not original, and it is wrong.

Fiction, The Press

…and every postmodern family is a dead loss in its own way

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Jane Austen's PersuasionOur friend Dale Nelson sent me a link to this New York Times column by Ross Douthat, all about why many “literary” authors are turning to writing historical novels, rather than setting their stories in contemporary settings. His interesting conclusion is that modern culture just doesn’t present the kind of conflicts that made the family sagas of old work so well:

You can write an interesting contemporary novel based on the “Anna Karenina” template in which the heroine gets a divorce, marries her modern-day Vronsky, and they both discover that they’re unhappy with the choices they’ve made — but the last act just isn’t going to be quite as gripping as Tolstoy’s original. You can turn the Jane Austen template to entertaining modern purposes, as Hollywood did in “Clueless” and “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” but the social and economic stakes are never going to be as high for a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet as they were for the Regency-era version.

I think he’s got something there. If you want to write a novel about, say, an unwed mother, you can suggest that your plucky heroine’s Neanderthal, Bible-thumping parents don’t want her to have an abortion, but there’s really nothing they can do to stop her. The only other problem her romantic passions are likely to get her into is that of sexually transmitted diseases. In that case, she either takes medication to get better, or she’s stuck with the problem for life. There’s little scope for her to heroically defy convention and shame the small minds; there is no convention to defy.
P. G. Wodehouse wrote stories about couples being kept apart by unsympathetic fathers and guardians, well past the point in history when such parental figures had “sunk to the level of a third rate power” (to quote “Uncle Fred Flits By”). He was able to get away with it because his stories were light confections, not intended to reflect real life in any serious way. If he’d been forced to be realistic, the fun would drained out like water from a lion-footed bathtub.
Is it an indictment of modern society to say that it doesn’t offer scope to certain forms of fiction? Probably not.
But I often think of the popularity of Amish stories in the Romance genre, as I’ve mentioned here before. I don’t think it’s unrelated to highbrow authors writing historical novels. I think there’s a hunger out there to be able to live in a society where people care enough about you to tell you when they think you’re messing up your life.
The autonomous life, in the end, is a pretty lonely one.

Fiction, Reviews

Dark Light, by Randy Wayne White

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Dark Light is another installment in Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford series. I was quite pleased with it. The author has positioned this series so as to let his marine biologist/covert ops agent hero play around in both the international thriller and the mystery genres. This one’s a mystery, with the intriguing addition of a (possibly) supernatural element.
In the wake of a devastating hurricane that wreaked havoc on the economy and ecology of his Sanibel Island, Florida home, Ford gets drawn into a dispute between an acquaintance—an old fisherman he doesn’t even like a whole lot—and a property developer. The developer, as it turns out, is not only a crooked businessman but a serial rapist and killer. Ford and his friends end up competing with the developer and his henchmen in the exploration and salvage of a World War II wreck. This attracts the interest of an enigmatic neighbor, an beautiful old woman who sometimes doesn’t seem old at all, but is disturbingly seductive either way.
The supernatural element was what intrigued me most, fantasist that I am. Is the old woman the goddaughter of a famous beauty supposed to have drowned in the shipwreck, as she claims, or is she the woman herself, some sort of ghost?
Doc Ford and his friend Tomlinson are like the extreme poles famously described by Chesterton—one doesn’t believe in God; the other believes in anything. Ford’s unsettling experience with the mystery woman can be satisfactorily explained in purely materialistic terms. And yet, even Doc himself doesn’t entirely believe that.
You used to see this sort of story more than you do now, I think. Stories framed as realistic, but with the door left open just a crack for other possibilities. I like such stories.
Dark Light was an engaging mystery, with a pleasant aftertaste. Cautions for language and adult situations.