Prisoner of Heaven

Or Shadow of the Wind Part 3, or Cemetery of Forgotten Books vol III, or Angel’s Game Part 2. Whatever it is called, it is Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s third book in a gothic series relating Barcelona post-Spanish-Civil-War to a family struggling to maintain a bookstore, a real awesome cemetery of forgotten books (which is like a library of Holy Grail conditioned books banished from contemporary society for any number of reasons), and the Sempere family. Though the series started out with one of the best books of the last ten years, and I am not exaggerating to reinforce my point on the other two, the books that followed just didn’t seem to contain the same awesome crime-mystery-thick plotlines with great points on the wickedness of people keeping secrets, the twisted nature of war and its longterm affects, and the general magic with which Zafon writes. It was almost as if the second two were written by another person trying to cash in on the fame of the writer of the first one.

Anyway, this book deals a lot with the same family we were introduced to in the first book, only at a much later time. Daniel is all grown up now and is a father. Fermin is looking to get married to Bernarda and the bookstore is, predictably, struggling. Fermin’s wedding prompts the issue we were introduced to in the first book but didn’t worry too much about, his fake name. His lack of real identity. His true identity cannot be known because he changed it during the civil war and for all intents and purposes became this Fermin Romero de Torres.

 So he tells Daniel why he did it, and that story becomes the plot, or most of it, for this book. It covers his time in prison during the conflict (or shortly after the war, I am not really familiar with the history of Spain), and his time in a cell across from the guy who is the main character of the second book. Not only does this plot totally try to mindfuck what the reader thought was going on in the second book (if you haven’t read it yet, The Angel’s Game, don’t bother, as The Prisoner of Heaven suggests none of it happened that way anyway), but it also weaves its way into about a 100pg section recreating the prison scene of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with Mr. Ruiz Zafon, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of if not thee greatest book written in modern literature. But you can’t just take a scene from it (which, since it’s a 1,000 pg book, each scene is a novel or novella in itself) and use it as the plot for a modern day book. It just doesn’t work. It also doesn’t if you’re trying to tie into another book in your series but without really tying into it, just saying “that whole time you that this was happening…well that was happening.”

Aside from all my whining, it is a good book, just with a weak plot. Its greatest flaws are that Carlos Ruiz Zafon wrote an absolutely mind-blowingly good novel in Book I of this series, The Shadow of the Wind, and each book since has disappointed fans of him and the series; and other flaws include the aforementioned Alexandre Dumas tribute gone wrong and a plot that just doesn’t amount to much. I meant the villains in the story meet unexpected ends but not in a way you’d dramatically, climactically hope for, especially after reading The Shadow of the Wind.

And apparently, Carlos is Espain's answer to Karl Pilkington

My ultimate review comes down to this: Read  the series thus far in reverse. And let me know, when you get to The Shadow of the Wind, if you liked it as much as me. Seems you will, as each book will build to that magic moment in literary history (it was good beyond description…every sentence was so well thought out and placed and written I couldn’t do it justice with a review here, honest!), until you reach the punch line or “ah-ha!” moment of it all. Just, someone, for the sake of literature and recommendations, please try it. So I can know if that’s how I should recommend these books to friends. Because I have unfortunately made a friend read The Shadow of the Wind not long after I read it and he still has not picked up a copy of the others. I could be ousted as a good source of recommendations if I tell him to continue the series…

The Man Who Was Thursday – A Nightmare

Remember that kids. A nightmare. It is important.

So G.K. Chesterton was a big guy who threw his weight around and liked to use rhetoric to argue with people, on all points concerning mankind and society, until he died? A man after my own heart. Truly. I picked this book up because I had found it and subsequently purchased a copy after I learned it makes its way into Neil Gaiman’s top 10 books. That he has read. In his life! That has some notoriety to it. Not that I would read all books on his list, he described one as a “slow version of Dickens’ Bleak House” and I nearly fell over with exhaustion just imagining it.

And some background on Gilbert Keith: He was a massive man, joked about it, wrote a lot about politics and religious apologetics, also wrote poetry, mystery, fantasy and spent the rest of his time arguing philosophies with George Bernard Shaw. Shaw was a modernist, and Chesterton an orthodox Catholic. But they had very spirited bouts and always remained great friends. Wish we could do that more now days. I mean I can, I don’t care who believes what, just as long as we all are good humoured about it and the views of others.

Anyway he wrote The Man Who Was Thursday as a detective novel where people are recruited into an anti-anarchist wing of Scotland Yard’s detective agency and must use their wit to infiltrate the ring of anarchists known to be amongst commoners in London, but operating out of the London Underground. The plot follows Gabriel Syme, who outwits a man named Gregory, who is an anarchist trying to prove to Syme that they are a real force to be reckoned with. Syme must protect his own identity, however, and accomplishes this by suggesting Gregory isn’t a good enough anarchist at a secret meeting Gregory drags him to where they are voting on a new leader of their local chapter, which happens to be a position in the council of 7 and is code-named Thursday. He uses leverage to speak to the council and gives such a great speech, condemning Gregory, that he wins the vote. Syme is going to be Mr. Thursday!

 

Once at these meetings of the 7, Syme learns something awful, however. That they no longer believe in keeping anarchy a secret, and instead believe the best way to appear harmless if for the heads to appear right out in the open. Has to make the detective nervous. What’s worse? (SPOILER ALERT!) Syme learns quickly that five of the seven member are also secret detectives like him, policemen from Scotland Yard sent to infiltrate the Council.

Even more mindblowing is that they learn all this as they come together, and figure out that a real anarchist revolution is going on without them, whilst they are busy hunting each other down in the woods trying to point out members that are actual anarchists. Turns out none of them are! And the anarchists move on with an insane plan, leaving them all hopeless and desperate.

In the end, Sunday is revealed as Gregory, only masked, and tells them all that his people are the ones who have suffered, hence the revolt. But good Syme responds with a “you don’t know what I just went through, what I experienced, what I suffered” speech and caps it off with a quote from Jesus: “can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?” Bravo G.K. Nightmare over. Book end.

I thought it was a nice, short and simple story with great post-Victorian British humour and rhetoric. I don’t know when I aged 120 years and started enjoying that stuff, my guess is sometime after my first go at Dickens’ Bleak House, but I really do like that stuff. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. Otherwise, it is a fairly entertaining nightmare.

Pavane

Geez a month since I last blogged here, what the fuck has been up? Oh yeah, illness, work, travel and holidays. Sorry folks. Enjoy my review of this one though, I loved this book.

Keith Roberts wrote Pavane in 1968 as an alternate history if Queen Elizabeth was assassinated before England’s big battle with Spain and the Spanish Armada won; hence the Catholic Church ruled, Protestantism never began; hence technological developments and indeed all progression of human development was done only with the oversight of the Church. Need I say more?

It is a collection of short stories, or a novel told in small parts, all of which intertwine of course and have a few common denominators: the power of the Church, stunted technological growth (i.e. no electricity), the mechanical wooden semaphore towers and their Guild, feudal system, and the family of Eli Strange and his hauliers business of steam engine hauling cars.

I had no idea what a steam engine car looked like either. Makes sense though.

The Catholic Church being the sole source of knowledge, progress and science in a much less than preferred society was very reminiscent of one of my all-time favourite books: A Canticle for Leibowitz. It’s Dark Ages, monks abound and people fight and torment themselves in a helpless, hopeless, heart-wrenching quest for progress. Sad, but the empathy seems to come easy for characters fighting these fights.

The rebellion is also a thrilling factor. Or should I say, the Rebellion, as you seemingly cannot find anything about this book without someone quoting the first page’s brilliance:

"Over all, the long arm of the Popes reached out to punish and reward; the Church Militant remained supreme. But by the middle of the twentieth century widespread mutterings were making themselves heard. Rebellion was once more in the air . . ."

Brother John, who when I read this immediately thought of my new musical hero Father John Misty, is a monk tasked with witnessing and transcribing the acts of punishment to witches conducted by the contemporary equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition, referred to in this book simply as the Inquisition.  The torture scenes, for that is what they really are, become almost too much to bare, and are more violent and obscene than just about anything I have read lately, including 200 pages of Cormac McCarthy’s masturbation material, but is over and done with fairly quickly (maybe 3 pages) and helps shape Brother John into one of the most powerful, demented (yet not quite powerfully demented) heretics I have ever come to know in the world of books.

There is really nothing more fascinating to me than human beings behaving like non-human beings. It’s really a something I could study the rest of my life. Holy wars, for example. Totally awful behavior. But torturing people who speak out against your beliefs, or either just do not believe, quite innocently, or simply do not believe hard enough. That takes it to a whole new level. Incredibly awful stuff, and Roberts conveys it in a very meaningful way. Violent, yes, but not so much that you lose your lunch and have another 100 pages of baby impalement to get through after ten hours of stomach churning gore. Do I sound like I’m still bitter about Blood Meridian? Good.

The book also incorporates a feudal war. As a bit of a nerd for Medieval Epics and some of the stories of Middle English/Middle Germanic Kings and Queens – some of whom I still tell friends of whenever drunkenly possible – I really enjoyed the second to last story titled “Lords and Ladies.” It was the best for me, as the aristocratic governess, once again tying into the Strange family as she is the grand-niece of the main character of the first story, defies the orders of the Holy Roman Emperor and a war ensues with the Catholic Church as she tries to defend her people. The woman holding down the castle as the greatest army assembled on Earth has her entire land under siege was very much like one of my all-time favourite Germanic Medieval epics, Willehalm, and had perhaps an even more charming ending.

Really wish I had more to say without spoiling anything, but definitely pick up a copy of this book, or ebook it or audio it some way. Just....give it a go, it is great.