Book Review: In a Dark Wood Wandering
Many, many moons ago I promised that I would add book reviews to my movie reviews. And seeing as I haven't seen a movie in ages (not since V for Vendetta anyway), but I've recently joined a book club, I thought I would finally do a write up about a book.
I am not really a medievalist, but I do have a passing interest in the time period (Sometimes I think the "Dark Ages" remain that way because American schools don't bother to teach anything substantial about them, but that's a whole other education rant that's really too short to bother with*). However, because my knowledge of the period consists of Shakespeare's History plays and a very, very Anglo-Saxon-centric middle school perspective of the Hundred Years War, I was very interested in a novel about what the French were doing at the same time. Of course, one has to keep in mind that historical novels are not necessarily a good education in a time period or historical actor, but any information is better than a list of forgettable dates.
The book is a translation of a Dutch novel, Het woud der verwachting. It is mostly about Charles d'Orleans (son of Louis d'Orleans and nephew of King Charles VI), who was a prolific poetry writer inbetween getting caught in neverending family feuds, dead wives, and being exiled to England for 20 plus years after the Battle at Agincourt. We don't actually meet Charles until we're a third of the way into the book. This might be a problem for some people, but the backstory of how Charles's father and mother, Louis and Valentine, got into the neverending family feud with the Burgundians is very important to the main plot of the story, as well as the theme.
The theme is really the most interesting part of the novel. The plot gets old pretty quick, as it is a series of court intrigues and battles that all sound the same after a while. I attribute this to the fact that people in the court really don't change that much. They are still greedy, grabbing idiots who don't give a damn about actual France. So, at about page 600, I wished that the plot would go away, because I really didn't need to read another episode of "Charles desperately tries to figure out how to avoid losing his honor." And then, to make it more boring, he goes into exile, which involves him sitting around for twenty-five years and occasionally being excruciatingly polite to his current captor. However, this plot was necessary for the theme to come across, and that part was very well thought out.
While the people weren't changing, the situations surrounding them slowly were. Burgundy and Orleans hold onto their grudge, to their own peril and the peril of France. The (eventual) King slowly pulls more power to himself because of these distracting blood-feuds, making the participants seem more and more like children playing war in every round. Charles's gradual understanding of his position and of the important things in life (which, of course, he is too old to appreciate, and is unable to pass on to anyone else) is shown to the reader through the evolution of his poetry.
The book has a huge cast, as everyone has lots of brothers and sisters, many cousins and nephews, and marries two or three times. Luckily, the book comes
with a genealogy to help the reader navigate the characters, as pretty much everyone is named Charles, Philippe or Louis. Sadly, the most interesting characters happen to not be Charles. Louis, his father, is much more charismatic, and while maybe that doesn't mean his characterization is better, he is much more interesting to read about. Valentine and Isabeau, Charles's mother and aunt, respectively, are also more interesting to the reader, if just for the comparison between the two and how they handle the collapse of their worlds. Charles likes to angst, of which I can only read so much. Charles comes off weak, unwilling and whinny, especially since he has Jean de Dunois, his bastard half-brother, riding out beside Joan of Arc. That kind of comparison flatters no one.
As a reader of Shakespeare's Histories, I very much enjoyed this book. It really gave me a sense of time (and a realization of how quickly people seemed to bite it), as over the course of the novel we see Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI all mess around France in various ways. It also gives another perspective into events described in the Histories, and a new way of looking at characters/historical figures. Things that were of immediate importance in England are only passing rumors in France, and vice versa.
For someone interested in Medieval France, this book is filled with rich detail of daily life and mindset that can be enlightening and fascinating. It's a very well crafted story, if you feel you can put up with a certain amount of court politics. Some parts, especially toward the end when Charles gets hyper-introspective, can drag, but on the whole, I found the description of the poet's life, and the resulting poetry, to be a subtle evolution of one person's world-view. I am also a fan of historical novels, which have their own expectations of fact-fiction blending, so the book does have to be taken with a grain of salt.
*Look! The Church! The feudal system! It sucked to be a serf! Now let's move on to Henry VIII!
I am not really a medievalist, but I do have a passing interest in the time period (Sometimes I think the "Dark Ages" remain that way because American schools don't bother to teach anything substantial about them, but that's a whole other education rant that's really too short to bother with*). However, because my knowledge of the period consists of Shakespeare's History plays and a very, very Anglo-Saxon-centric middle school perspective of the Hundred Years War, I was very interested in a novel about what the French were doing at the same time. Of course, one has to keep in mind that historical novels are not necessarily a good education in a time period or historical actor, but any information is better than a list of forgettable dates.
The book is a translation of a Dutch novel, Het woud der verwachting. It is mostly about Charles d'Orleans (son of Louis d'Orleans and nephew of King Charles VI), who was a prolific poetry writer inbetween getting caught in neverending family feuds, dead wives, and being exiled to England for 20 plus years after the Battle at Agincourt. We don't actually meet Charles until we're a third of the way into the book. This might be a problem for some people, but the backstory of how Charles's father and mother, Louis and Valentine, got into the neverending family feud with the Burgundians is very important to the main plot of the story, as well as the theme.
The theme is really the most interesting part of the novel. The plot gets old pretty quick, as it is a series of court intrigues and battles that all sound the same after a while. I attribute this to the fact that people in the court really don't change that much. They are still greedy, grabbing idiots who don't give a damn about actual France. So, at about page 600, I wished that the plot would go away, because I really didn't need to read another episode of "Charles desperately tries to figure out how to avoid losing his honor." And then, to make it more boring, he goes into exile, which involves him sitting around for twenty-five years and occasionally being excruciatingly polite to his current captor. However, this plot was necessary for the theme to come across, and that part was very well thought out.
While the people weren't changing, the situations surrounding them slowly were. Burgundy and Orleans hold onto their grudge, to their own peril and the peril of France. The (eventual) King slowly pulls more power to himself because of these distracting blood-feuds, making the participants seem more and more like children playing war in every round. Charles's gradual understanding of his position and of the important things in life (which, of course, he is too old to appreciate, and is unable to pass on to anyone else) is shown to the reader through the evolution of his poetry.
The book has a huge cast, as everyone has lots of brothers and sisters, many cousins and nephews, and marries two or three times. Luckily, the book comes
with a genealogy to help the reader navigate the characters, as pretty much everyone is named Charles, Philippe or Louis. Sadly, the most interesting characters happen to not be Charles. Louis, his father, is much more charismatic, and while maybe that doesn't mean his characterization is better, he is much more interesting to read about. Valentine and Isabeau, Charles's mother and aunt, respectively, are also more interesting to the reader, if just for the comparison between the two and how they handle the collapse of their worlds. Charles likes to angst, of which I can only read so much. Charles comes off weak, unwilling and whinny, especially since he has Jean de Dunois, his bastard half-brother, riding out beside Joan of Arc. That kind of comparison flatters no one.
As a reader of Shakespeare's Histories, I very much enjoyed this book. It really gave me a sense of time (and a realization of how quickly people seemed to bite it), as over the course of the novel we see Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI all mess around France in various ways. It also gives another perspective into events described in the Histories, and a new way of looking at characters/historical figures. Things that were of immediate importance in England are only passing rumors in France, and vice versa.
For someone interested in Medieval France, this book is filled with rich detail of daily life and mindset that can be enlightening and fascinating. It's a very well crafted story, if you feel you can put up with a certain amount of court politics. Some parts, especially toward the end when Charles gets hyper-introspective, can drag, but on the whole, I found the description of the poet's life, and the resulting poetry, to be a subtle evolution of one person's world-view. I am also a fan of historical novels, which have their own expectations of fact-fiction blending, so the book does have to be taken with a grain of salt.
*Look! The Church! The feudal system! It sucked to be a serf! Now let's move on to Henry VIII!