The Habitation of the Blessed, by Catherynne M. Valente

Apr 19, 2011 12:50




Title: The Habitation of the Blessed
   Series: A Dirge for Prester John #1
Author: Catherynne M. Valente
Publisher: NightShade Books
Format: Trade Paperback
Year: 2010
Pages: 269
Genre: Fantasy, Metafiction
   Subgenres: Secret History
Challenge Information: Contemporary Challenge category "Science Fiction/Fantasy novel"; Fantasy Challenge category "Meta-Fantasy"
Full Disclosure: I am a Catherynne M. Valente fangirl. Deal with it. :)

Jacket Description
This is the story of a place that never was: the kingdom of Prester John, the utopia described by an anonymous, twelfth-century document which captured the imagination of the medieval world and drove hundreds of lost souls to seek out its secrets, inspiring explorers, missionaries, and kings for centuries. But what if it were all true? What if there was such a place, and a poor, broken priest once stumbled past its borders, discovering, not a Christian paradise, but a country where everything is possible, immortality is easily had, and the Western world is nothing but a dim and distant dream?

Brother Hiob of Luzerne, on missionary work in the Himalayan wilderness on the eve of the eighteenth century, discovers a village guarding a miraculous tree whose branches sprout books instead of fruit. These strange books chronicle the history of the kingdom of Prester John, and Hiob becomes obsessed with the tales they tell. The Habitation of the Blessed recounts the fragmented narratives found within these living volumes, revealing the life of a priest named John, and his rise to power in this country of impossible richness. John's tale weaves together with the confessions of his wife Hagia, a blemmye -- a headless creature who carried her face on her chest -- as well as the tender, jeweled nursery stories of Imtithal, nanny to the royal family.

My Review
I do not know where to start in talking about this book.

I suppose I should start with the fact that I choked up in every single on of Hagia's sections, and half of Imtithal's. This is partly because I am a sap, but mostly because this book (and this trilogy, given the foreshadowing) is about a fall from paradise, about the elves going off to the Grey Havens, about the horrible inevitableness of the change you don't see coming. And that atmosphere hangs over every passage of those two narratives, infusing them with an exquisite sense of loss.

Three narratives, actually, because Hiob's framing narrative is also imbued with that grief, though at a remove.

There are four narratives, by the way -- the three previously mentioned and that of John the Priest. That complexity of structure is typical of Valente's novels (at least the four I have now read); she weaves together disparate narratives better than any author I have ever read, ignoring linearity in favor of thematic resonance. So Hiob says "I have boys to scribed for me now -- for I have often and in secret thought that it is boys' work, to copy and not to compose, to parrot, and not to proclaim" and four pages later Hagia writes "I have been all my life a scribe. . . But in the end. . . I attempt, with clumsy but earnest need, to compose and not to copy. . ." Characters echo one anothers' thoughts without knowing, and their actions are mirrored or reversed to throw light on the sorts of people they are.

This is the sort of book that rewards careful reading, and punishes any lack of attention or attempt to skim.

John's narrative, at first, does not seem to fit with the other three. It is the most chronological, mostly confining itself to whatever events it is relating rather than musing on what came later (though John does do a little of this sort of foreshadowing); it is also the most surreal, and the first section when he is adrift on the sea of sand is downright hard to figure out, because we don't yet have enough knowledge of the world to know what is real and what is metaphor. But that discordant note is a very carefully measured choice on Valente's part.

There is a passage in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion that seems appropriate, so I will quote it here:

You have to make a cup of yourself, to recive that pouring out [necessary to becoming a saint]. You are a sword. You were always a sword. Like your mother and your daughter, too -- steel spines run in the women of your family. I realize now why I never saw saints, before. The world does not crash upon their wills like waves upon a rock, or part around them like the wake of a ship. Instead they are supple, and swim through the world as silently as fishes.

John is just such a sword. He is the catalyst, the thing that, when added to Hagia's delicately balanced world, changes the world rather than being changed itself. That's why when he finally is mirrored it's by Thomas, another Christian who stumbled into paradise, with vastly different results.

And Hagia is. . . absolutely the most perfect challenge her world casts against John. The book is incredibly sensual -- far more sensual than Palimpsest, which was all about sex. Each of the men of the Church is confronted with the world of the body he thought he left behind: Thomas by Imtithal's physical affection; Hiob by the fragrant, liquid rot that worked against him in his task of copying; and John by Hagia, with her eyes where her nipples should be, at the tips of abundant breasts, and totally comfortable in that body. The tension in the book comes from those challenges, even though we already know who ends up the victor.

To bring a long rambling squee to the point, every moment of this novel is perfectly constructed, every choice deliberately calculated to further the story being told. Because of this (not despite it) it is deeply moving. The best thing I read last year was Valente's two-volume The Orphan's Tales; so far this year, it is definitely The Habitation of the Blessed.

My Rating
Overall Satisfaction: ★★★★★
   Intellectual Satisfaction: ★★★★★
   Emotional Satisfaction: ★★★★★
Read this for: The prose, the structure
Don't read this for: The plot
Bechdel Test: Pass
Johnson Test: Fail
Books I was reminded of: The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien; Kushiel's Avatar, by Jacqueline Carey; The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold; William Shakespeare*
Will I read more by this author? Absolutely

*Yes, I really said Shakespeare. It's a fault in my reading, but I actually can't think of any other author that does that mirroring thing as well. I'm sure other such authors exist, but until I read them I have to admit I'm reminded of the Bard here. :)

author: catherynne m. valente, genre: metafiction, genre: fantasy, strong prose, strong structure, subgenre: secret history, pass: bechdel test, rating: 5 star books, series: a dirge for prester john

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