C. J. Sansom: Lamentation (Book Review)
Oct. 25th, 2014 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThe latest entry in the Shardlake series, and one which could very well as a finale, were it not for the fact the ending makes me conclude Sansom will continue the series, which started with Dissolution.
Back then, the series hero, lawyer Matthew Shardlake, had been an eager Protestant and agent for Thomas Cromwell, and the time the novel was set were the months after Anne Boleyn's execution. The novel also was a pretty straightforward whodunit. By the time Lamentation comes along, we're in the last year of Henry VIII.'s life, Matthew Shardlake has been thoroughly disillusioned with both sides of the religious divide, the series gathered a vivid supporting part, and though there are two murders in Lamentation, their solution in both cases is just a minor subplot, while the main plot is more or less following the rules of the spy thriller. I.e. a McGuffin has been stolen, Shardlake must find out how, why, by whom, and who has it (and then either get it back of destroy it). Since the McGuffin in question is Catherine Parr's book Lamentation of a Sinner, the danger it poses is for the Queen to be seen as disloyal and heretic by her husband, Henry (who decides what's heretic and what's not in the new faith on a how-I-feel-at-the-moment basis), one of the not inconsiderable feats Sansom pulls off is to make this suspenseful even though readers with a cursory knowledge of the Tudor period know this is not how Catherine Parr will meet her maker, that on the contrary, she'll survive Henry.
Partly, he does it through the fact while Catherine is protected by history, Matthew Shardlake and his friends are not. The danger being involved with politics poses has been a constant theme through all the Shardlake novels, and he's had some close calls, but always was saved, as were his friends. This time, however, there really is a price paid for the fact Shardlake agrees to help the Queen, whom he's nursed a crush on for two novels now. Partly, it's because Sansom is a good writer, especially great in bringing home the paranoia rampant in Henry's England, where with the ever switching dominance between Traditionalists and Reformers you can find yourself denounced as a Papist or Heretic at any given moment. He also highlights aspects overlooked in much historical fiction set in the Tudor era - how Henry's French wars literally bankrupted the country, and the contrast between the increasing number of beggars in London and the growing palace of Whitehall is glaring. And he makes the catastrophes more than set pieces; living through the sinking of the Mary Rose in the last novel left Shardlake with an ongoing trauma. The burning of Anne Askew, which opens the novel, is reflected upon and remembered throughout.
But if you don't care about the characters, this doesn't matter, and Sansom has become good in making this reader care. (I say "has become" because in Dissolution, he wasn't quite there yet with part of them, and to me the first novel where he really hit his stride was Sovereign.) They also aren't subjected to unrelenting misery. The bullied servant girl Josephine is now happy and doing well, so are Jack Barak and Tamasin, and MYSTERY CHARACTER WHOSE EXISTENCE WOULD BE A SPOILER FOR THE NOVEL HEARTSTONE, whose further fate I was very curious about after that novel, is off stage due to being on the continent but still present in Shardlake's life and corresponding with him regularly. Shardlake's friend Guy (ex monk, doctor and apothocary), whom I missed in the last novel, is very present again in this book. Long time antagonists/villains from the entire series start to have fate catch up with them: Knealnap the sellout, Richard Rich (Shardlake's eternal arch nemesis), but most of all: the King himself.
Sansom kept Henry, as far as personal appearances go, off stage for most of the books, with the memorable exception of Sovereign where Matthew Shardlake meets him in person for the first time (and an awful experience it is, too). But every one of Shardlake's temporary patrons (Cromwell, Crammer, Catherine Parr) and foes (the Duke of Norfolk, Richard Rich) depends on Henry for power and survival. And Henry, of course, is the origin of all that paranoia, of the poverty. (And he's the one who also enabled reforms when it served his aims, the novels don't forget that, either.) So it's inevitable that in this novel, where things come full circle, Henry is an important factor. Still more often than not offstage. But much talked about. He's also an example of what I'd call the deep humanity of the Shardlake novels. The first time Matthew Shardlake spots him in this novel, a grotesque mass of fat and ulcers barely able to move without help, he's not only aware of Henry's physical decay but also of the fact the man must be in constant physical pain. Now Shardlake fears and at times hates the King (for both general and personal reasons), and the narrative agrees with him on Henry's culpability and monstrosity. But he also is able to see, and acknowledge, what that life in constant physical torment must mean for Henry (for any man, but especially one who once prided himself on his athleticism), and the courage those few public appearances must take where he's walking. Just as he sees what cancer does to a fictional minor foe of his, or how a very dislikable client has her own tragedy instead of being an inexplicable harridan. What I'm getting at: even the boo-hiss villains aren't caricatures. They're responsible for their crimes, and the narrative doesn't excuse them, but it also acknowledges their humanity.
(Well, other than Thomas Seymour, who so far is simply a boo-hiss idiot with good looks and cruel "jests", but hey, Shardlake is aware that the Queen loves him, and both he and his author think she could do so much better.)
There are a great many new characters introduced in this novel, both fictional and historical: most importantly a fellow lawyer whom Shardlake takes a liking to, Philip Coswelyn, another up and coming lawyer named William Cecil (the fact young Cecil plays a fairly prominent part in this book is one of the reasons why I don't think Sansom will end the series here), Mary Tudor (Shardlake met Elizabeth already in Heartstone and briefly meets her here again at her stepmother's) and her fool Jane, Shardlake's new pupil Nicholas (who gets a crash course in the art of detecting and surviving during the novel), William Paget, currently Henry's go to minister. But I never had the impression Sansom is overdoing it, I felt it was possible to keep a good overview.
Nitpicks: most of the novels have Shardlake simultanously solving a political case dumped on him by a powerful person and one that's due to a client he chooses to represent. Lamentation varies this in that he takes on the political case (which is the main one) due to his feelings for the Queen and tries to get rid of the client who ends up firing him first and then proceeding his life more miserable, but whose backstory mystery he eventually solves. The problem here is that her backstory mystery is glaringly obvious and consequently those passages drag a bit, though they do serve to introduce and then let Shardlake befriend the very likeable Philip Coswelyn.
Otoh: there is a great twist/ZOMG moment when Shardlake finds out who actually has the manuscript. Which I wouldn't want to spoil. It's a revelation in two steps - the first one makes you think, oh, that's lame, and then it turns out it isn't really SPOILER but SPOILER, which results in a fantastic scene. So what I'd call the spy novel plot does pay off.
Trivia: Sansom makes great use of some actually existing portraits from the era. Must reexamine the "Henry VIII. and his family" one with this in mind.
In conclusion: a good novel, but not one for readers unfamiliar with the (fictional) characters. As I said, it brings a lot of things full circle, and you need to have followed Shardlake & Co. until then.
Back then, the series hero, lawyer Matthew Shardlake, had been an eager Protestant and agent for Thomas Cromwell, and the time the novel was set were the months after Anne Boleyn's execution. The novel also was a pretty straightforward whodunit. By the time Lamentation comes along, we're in the last year of Henry VIII.'s life, Matthew Shardlake has been thoroughly disillusioned with both sides of the religious divide, the series gathered a vivid supporting part, and though there are two murders in Lamentation, their solution in both cases is just a minor subplot, while the main plot is more or less following the rules of the spy thriller. I.e. a McGuffin has been stolen, Shardlake must find out how, why, by whom, and who has it (and then either get it back of destroy it). Since the McGuffin in question is Catherine Parr's book Lamentation of a Sinner, the danger it poses is for the Queen to be seen as disloyal and heretic by her husband, Henry (who decides what's heretic and what's not in the new faith on a how-I-feel-at-the-moment basis), one of the not inconsiderable feats Sansom pulls off is to make this suspenseful even though readers with a cursory knowledge of the Tudor period know this is not how Catherine Parr will meet her maker, that on the contrary, she'll survive Henry.
Partly, he does it through the fact while Catherine is protected by history, Matthew Shardlake and his friends are not. The danger being involved with politics poses has been a constant theme through all the Shardlake novels, and he's had some close calls, but always was saved, as were his friends. This time, however, there really is a price paid for the fact Shardlake agrees to help the Queen, whom he's nursed a crush on for two novels now. Partly, it's because Sansom is a good writer, especially great in bringing home the paranoia rampant in Henry's England, where with the ever switching dominance between Traditionalists and Reformers you can find yourself denounced as a Papist or Heretic at any given moment. He also highlights aspects overlooked in much historical fiction set in the Tudor era - how Henry's French wars literally bankrupted the country, and the contrast between the increasing number of beggars in London and the growing palace of Whitehall is glaring. And he makes the catastrophes more than set pieces; living through the sinking of the Mary Rose in the last novel left Shardlake with an ongoing trauma. The burning of Anne Askew, which opens the novel, is reflected upon and remembered throughout.
But if you don't care about the characters, this doesn't matter, and Sansom has become good in making this reader care. (I say "has become" because in Dissolution, he wasn't quite there yet with part of them, and to me the first novel where he really hit his stride was Sovereign.) They also aren't subjected to unrelenting misery. The bullied servant girl Josephine is now happy and doing well, so are Jack Barak and Tamasin, and MYSTERY CHARACTER WHOSE EXISTENCE WOULD BE A SPOILER FOR THE NOVEL HEARTSTONE, whose further fate I was very curious about after that novel, is off stage due to being on the continent but still present in Shardlake's life and corresponding with him regularly. Shardlake's friend Guy (ex monk, doctor and apothocary), whom I missed in the last novel, is very present again in this book. Long time antagonists/villains from the entire series start to have fate catch up with them: Knealnap the sellout, Richard Rich (Shardlake's eternal arch nemesis), but most of all: the King himself.
Sansom kept Henry, as far as personal appearances go, off stage for most of the books, with the memorable exception of Sovereign where Matthew Shardlake meets him in person for the first time (and an awful experience it is, too). But every one of Shardlake's temporary patrons (Cromwell, Crammer, Catherine Parr) and foes (the Duke of Norfolk, Richard Rich) depends on Henry for power and survival. And Henry, of course, is the origin of all that paranoia, of the poverty. (And he's the one who also enabled reforms when it served his aims, the novels don't forget that, either.) So it's inevitable that in this novel, where things come full circle, Henry is an important factor. Still more often than not offstage. But much talked about. He's also an example of what I'd call the deep humanity of the Shardlake novels. The first time Matthew Shardlake spots him in this novel, a grotesque mass of fat and ulcers barely able to move without help, he's not only aware of Henry's physical decay but also of the fact the man must be in constant physical pain. Now Shardlake fears and at times hates the King (for both general and personal reasons), and the narrative agrees with him on Henry's culpability and monstrosity. But he also is able to see, and acknowledge, what that life in constant physical torment must mean for Henry (for any man, but especially one who once prided himself on his athleticism), and the courage those few public appearances must take where he's walking. Just as he sees what cancer does to a fictional minor foe of his, or how a very dislikable client has her own tragedy instead of being an inexplicable harridan. What I'm getting at: even the boo-hiss villains aren't caricatures. They're responsible for their crimes, and the narrative doesn't excuse them, but it also acknowledges their humanity.
(Well, other than Thomas Seymour, who so far is simply a boo-hiss idiot with good looks and cruel "jests", but hey, Shardlake is aware that the Queen loves him, and both he and his author think she could do so much better.)
There are a great many new characters introduced in this novel, both fictional and historical: most importantly a fellow lawyer whom Shardlake takes a liking to, Philip Coswelyn, another up and coming lawyer named William Cecil (the fact young Cecil plays a fairly prominent part in this book is one of the reasons why I don't think Sansom will end the series here), Mary Tudor (Shardlake met Elizabeth already in Heartstone and briefly meets her here again at her stepmother's) and her fool Jane, Shardlake's new pupil Nicholas (who gets a crash course in the art of detecting and surviving during the novel), William Paget, currently Henry's go to minister. But I never had the impression Sansom is overdoing it, I felt it was possible to keep a good overview.
Nitpicks: most of the novels have Shardlake simultanously solving a political case dumped on him by a powerful person and one that's due to a client he chooses to represent. Lamentation varies this in that he takes on the political case (which is the main one) due to his feelings for the Queen and tries to get rid of the client who ends up firing him first and then proceeding his life more miserable, but whose backstory mystery he eventually solves. The problem here is that her backstory mystery is glaringly obvious and consequently those passages drag a bit, though they do serve to introduce and then let Shardlake befriend the very likeable Philip Coswelyn.
Otoh: there is a great twist/ZOMG moment when Shardlake finds out who actually has the manuscript. Which I wouldn't want to spoil. It's a revelation in two steps - the first one makes you think, oh, that's lame, and then it turns out it isn't really SPOILER but SPOILER, which results in a fantastic scene. So what I'd call the spy novel plot does pay off.
Trivia: Sansom makes great use of some actually existing portraits from the era. Must reexamine the "Henry VIII. and his family" one with this in mind.
In conclusion: a good novel, but not one for readers unfamiliar with the (fictional) characters. As I said, it brings a lot of things full circle, and you need to have followed Shardlake & Co. until then.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-25 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-25 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 09:06 pm (UTC)Two historical persons who intrigued me were Cecil and Jane Fool. There obviously will be writings on him, but do you know if there is any biographical material on her?
no subject
Date: 2014-12-10 11:27 am (UTC)(As for Cecil, I think the most famous bio is the two parter "Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth" and "Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth", but, as mentioned, there a A LOT. )
no subject
Date: 2014-12-12 02:06 pm (UTC)