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selenakOne author whose work I like a lot is Parke Godwin. I first came across him via reading Firelord, in my Arthurian novels phase; this particular novel was the first one to make Arthur, not Lancelot, Guenevre or Morgaine or someone else from the gigantic cast myths provide into the central character, and to make him into an immensely compelling, fascinating human being instead of either a prop of virtue or ineffectuality. It also was great with capturing the transition period between Roman Britain and medieval times - what we call "Völkerwanderung" in German. And it offered great versions of Guenevre (I still suspect Godwin must have watched The Lion in Winter, because his Guenevre is very much Katherine Hepburn's Eleanor of Aquitaine to Arthur's Henry), the Orkney brothers, and Tristan, of all the people. His sequel, Beloved Exile, which is about Guenevre after Arthur's death, is a rare example of a good sequel which works as a book in its own right (you can read it without having read Firelord first) and tries something else instead of just repeating the first book - in this case, the core of it is Guenevre ending up in Saxon captivity and getting to know the Saxons from another perspective. Then he also wrote a sort-of-prequel, The Last Rainbow, which while set in the same fictional world - a young Ambrosius shows up, whom Arthur will later meet as an old man - is again a standalone as well, with the central character Patricius none other than the later St. Patrick, who in the course of the story loses and regains his faith; this time, the Britain described is still more Roman than not, and everyone comes vividly to life.
Another losely connected couple of novels by Parke Godwin are Sherwood, Robin and the King and Lord of Sunset, set around and after the Norman Conquest (and Godwin has the inspired idea of putting the Robin Hood legend there instead of the Richard-and-John period a century later). Of these, I love Sherwood best; Godwin parallels his version of Robin Hood - a young Saxon thane - with his version of the Sheriff, a young Norman Knight, and Ralf, the Norman, is described with as much narrative sympathy and detail as Robin. Their clash is the clash of two very different societies as well, which allows for both of them to come across as sympathetic, and Godwin pulls off the rare feat of getting across different mentalities, not just to each other but to the modern reader. Again, the supporting cast, whether it's Marian or Robin's cousin Judith or indeed his mother, Maud, are all vividly drawn, and none of them damsels in distress. (We even get a great cat into the bargain.) The sequel, Robin and the King, is still highly readable but suffers from the parallel structure being gone; on the other hand, the various offspring of William the Conqueror and William himself are fascinating in their own right, and they take a lot of place in this novel.
Which brings me to Lord of Sunset. I was prepared to love it as well as I had the others. But reading it this week in various trains, I found myself dissatisfied, of all things. It's not that Godwin has lost the gift of making characters come alive - this novel deals with Harold, the last Saxon king, and his love Edith Swan's Neck - and the characterisation of the Saxons as law-oriented versus the Normans as believers in the feudal system - i.e. the word of the monarch IS law - isn't that different from Sherwood. Also, I am aware of a paradox: on the one hand, my problem with Harold is that he's too good to be true; on the other hand, Godwin lets him do something completely wrong early on in the novel, and that also is a problem for me. Probably because of the presentation. You see, this one evil Harold commits is that he gets a Welsh servant pregnant, doesn't realize the girl is actually in love with him, reacts callously when she tells him about the pregnancy, then angsts ever after about being doomed to hell after she kills herself because of that. Basically, the Welsh girl just exists so Harold has something to feel genuinly guilty about, and you get the sense we're expected to regard him as more sympathetic because of it. When he tells the story to Edith, whom he falls in love with soon after, Edith reacts like the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca. Before he told her, she fretted endlessly about him still being in love with the dead girl; once she finds out he didn't love her at all but feels massively guilty for driving her to her death, she's happy and relieved and just very, very sorry for him. Considering my feelings about this in Rebecca, it's not surprising I didn't like it any more here, and it put me off Harold and Edith both for a start. As the novel continued, I found other reasons to be irritated. In the Arthurian novels, both Celts and Saxons are portrayed as societies with their flaws and virtues. In the Robin Hood novels, when it's Normans versus Saxons, the scale is a bit more in the Saxon's favour - more advanced law system, see above - but you also see some advantages of the Normans, plus of course we have several sympathetic Norman charaters. So again, balance. In Lord of Sunset, on the other hand, the Saxons, individual villains excepted, are non-stop noble and well on their way to being modern free thinkers, and when a Saxon is a died-in-the wool feudal lord, i.e. King Edward, this is because "he's half Norman in blood and all in spirit". Harold's father Godwine doesn't want power for his family because he wants power, but because he's a patriot and connected to England in a way Norman-infected Edward is not; ditto Harold. It's not a power struggle between an autocratic noble and the king, oh no, it's Saxon patriotism and regard for the people versus quasi Norman tyranny, and so forth. This had the result that the only Saxons I sympathized with and found interesting in the novel were the ones meant to be unsympathetic and seduced by Norman feudal ways, i.e. Edward and Harold's sister Eadgytha; and when in the last third of the novel William showed up, I breathed a sigh of relief. William being the ruthless but shrewed autocrat I remembered from the Robin Hood novels, maybe not ahead of his time, but a credible portrait because of that. Fie on noble Saxons and their patriotism.
Another losely connected couple of novels by Parke Godwin are Sherwood, Robin and the King and Lord of Sunset, set around and after the Norman Conquest (and Godwin has the inspired idea of putting the Robin Hood legend there instead of the Richard-and-John period a century later). Of these, I love Sherwood best; Godwin parallels his version of Robin Hood - a young Saxon thane - with his version of the Sheriff, a young Norman Knight, and Ralf, the Norman, is described with as much narrative sympathy and detail as Robin. Their clash is the clash of two very different societies as well, which allows for both of them to come across as sympathetic, and Godwin pulls off the rare feat of getting across different mentalities, not just to each other but to the modern reader. Again, the supporting cast, whether it's Marian or Robin's cousin Judith or indeed his mother, Maud, are all vividly drawn, and none of them damsels in distress. (We even get a great cat into the bargain.) The sequel, Robin and the King, is still highly readable but suffers from the parallel structure being gone; on the other hand, the various offspring of William the Conqueror and William himself are fascinating in their own right, and they take a lot of place in this novel.
Which brings me to Lord of Sunset. I was prepared to love it as well as I had the others. But reading it this week in various trains, I found myself dissatisfied, of all things. It's not that Godwin has lost the gift of making characters come alive - this novel deals with Harold, the last Saxon king, and his love Edith Swan's Neck - and the characterisation of the Saxons as law-oriented versus the Normans as believers in the feudal system - i.e. the word of the monarch IS law - isn't that different from Sherwood. Also, I am aware of a paradox: on the one hand, my problem with Harold is that he's too good to be true; on the other hand, Godwin lets him do something completely wrong early on in the novel, and that also is a problem for me. Probably because of the presentation. You see, this one evil Harold commits is that he gets a Welsh servant pregnant, doesn't realize the girl is actually in love with him, reacts callously when she tells him about the pregnancy, then angsts ever after about being doomed to hell after she kills herself because of that. Basically, the Welsh girl just exists so Harold has something to feel genuinly guilty about, and you get the sense we're expected to regard him as more sympathetic because of it. When he tells the story to Edith, whom he falls in love with soon after, Edith reacts like the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca. Before he told her, she fretted endlessly about him still being in love with the dead girl; once she finds out he didn't love her at all but feels massively guilty for driving her to her death, she's happy and relieved and just very, very sorry for him. Considering my feelings about this in Rebecca, it's not surprising I didn't like it any more here, and it put me off Harold and Edith both for a start. As the novel continued, I found other reasons to be irritated. In the Arthurian novels, both Celts and Saxons are portrayed as societies with their flaws and virtues. In the Robin Hood novels, when it's Normans versus Saxons, the scale is a bit more in the Saxon's favour - more advanced law system, see above - but you also see some advantages of the Normans, plus of course we have several sympathetic Norman charaters. So again, balance. In Lord of Sunset, on the other hand, the Saxons, individual villains excepted, are non-stop noble and well on their way to being modern free thinkers, and when a Saxon is a died-in-the wool feudal lord, i.e. King Edward, this is because "he's half Norman in blood and all in spirit". Harold's father Godwine doesn't want power for his family because he wants power, but because he's a patriot and connected to England in a way Norman-infected Edward is not; ditto Harold. It's not a power struggle between an autocratic noble and the king, oh no, it's Saxon patriotism and regard for the people versus quasi Norman tyranny, and so forth. This had the result that the only Saxons I sympathized with and found interesting in the novel were the ones meant to be unsympathetic and seduced by Norman feudal ways, i.e. Edward and Harold's sister Eadgytha; and when in the last third of the novel William showed up, I breathed a sigh of relief. William being the ruthless but shrewed autocrat I remembered from the Robin Hood novels, maybe not ahead of his time, but a credible portrait because of that. Fie on noble Saxons and their patriotism.
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Date: 2008-09-05 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 12:34 pm (UTC)I would be very interested to read more of your thoughts on Rebecca, actually--I remember being drawn to Rebecca herself when I read it, much more than to Max or the nameless narrator. I loved it for the vivid descriptions of the gardens and food and Manderley, but I haven't revisited it in some time.
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Date: 2008-09-05 02:30 pm (UTC)Rebecca: here's my meta (http://selenak.livejournal.com/169356.html), with more discussion in the comments.
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Date: 2008-09-05 12:47 pm (UTC)Speaking of (pseudo-)historical novels, I, Claudius has prompted me to construct the following thesis: Robert Graves is to Historical Fiction as J.R.R. Tolkien is to Fantasy, in that he has overwhelmingly influenced the way stories are structured and especially the type of characters that turn up (I swear, versions of Livia, Tiberius, Augustus, Livilla (ugh) and Caligula as they are drawn here turn up in every other historical novel I've read). Valid or not?
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Date: 2008-09-05 02:34 pm (UTC)I really can recommend it wholeheartedly. I think about two years ago there was a new German edition which packed it together with Beloved Exile as "Camelot".
Robert Graves: methinks you're onto something. This makes up for being slighted by Pat Barker because she ships Owen/Sassoon.*g* Re: Livilla -
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Date: 2008-09-05 01:44 pm (UTC)Off to add Firelord to my to reread right away pile.
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Date: 2008-09-05 02:46 pm (UTC)Gush away, I empathize!
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Date: 2008-09-06 02:13 am (UTC)The action scenes were also superb.
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Date: 2008-09-05 04:16 pm (UTC)Have you tried Guy Gavriel Kay? Struck me as an author with similar interests and outlooks, if a very different writing style, than Godwin.
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Date: 2008-09-05 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 05:55 pm (UTC)It's too bad that he simplifies characters like that in Lord of Sunset, because one of the things that most suprised me in Sherwood, like you pointed out, was he portrayed the Sheriff. I wasn't expecting that. And the non-love triangle sounds a little silly.
(Forgive me for being spammy - I try not to comment too often when I'm new to a person's journal, but I had to when I saw the subject. *g* )
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Date: 2008-09-05 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 08:48 pm (UTC)BTW - I noticed you changed your layout. Who's the lady that replaced Sloane?
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Date: 2008-09-05 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 08:51 pm (UTC)And now I have a longing to read again Henry Treece's children's novel about Hereward the Wake, Man with a Sword (which is decidedly anti-Godwine). Because I don't think I've read it in thirty years, but I still remember Hereward's wife teaching the Vikings to play a game where they run round a pub shouting "You're it! You're the cat! Off with your tail!"
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Date: 2008-09-06 12:02 pm (UTC)