Historical Novels Review - November 2008

SEAL WOMAN
Solveig Eggers, Ghost Road Press, $19.95, pb, 283pp, 0-9796255-3-x

A Historical Novels Review Editor's Choice

Berlin, 1947. The Icelandic Agricultural Association advertises for “strong women who can cook and do farm work,” and artist Charlotte, who has watched her life and her city crumble around her, agrees to work at a farm called Dark Castle.

SEAL WOMAN is, at its core, about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and our lives. What is real, and what is myth? After almost incomprehensible pain and loss, how does one go on?

Impressionistic and mythic in the Iceland-based sections, and all too real and present in the Berlin-based sections, the settings – both time and place – are beautifully rendered. The characters, particularly Charlotte, are very real, and every bit as frustrating and messy as real people. I caught myself more than once thinking I was reading the biography of a mid-20th century war survivor.

But as fascinating as the story and the characters are, the writing itself is gorgeous – many passages so lovely, I wanted to underline them and commit them to memory so I’d never forget their lyric beauty. Overall, a challenging book on many levels – and very rewarding. A fantastic story, beautifully written. Highly recommended.

MUSEUM OF HUMAN BEINGS
Colin Sargent, McBooks Press, 2008, $23.95/C$26.95, pb, 321 pp, 9781590131671

We first meet Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau in 1805 as he bounces along on his mother Sacagawea’s back, seeing the world with her eyes as they lead the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific. He is a child, and a man, caught in the middle – half-French, half-Shoshone, struggling to find his place in the world and watching America grow up around him, struggling to find its identity.

This sprawling, quasi-bildungsroman, loosely based on J.B. Charbonneau’s life, is a story of dichotomies – “Injun” vs. white, the wilderness vs. civilization, the new world vs. the old, past vs. present, knowledge vs. knowing. Baptiste struggles throughout the book to find his place in these dichotomies, never bridging, always seeking to choose sides. It is a story of the labels we put on each other, and those we take on to ourselves.

The book is beautifully written, and has a good sense of time and place, but I felt held at a distance. Though Baptiste’s life was full of adventure and tragedy, I found it hard to really care about him, and watched his struggles as though he were the subject of an anthropological study. Perhaps, given the themes and subjects of the story, this was intentional – he seemed like another exhibit in Clark’s Museum of Human Beings, and not a flesh-and-blood person to struggle with and care for.

MUSEUM OF HUMAN BEINGS is an ambitious, thoughtful book, but ultimately fell short for me.

THE HIDDEN MAN
Anthony Flacco, Ballantine Books, $14.00, pb, 275pp, 978-0-8129-7758-5

Nine years after San Francisco’s great earthquake and fires, the city is just beginning to be reborn and is full of possibility. Against this backdrop, and the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exhibition, Detective Randall Blackburn and his adoptive children Shane and Vignette Nightingale struggle to understand their places in the world – all while protecting the famous mesmerist James “J.D.” Duncan from a threat only he can see.

Though this book is a sequel to The Last Nightingale, reading the first book is not a prerequisite (I did not). The setting and concept had a great deal of potential; sadly, I do not think the execution capitalizes on either. The setting – both time and place – felt like props rather than integral parts of the story; I never felt a real sense of place or time, though the details were strewn throughout. The same can be said for the characters: I wanted very much to care about them and their plight (particularly Shane), but I just couldn’t connect with them – they felt very much like props themselves.

The potentially interesting characters were done a real disservice with a flimsy plot and sluggish pacing. The book is serviceably written, but could have used a much stronger hand in editing, for continuity, content (so many long expository passages!), and line editing.

Overall the book is enjoyable enough, though I would recommend it only for historical fiction fans who want a quick read in between works with more depth.