The work in question, the one following Tolstoy, was Jennifer Lee Carrell’s Interred With Their Bones. I don’t think I would have picked this one up of my own accord but I got it as a birthday present, along with something by Howard Gardner, from Karen back in April. It’s a sort of Da Vinci Code for fans of the Bard and certainly entertaining, to the extent that I read it in a couple of days. In fact, ‘flimsy’ might be the wrong word to use. Although the adjective reasonably applies to the thin characterisation and the workings of the plot in the present day of the novel, the Shakespeare back-story is incredibly rich and detailed, sometimes too much so, I think. Although Ms Carrell (or her editors) are certainly imitating Dan Brown, particularly in terms of plot twists, I don’t see this one ever making the best-seller lists as what Brown did so brilliantly and/or crassly and/or both was to provide a back story with enough detail to sound complicated but which was, in fact, very simple (and silly) in terms of its broad outline.
But although I enjoyed Interred With Their Bones on the level of simple entertainment, there were two things about it I found irritating. The first was Ms Carrell’s perverse desire to use the nonsense of the non-existent controversy of the authorship question. She clearly knows her subject well enough to know this is nonsense so I suppose it’s done for the general reader who might genuinely believe that some kind of controversy does exist. The fact that the major villain is a so-called Stratfordian (as if there were real sides in this) doubles the level of irritation. The second concerns major moments in the text that are so less-than-credible as to be dangerously funny, yet which have been allowed to stand. I am sure the author, her agent and her editors were very much aware of these and it’s my guess they were ignored, in fact, possibly calculatedly included, based on what they took to be the ignorance of the average reader they hoped would be snapping up their best-seller. I’ll mention two. One is when the heroine comes across what is obviously the word ‘Cardenio’ for the first time and doesn’t immediately recognise it as the title of a lost play by Shakespeare. I mean, come on, she’s supposed to be not merely an expert but a brilliant expert on her subject, yet she doesn’t know something as obvious as this? Similarly the fact she has remained ignorant that Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam is the motto of the Jesuits despite possessing all sorts of weird arcane knowledge of the good brothers just doesn’t cut it in the real world.
I know it sounds as if I’m being unduly fussy here, but I suspect a potentially good novel was ruined by the desire of the publishers to find a blockbuster follow-up to the Code. Anyway, probably they’ve made a lot of money already by flogging the film rights, so well done them, even though I don’t think it’ll make it to the big screen in the end.
2 comments:
Wow, my gusto to read it kept increasing, despite the mistakes, until you got to the motto of the Jesuits part. Then I suddenly lost interest.
I wouldn't let my comments put you off, O Wiccan Wone. Once you accept it's all very silly, around about page 2, there's a lot to enjoy in terms of the Shakespeariana on offer. Having said that, I'm not recommending it as any kind of genuinely worthwhile novel. Now the question is, have you tasted the joys of Anna Karenin yet? A MUST read of major proportions, though you might consider putting it off till your fifties, if you read it as badly as I did in my teens. But I suspect you are up to the task!
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