Sarum

Sarum - by Edward Rutherford

Sarum is a first-class epic novel that is over 1,000 pages in length.  It’s definitely quite the feat; especially since this was author Edward Rutherford’s first novel.  The subtitle of this work is “The Novel of England”.  So what this book is in addition to a story, is also a history book.  We’re talking 12,000 years of history here more or less.  That really is a bit much, though, and I have to honestly say that as much as I enjoyed this book, it really could have been a little better.  I really did appreciate it immensely, but I actually admired it more than I enjoyed it.   It’s quite a challenge for a writer to pack so much stuff into only one book.

If you’re a lover a fiction, it’s impossible to not compare this author to the great James Michener.  Michener was the master of novels such as this.  The structure is to begin the (usually very long) book as far back as prehistoric times and focus on a few key individuals.  As the chapters progress, we would advance in time by centuries (sometimes millennium) and each chapter would focus on the descendants of the original characters.  All of these stories would take place in a particular geographical locality, so all of the situations that the characters found themselves in were colored by the particular location and whatever history that it was going through at the time.  So not only were we reading a (usually) pretty good story, but we were also learning about the history of the location. Fortunately, Edward Rutherford is proving to be a worthy successor of James Michener.

This book is the author’s first.  ‘Sarum’ is an area in the southern part of England, very close to the English Channel.  I’m guessing the author chose this area for his first book as this is essentially where he was born and raised.  Although Rutherford does a great job with this type of novel, that’s not to say the structure is perfect, nor that it can’t be improved.  As I’ve stated, 12,000 years is a huge chunk to pack into one book.  Yes, 1,000 pages is a very hefty tome, but I still couldn’t help but feel that the author needed much more space to do justice to his story; or stories. Perhaps he should have fleshed this out into another book or two.     Analogy: If you’re familiar with the wonderful John Jakes historical novel series “The Kent Chronicles” that came out in the 1970s, you may recall that it took that author 8 full-length novels to tell the entire story.  Imagine if that author tried to pack all 8 novels into only 1. It would have greatly suffered.  That’s what reading Sarum felt like at times.  If you think about it, though, that’s actually a pretty hefty compliment.  To not like a book because it’s too long means the author badly needed to trim the pages and the reader was bored.  In this case though, when a 1,000-page novel isn’t “long enough”, well, that essentially means the reader isn’t quite satisfied and would love even more.

This book is broken out into about 17 chapters. Each chapter is basically a separate story with new people that move the narrative forward in terms of years.  The best of these chapters, ironically, are the longest.  There are one or two that are about 150 pages, and they excel because we’re really allowed to let the particular story within the chapter breathe.  We don’t feel “rushed” when reading said episodes.  The shorter chapters, though, have the complete opposite effect. In many cases, we feel the author included these chapters with no reason other than to quickly cover the history of the particular period.  It’s a bit much when a 40-page chapter covers about 75 years of history.  It leaves the reader with their head spinning.  In fact, many of these chapters really only serve the purposes of “setting up” the following chapter.  It seemed awfully hodge-podge. By the time we get to the penultimate chapter (the last before the epilogue), we find out it’s a very brief 20-page fictional story during the Normandy invasion of 1944.  Had the author fleshed this out more, it would have had more impact. At only 20 pages, though, it seemed like a haphazard way of quickly throwing in another event of the history of Sarum and trying to cram somewhat of a story in it.   It really didn’t work, yet it could have had it been allowed to stretch out over more pages.

Which leads me to my next (minor) gripe.  As the centuries progress and the stories start with fresh characters, all of the characters are descendants of OTHER characters from previous chapters.  We focus on mainly five families: the Forrests, the Masons, the Shockleys, the Wilsons, and the Godfreys.  Even though the author includes a helpful family tree in the beginning of the book, it’s simply too much to keep up with who is related to whom, and what all of the behaviors and motivations were of all the characters when we’re jarred so quickly from century to century.  It doesn’t help when the author gives the same first name to the descendants of the same family.  It felt like there were 5 or 6 characters in this novel with the name ‘Edward Shockley’. (There wasn’t, but it felt like there were.)   I learned that to really enjoy each section, it’s best to forget the intricacies of each family and what happened in the previous chapters, and just enjoy the current story of the current chapter.

He also is throwing an awful lot of history and habits of the land at us.  To be fair, this is really necessary in order to succeed at telling such a story as this, but there were many times when I wished for less history and more story (I felt this way about his sophomore novel ‘London’ as well).  In fact, in many places, the ‘story’ of the chapter would basically be two characters arguing over the politics and/or religion of the country at the time.  When this is a main part of the story, it loses a lot of impact if the minutia of the history is not really what you’re looking for in a novel.

Still, overall, the author mainly succeeds.  I particularly enjoyed his fictionalized account of the creation of Stonehenge (hint: it wasn’t giants and/or aliens who created it), and there’s another early story that is told very well about the Roman Empire’s occupancy of England sometime in the 5^th century.  Again, the longer the chapter the better.  Conversely, I wish there would have been more in the brief chapter about the Viking invasions during the 10^th century.  As I write this review, I can’t honestly remember anything that happened in that particular chapter other than it was way too short.

So in conclusion, I reiterate that I greatly admire an individual who can create something of this magnitude.  If you prefer ‘quick’ novels that are only 300-400 pages that you can read over a weekend, you may want to skip this one.  If, however, you’re more patient and really admire the craft of writing fiction and history intertwined, this book is a great choice.  He also makes you want to visit the particular place of his focus once you’re done reading the novel.  Michener would make you do this as well.  One of the many fringe benefits of a great novel such as this.

Line of Fire

 

Line of Fire – W.E.B. Griffin

OK. I confess.  I’m officially done with this author and this particular series of his books. This book is part 5 of a 10-volume set titled “The Corps”.  I enjoyed the first 4 o.k., but by the time I got to this one, I just got tired of this series in a very big way.  I was actually surprised how much I was put off by this one.  It’s just too much like all of his other books, and nothing ever consequential seems to happen in the story. That’s o.k. after a while, but it just hit the limit for me by this one.

I’m reminded of when I was in college and my roommate and I used to watch a popular soap opera (‘As the World Turns’).  We really got into the show, but I gave up after six months because it took far too long for anything to really happen.  I guess soap operas focused much more on the drama of the actors as opposed to pushing a relevant story forward.  It was typical for the show to drag on with a particular plot line far too long, and instead interjected as much romance, intrigue, sinister characters, and useless arguing among the people.  So even though I enjoyed the soap opera for a while, it got old quick.  This is exactly how I felt while reading ‘Line of Fire’.

The story takes place in the first year of the U.S. involvement during World War II.  There really isn’t even a plot here.  I guess if you had to define a plot, you could say that it revolves around a few GIs who are ‘stranded’ on a Pacific island that is controlled by the Japanese.  Ideally, the U.S. would love to get the soldiers off the island, but such a tactic is never as easy as it sounds.   So even though this is the closest thing resembling a plot, this really isn’t the author’s focus.  He cares more about the everyday interactions of the various members of the marine corps and their day-to-day lives during this tumultuous time in American history.  Ironically, you never really feel like you’re reading about people in a war.  Many of the interactions and situations we read about could just as likely happen within the confines of the military during peace time, so we never really feel the “thrill” of the battle.   Just like a soap opera.

There’s far too many characters in these books for any reasonable reader to keep track.  It doesn’t help when the author keeps introducing new ones in the new books and retains all of the older ones from the older books as well. It also doesn’t help when he introduces a character on, say page 20, and we don’t read about the character again until around page 220.  These are mostly marines, so there really isn’t much difference between the bulk of the characters.  They’re all “tough” guys, most with shady violent pasts (but we NEED people like that in the marines!), they all drool over any woman in a dress, and they all seem to consume a gallon of booze each day.  Plus, there are a few “father and sons” as well as at least one pair of brothers.  Then there’s the marine who’s dating the aunt of another marine, a few politicians (who drink even more) and gobs and gobs of women who have no problem spreading their legs for anything in a uniform.  

So when we read about all of these episodes that take place more often in bars and hotel rooms than we do on the battlefield, it’s easy to get tired of such episodes when they happen over and over again.  Yes, all of these escapades happen in the first four books as well, and it didn’t bother me quite that much since the episodes were still novel.  As I’ve stated though, after reading book #5, it just got too old too quick for my tastes.

You do learn a lot about the comings and goings of how the military works. There’s a lot a politics that goes on in the military, and we’re exposed to a lot of nomenclature.  All of this was actually quite entertaining, but as I keep saying, it simply gets old after a while.

So I’m officially done.  I have the feeling that the remainder of these books in the series won’t be much different, so I’ll look for something else to occupy my reading time. No great loss.

Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church

 

Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church:  by Michael J. Kruger

I would bet 95% or more of practicing Christians know every little about the history of the faith.  Sure, every authentic believer is familiar with the books of the Bible, but all of those were written no later than 60 or 70 years after Christ.   Most Christians could tell you nothing about figures such as Clement, Iraneus, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Augustine, or Tertullian.   Nor or they familiar with the history of the Gnostics, the Marcionists, Lucian of Samasota, Heracleon,or Celsus.

This is a shame because the history of Christianity is incredibly rich and rewarding.  It wasn’t always pretty in the early days, but author Michael J. Kruger does an outstanding job showing us the many facets, and leaves his reader with a solid understanding and knowledge of how this new faith survived in spite of its animosities and controversies.  We can see just how it prevailed and became what it is today.   Kruger carefully limits his narrative to the second century.  My feeling is that he probably didn’t want to go further in the timeline since that might violate what he deems as “Early” Christianity.  It’s funny when his narrative does slip into, say, the third century as you can almost hear him slapping his own hand for sailing in waters that he considers forbidden.   Let’s just say that I wish he would have kept going into the third or fourth centuries.  I would love it if he pens another volume that only focuses on the third century, then a book on the fourth, and so on.

One of the main highlights of this book is that the author never allows his narrative to go too deep into the weeds.  He is tackling everything here, not just one or two aspects of second century Christianity.  Every chapter is devoted to a different aspect.  We read about the leaders, the more visible heresies of the time, the relationship between the Jews and the Romans, the aspects of a typical worship service, and a lot on the writings that were penned in the first two centuries.  To be brutally honest, he focuses a bit too much the formulation of the Canon, which is one of the last chapters of the book. 

History tells us that the new testament of our Bible wasn’t actually compiled until around 382 A.D. (which if you think about it, really is a LONG time after the second century), yet Krueger spends an awful lot of time convincing his reader that even though Christianity didn’t actually have “The Bible” as early as the second century, the gospels and epistles were widely available (in the context of the second century, that is) and there really wasn’t that much controversy over what writings were “authentic” and what were not as widely accepted.  So he leads us to believe that when the Bible was finally compiled, it was really more of a formality if anything.

Of course this is only the author’s opinion, and he’s very vocal that there are plenty of scholars out there who disagree with him.  He comes across as quite modest and doesn’t try to steamroll his readers into believing that he’s the ultimate authority of events that happened 2000 years ago. He acknowledges that there are relatively few writings to guide us and to give insight into what was really going on at the time.

Overall this was a very easy book to read.  From the bibliography, the author obviously did a lot of homework, yet his style is such that any reader with a high school education can easily read, digest, and assimilate the material.  This was a very rich book that covered a lot of different aspects of the Christian faith without overwhelming the reader.  This book probably could have been about ten times longer than it was.  In fact, there were many times when I did want more, but as I’ve stated, it’s probably best that Kruger keeps his chapters, and the overall book, somewhat brief.  A great primer to early Christianity, and very easy for most to understand.