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.