Wroe, who studied medieval history at Oxford and is now the American editor of the Economist, uses a real-life 14th-century mystery as a ``springboard'' for an intimate, well-crafted profile of late medieval life in the town of Rodez in southwest France. In 1369 or 1370, a somewhat down-and-out man named Peyre Marques of Rodez calls in masons to investigate a blocked drain in his house. They soon get to the root of the problem: an impacted jug filled with gold coins, which is claimed by Marques's brother- in-law. To whom do the jug and the gold treasure really belong? Wroe doesn't solve the mystery, but she reveals much about life in Rodez. Actually, Rodez is comprised of two towns: the City, with its imposing cathedral and clerical domination, and the Burg, with its entrepreneurial hustle and bustle. One is allied with England, the other with France, and their officials compete fiercely in collecting taxes and fees on everything from meat to funerals. Basing her work on a trove of town documents in Latin and Occitan (a mixture of French and Catalan), Wroe uncovers aspects of daily life that seem astonishingly contemporary. Think the O.J. trial has dragged on? In Rodez, a trial over a case of suspected arson still was being litigated 50 years after the incident occurred. Think heartlessness towards the homeless is new? In 1375, the French town's council resolved that ``there should be a very strict watch day and night and . . . poor men who are already here should be thrown out.'' And for all the Middle Ages' reputation for religiosity, Wroe reveals the dark underside of the Church. She might have, however, provided more political and socioeconomic background on the world beyond Rodez and maps locating Rodez in France and depicting the town itself. These small flaws aside, this is an equally informative and entertaining work, one that will be a delight not only to medievalists, but to all who wish a respite from the pace, technology, and other perplexities of contemporary life.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8090-4595-8
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
Finely honed biographical intuition and a novelist’s sensibility make for a stylish, engrossing narrative.
A fresh, urbane history of the dramatic and melodramatic belle epoque.
When Barnes (The Only Story, 2018, etc.), winner of the Man Booker Prize and many other literary awards, first saw John Singer Sargent’s striking portrait of Dr. Samuel Pozzi—handsome, “virile, yet slender,” dressed in a sumptuous scarlet coat—he was intrigued by a figure he had not yet encountered in his readings about 19th-century France. The wall label revealed that Pozzi was a gynecologist; a magazine article called him “not only the father of French gynecology, but also a confirmed sex addict who routinely attempted to seduce his female patients.” The paradox of healer and exploiter posed an alluring mystery that Barnes was eager to investigate. Pozzi, he discovered, succeeded in his amorous affairs as much as in his acclaimed career. “I have never met a man as seductive as Pozzi,” the arrogant Count Robert de Montesquiou recalled; Pozzi was a “man of rare good sense and rare good taste,” “filled with knowledge and purpose” as well as “grace and charm.” The author’s portrait, as admiring as Sargent’s, depicts a “hospitable, generous” man, “rich by marriage, clubbable, inquisitive, cultured and well travelled,” and brilliant. The cosmopolitan Pozzi, his supercilious friend Montesquiou, and “gentle, whimsical” Edmond de Polignac are central characters in Barnes’ irreverent, gossipy, sparkling history of the belle epoque, “a time of vast wealth for the wealthy, of social power for the aristocracy, of uncontrolled and intricate snobbery, of headlong colonial ambition, of artistic patronage, and of duels whose scale of violence often reflected personal irascibility more than offended honor.” Dueling, writes the author, “was not just the highest form of sport, it also required the highest form of manliness.” Barnes peoples his history with a spirited cast of characters, including Sargent and Whistler, Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt (who adored Pozzi), Henry James and Proust, Pozzi’s diarist daughter, Catherine, and unhappy wife, Therese, and scores more.
Finely honed biographical intuition and a novelist’s sensibility make for a stylish, engrossing narrative.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-65877-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
It took 14 years to build and it cost 15 million dollars and the lives of 20 workmen. Like the Atlantic cable and the Suez Canal it was a gigantic embodiment in steel and concrete of the Age of Enterprise. McCullough's outsized biography of the bridge attempts to capture in one majestic sweep the full glory of the achievement but the story sags mightily in the middle. True, the Roeblings, father and son who served successively as Chief Engineer, are cast in a heroic mold. True, too, the vital statistics of the bridge are formidable. But despite diligent efforts by the author the details of the construction work — from sinking the caissons, to underground blasting, stringing of cables and pouring of cement — will crush the determination of all but the most indomitable reader. To make matters worse, McCullough dutifully struggles through the administrative history of the Brooklyn Bridge Company which financed and contracted for the project with the help of the Tweed Machine and various Brooklyn bosses who profited handsomely amid continuous allegations of kickbacks and mismanagement of funds. He succeeds in evoking the venality and crass materialism of the epoch but once again the details — like the 3,515 miles of steel wire in each cable — are tiresome and ultimately entangling. Workmanlike and thorough though it is, McCullough's history of the bridge has more bulk than stature.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1972
ISBN: 0743217373
Page Count: 652
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1972
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