A thorough introduction to an intriguing historical figure.
A novel focuses on St. Francis of Assisi’s transformation from a dissolute youngster into a man of God.
Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone is born in 1182 in Assisi and, from an early age, demonstrates “amiable awareness of others and a love of all things beautiful.” Bored by his studies, he pines for a life more adventurous than his father’s—Pietro is a cloth merchant—and dreams of becoming a troubadour or knight. But he remains a constant source of consternation to his parents—irresponsible and ill-disciplined, he seems destined to waste his life. He grows up during tumultuous times and wants to participate in the military campaigns to protect Assisi, but one night, while suffering from a fever, a disembodied voice tells him it is better to serve God. Later, the voice of God issues him a more specific command: “Francis, go and build up My house, which, as you can see, is falling into ruin.” At first, Francis interprets this literally and devotes himself to the restoration of a country church, but later, he sees a greater meaning in his mission. He articulates a “Rule of Life” that demands an existence of absolute poverty and service to the most disadvantaged. O’Reilly’s book is part of the Mentoris Project, “a series of novels and biographies about the lives of great men and women who have changed history.” The author lucidly reconstructs St. Francis’ extraordinary life as a “profligate-turned-penitent” and the order of friars that formed around him. Her prose is plain, unadorned by literary embellishments, and the plot can be lumbering. One can’t help but wonder why O’Reilly chose to present St. Francis’ life in a novel since she seems to have so little interest in the literary form. But the author’s research is impressive, and she not only furnishes a rigorously synoptic account of the man’s remarkable spiritual journey, but also meticulously covers the turbulent times he endured.
A thorough introduction to an intriguing historical figure.Pub Date: July 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-947431-37-9
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Barbera Foundation
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Even the Loch Ness monster makes an appearance in this kaleidoscopic epic with deep roots in both history and myth.
The third book in a series set in sixth-century Celtic Britain puts powerful women in the foreground of an ensemble including the historical characters of Merlin and Arthur.
“After the Battle of the Caledonian Wood, as our celebration had cooled to embers, I’d listened with a tortured sort of rapture as Angharad described what had become of her as a child all those winters ago, in the Battle of Arderydd.” It is 580 C.E.; Languoreth, Queen of Strathclyde, twin sister of Lailoken (later known as Myrddin, or Merlin), has just been reunited with the mystically gifted daughter she’s believed dead for years. Once the truth of the events surrounding Angharad’s disappearance emerges, long-awaited justice will be served, powered in part by the 17-year-old Wisdom Keeper’s supernatural abilities. Those who have read The Lost Queen (2018) and The Forgotten Kingdom (2020) will be right at home as Pike continues her chronicle of the swirling intrigue and bloody confrontations among the Britons, Picts, Scots, Angles, Christians, and other kingdoms and ethnicities of the Arthurian period. Languoreth will again be separated from her daughter as the latter journeys into the “Shadowed Lands” to apprentice herself to the weatherworking druid Briochan, and though she’d love to visit her pregnant daughter, Gladys, in a neighboring kingdom, her husband insists she stay at home to monitor the machinations of a malign Christian monk named Mungo. To top it off, she has renounced the solace of her affair with the warrior Maelgwn Pendragon: “I am a woman of the Old Way, married to a Christian. Adultery is not tolerated. Should we be discovered, our people would lose an irreplicable advocate. You know as well as I, there is nothing that would delight Mungo more.” Meanwhile, Artúr mac Aedan (Arthur) must answer a call from his father to assume his destiny among the Scots. An author’s note provides historical context, includes details for readers who plan to visit the U.K. locations, and promises that there is more to come.
Even the Loch Ness monster makes an appearance in this kaleidoscopic epic with deep roots in both history and myth.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781501191480
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
Like the house at its center, a book that is multitudinous and magical.
The story of a house, the humans who inhabit it, the ghosts who haunt it, and the New England forest encompassing them all.
In the opening chapter of the fourth novel by Mason—a Pulitzer Prize finalist for A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (2020)—a pair of rebellious young lovers flee their Puritan Massachusetts village to seek refuge in the “north woods”: “They were Nature’s wards now, he told her, they had crossed into a Realm.” Readers, too, will find themselves in an entrancing fictional realm where the human, natural, and supernatural mingle, all captured in the author’s effortlessly virtuosic prose. Across the centuries, the cabin built by those lovers will transform and house a host of characters, among them Charles Osgood, a British colonist who establishes an apple orchard there; Osgood’s twin daughters, Alice and Mary, whose mutual spinsterhood conceals a bitter jealousy; and Karl Farnsworth, an avid hunter who sees the land as a “sportsman’s paradise” in which to open a private lodge (he hopes to host Teddy Roosevelt despite the “vile” sounds his distraught wife hears in the old structure). Many chapters read like found historical documents, including one side of the correspondence between painter William Henry Teale and his friend Erasmus Nash, a poet, whose visit to the north woods house will have an unexpected impact on both their lives—and those of future inhabitants. Elsewhere we find “Case Notes on Robert S.,” in which a psychiatrist pays a house call to a resident suffering from possible schizophrenia and given to auditory hallucinations while wandering the forest; and “Murder Most Cold,” a dispatch by TRUE CRIME! columnist Jack Dunne, summoned from New York to look into a gory death on the property. Throughout, this loose and limber novel explores themes of illicit desire, madness, the occult, the palimpsest of human history, and the inexorable workings of the natural world (a passage recounting the fateful mating of an elm bark beetle is unforgettable), all handled with a touch that is light and sure.
Like the house at its center, a book that is multitudinous and magical.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593597033
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
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