Karin Fossum, When the Devil Holds the Candle
When the Devil Holds the Candle is another novel by Karen Fossum featuring Inspector Konrad Sejer, a policeman who, a bit like Indridason’s Erlendur, shows compassion to both victims and suspects (Although this time, I was surprised by his lack of compassion to the bereaved mother). In this novel, two young adults, Zipp and Andreas, get into trouble by boredom and lack of ambition. First, they scare Sejer’s grandchild, who is adopted from Somalia and uneasy with his skin color and first name, Matteus, and then they steal the bag from a young woman pushing a baby in a pram, a petty crime which ends badly. A secret accidentally revealed later in the evening leads to further violence, ending with Andreas’s disappearance…
When the Devil Holds the Candle is another good novel by Karen Fossum. This time Fossum deals with people, who, not criminal to start with, are led by a combination of personal troubles and extreme circumstances to cause the death of somebody else (some characters would say they are “possessed by the Devil”). Sejer is also investigating the murder of Anita, a young girl killed by her jealous boyfriend. Not much mystery there, but another troubled youth who could have led his life within the confines of the law and instead committed the irreparable, driven by drunkenness and insecurity…
The most interesting (and troubled) character in the novel is Irma Funder, a woman who tried to pass her life unnoticed, and who doesn’t like to be bothered. When she is singled out by Andreas and his friend Zipp as the potential victim of a robbery, her facade crumbles and she lets her repressed madness out (the back covers points out similarities with Stephen King, and while it indeed reminds of one of his novels in terms of plot, the effect is completely different here).
When the Devil Holds the Candle is not a traditional whodunit, the novel deals with the justification (or rather lack of justification) for murder, and the circumstances that lead to it. Fossum’s mysteries are a bit like Ruth Rendell’s, quite atypical (but Rendell’s novels, when good, are much better that Fossum’s). Although Karin Fossum is known to us through the current taste for Nordic mysteries, her novels, set in Norway, deal with psychological aspects of murder, and could really happen anywhere else in Europe (unlike, for instance, Donna Leon’s novels, in which the Venetian setting is as important as the plot). So it is no use reading Fossum’s novels for exotic escapism…
Rating: 3,5/5
Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio
I have had this novel on my shelves for ages. I bought it in hardcover, in 2003, when it was first out, and I suppose I was put off by the fact that, unlike An Instance of the Fingerpost, it is not a mystery, and I think I was afraid that the philosophy behind the novel would be a bit hard to grasp. Well, I was wrong. I found The Dream of Scipio very readable (more than some passages of Instance), and the Neoplatonism, though at the core of the novel, is really not that important to follow the plot (and the concepts are clear enough, and their misunderstandings also part of the action)…
The action is divided into three intertwined parts: three male characters, who lived at different periods of time, and who all were inspired by the same philosophy, of which they made different interpretations, and who had difficult decisions to make at a time when civilization was endangered . They all lived in Vaison, near Avignon. Manlius Hippomanes, a Gallic aristocrat living the decline of the Roman Empire in the 400’s, is ready to compromise in order to save what’s left of his civilization. The area is threatened by Visigoth King Euric, but instead of fighting the Barbarian invasion like his father did without success in the previous generation (losing his own life), Manlius (who has no interest in Christianity), becomes a bishop and uses his influence to convince Burgundian King Gundobad impose his rule over the Avignon province (he is also a Barbarian, but at least one educated in Rome…). The Dream of Scipio, inspired by the eponymous work written by Cicero, is Manlius’s own vision of philosophy, derived from Neoplatonism but adapted to Manlius’s times, and rediscovered by the two other main characters, Olivier and Julien.
In the 1300’s, the papacy has moved from Rome to Avignon and it is Cardinal Ceccani’s dream and sole ambition in life to see Pope Clement VI abandon Avignon and go back to Rome. When the plague arrives in Avignon, causing numerous victims, Ceccani sees the opportunity to make a deal with the English so they can attack Provence, and therefore, the pope would be forced to leave Avignon. At the same time, he blames the Jews for the plague and is ready to sacrifice them to serve his purposes. Olivier de Noyen, Ceccani’s protégé and a poet, has a dilemma between remaining loyal to Ceccani or saving the woman he loves…
During World War II, Julien Barneuve becomes part of the Vichy government, not because he is a collaborator, but because he becomes convinced that, by holding a position, however trivial (he is in charge of cultural matters), in the government, he can avoid that a more zealous man does more harm in his place. But in the process of compromising, does he not risk to lose his soul?
The three men are in love with three women, who embody their ideals, the best of themselves. One is Sophia, a Greek philosopher, another is Rebecca, an orphan taken in by a learned rabbi, Gersonides, and the third is a Jewish painter, Julia. But despite their intention to do well by the women they love, some have failed, and, as one of the characters concludes, towards the end:
The evil done by men of goodwill is the worst of all […] We have done terrible things, for the best of reasons, and that makes it worse.
One theme that comes back in every period is the theme of the Jews as eternal scapegoats: forced to convert by Manlius for the only purpose of asserting his power, accused of causing the plague in the middle-ages, and again victims of the holocaust during World War II.
The novel asks the question whether we are justified to do usually condemnable acts in order to save civilization. But, as a character wonders at one point:
How do we justify calling ourselves civilized, after all? Is it the books we read? The delicacy of our tastes? Our place in continuing a line of belief and of common values that stretch back a thousand years and more? All this, indeed, but what does it mean? How does it show itself? Are you civilized if you read the right books, yet stand while your neighbors are massacred, your lands laid waste, your cities brought to ruin?
Do we use Barbarians to control barbarism? Can we exploit them so that they preserve civilized values rather than destroy them?
Or to push it further, are we allowed to act as barbarians in order to preserve civilization? How far are we allowed to go to protect what we believe in?
It is Sophia, the philosopher, who brings an answer to that:
Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of a single person?
The reader will have understood by now, The Dream of Scipio is a serious novel raising important philosophical questions, that our civilization might once again have to ask itself soon. The Dream of Scipio is not the kind of novel that keeps you awake all night racing towards the end, but it flows easily enough, and is not as tough as it seems to be, at least, regarding the writing itself. Pears weaves the destiny of his three male characters (who, beware, even if they try to inspire themselves from the same ideas, do so with completely different results) in a very convincing manner, and several connections can be made between the characters (at one point, they are all “together” in a little chapel near Vaison: Julien and Julia meet there, under the eyes of Christian figures painted by Olivier’s friend Pisano and representing Olivier, Rebecca and Ceccani amongst others. The chapel itself is consecrated to Sophia, who was viewed as a saint towards the end of her life…
The Dream of Scipio is very good novel, based on solid research, and that shows that history repeats itself, and that we can learn the lessons from the past, even if there are no easy solutions…
Rating: 4/5
Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry
Surprised by the average rating this novel got, I read the reviews of it and realized that many readers were disappointed in their expectations. They had loved The Time Traveler’s Wife and had hoped for more of the same. But Her Fearful Symmetry, if it is recognizable as a novel by the author who wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife, is something else entirely. Which is good, in my opinion…
The Time Traveler’s Wife is a bittersweet love story with a twist: the fact that the male protagonist travels in time and has no control over his disappearances from the present and appearances in the past or in the future. Her Fearful Symmetry also starts as something that could evolve into a bittersweet love story, except that in the last third of the novel, events take a rather unexpected turn and the story is taken into another realm completely. Maybe this is what threw the readers off. Since I had no particular expectation, I was able to enjoy the story for what it is: a good ghost story set near the Gothic atmosphere of Highgate Cemetery, in London.
Julia and Valentina Poole are inseparable twins who live in Chicago. They have always done everything together: both have gone to the same colleges, and left them after a few months. They seem to have no ambition, happy to stay at home with their parents. When their aunt Elspeth, whom they have never met, dies, the twins inherit her possessions with peculiar reservations: they have to live in her London flat for one year before deciding to sell it or not, and their parents are forbidden to enter the flat during this time. Edie, Elspeth’s twin sister, who had been estranged from her for years, views it as a post-mortem attempt to take the girls away from her. The girls go to London, they pass their days strolling around the town, and finally meet their two neighbors: Robert, who was Elspeth’s lover, and who shies from the twins despite his desire to meet them, and Martin, a man with OCD whose wife left him and who can’t leave his apartment. Soon after their arrival, the first hints of disagreement appear between the sisters: while Julia is happy bossing her sister around and imposing her will, Valentina gently starts to rebel and to affirm a new, more independent personality: she wishes to become a dress maker, and want to go back to college. She is also in love with Robert. But Julia is not ready to let go of her sister…
Her Fearful Symmetry shares some similar themes with The Time Traveler’s Wife: it is about love and loss, the things we would do for love and how we overcome loss. Her Fearful Symmetry reminded me of the atmosphere of nineteenth century novels by Charles Dickens, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe and also of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The parts connected to Highgate Cemetery were fascinating, and reminded me of Tracy Chevalier’s Falling Angels, which also revolves around a London cemetery (Highgate?).
Read Her Fearful Symmetry without prejudice or expectation, and let yourself be won over by the eeriness of this well-written, easy-flowing, carefully-plotted story…