jorgmateus

It was with great anticipation that I returned to Sharon Penman’s When Christ and His Saints Slept, the first book by Sharon Penman that I ever read at the tender age of 10, and which for good reasons immediately became one of my favourite books of all time and in all the years since has never been displaced from its solid and thoroughly deserved status as the cream of the crop not just of historical fiction but across genres. This is the only book for which I have ever stayed awake without sleep all night simply in order to read. I'd always meant to re-read When Christ and His Saints Slept someday, and I loved it just as much the second time round as the first, if not more, and I daresay that’ll be equally true of the 100th reading. Re-reading When Christ and His Saints Slept was a joy and a delight. Sharon Penman is one of those exquisitely rare writers who can’t put a foot wrong. The vocabulary she can draw upon would put professors of English to shame, her understanding of the language is almost unmatched, and her consummate fluidity of writing and fluency has few rivals. Moreover, Sharon’s writing style is supremely natural and elegant in its simplicity – though it’s plain that Sharon has the linguistic knowledge to bewilder and befuddle us with hideously complex constructions and obscure tongue-twisters, she doesn’t. Her efforts are consistently devoted to lucidity and creating the best reading experience possible. Sharon shows us rather than tells us, and where she does tell it fits so seamlessly into the narrative that you’d hardly notice its presence at all. Her dialogue is unforced and appears effortless. Her descriptions are that rare beast; concise yet perfectly clear and astonishingly vivid and real. Scenes of laugh-out-loud acerbic humour are written as adroitly as scenes of moving poignancy. This book is not just "interesting" or "engaging", those words are not fit for purpose when describing When Christ and His Saints Slept. It’s amazingly easy to pick this book up and within a paragraph find yourself sucked into a wondrously detailed and thoroughly authentic Medieval world, and emerge an unknown amount of time later to discover that hours and hours have passed by. This book is completely absorbing, utterly enthralling, and resplendently captivating. I read it as if spellbound, for When Christ and His Saints Slept is a literary dream. Sharon’s research is ever-impeccable to the point where I must admit to a mixture of enviousness and a truly uncommon admiration. This is an author who berates herself over the anachronistic appearance of hoods for hunting falcons in this very book, and details such as the colour of dog hair in Medieval canine breeds – inaccuracies of such miniscule stature that surely fewer than one in a thousand would ever pick up on them, and of those that do forgivable without a second thought. I’m in awe of Sharon’s dedication to historical accuracy; now this is the level of historical accuracy that I expect of all historical fiction, I only wish all authors were as devoted to it as Sharon Penman. Sharon sticks to events as closely as possible and lets the history speak for itself, devoid of embellishment except in a few scarce instances. She makes no attempt to dumb down events for her readers by simplifying, but gives her readers the credit they deserve and trusts that we’re intelligent enough to comprehend the complexities of the actual history. This is something I’d sorely like to see more of in the historical fiction industry. The picture that Sharon paints on the page with her words is so detailed, so thorough, I feel sure that Sharon must know every speck of dust in her world, and I’m half-convinced that she’s discovered the secret of time travel. Such a vivid, realistic picture brings the Medieval world to life before your very eyes; four-dimensional, subtle, sophisticated, and fully-formed. Even more impressive is Sharon’s ability to infuse her characters with such depth and understanding and subtlety that you’d swear they were old friends. Whether fictional or real historical figures, Sharon seems to know and understand her characters like the back of her hand and creates tangible portraits of subtle, complex people, rooted in their times but distinctly modern, firmly dispelling the notion of past peoples as somehow alien in relation to ourselves. These are real, flawed people; intelligent, driven by complicated yet understandable motivations, starkly human, one feels as close to the real life historical individuals as one is ever like to get. Not one of them is unintelligible or lacks for empathy. Even if you find yourself taking sides and disagreeing with the decisions of certain characters, their reasoning is deftly illuminated, their motivations crystal clear. I must confess to becoming rather fond of the hot-headed Count of Chester, and even Eustace, whose actions are indisputably reprehensible, was understandable if not at all laudable. I must admit to whole-heartedly getting behind Maude whenever I read this book, warts and all as she comes, but at the same time Sharon Penman’s Stephen is no ghoulish villain designed with the express purpose of invoking the reader’s loathing; in actual fact he is often highly sympathetic. There are no black-and-white "sinners" and "saints" here as in so many other, lesser works of historical fiction which tend to play "the good guys vs the bad guys", only varying shades of grey. Sharon treats her historical characters as carefully as she does the historical facts: with objectivity, refinement and intricacy. All grow organically. She focuses on painting as accurate a picture as possible whilst standing back to let the reader make up their own minds about the people from history, she never tries to impose her own conclusions on us. Sharon remarked in her author’s note that "This was the first time that I’d allowed a fictional character to share centre stage with historical figures, and I wasn’t sure if I’d feel comfortable with Ranulf." I simply adored Ranulf Fitz Roy, quite possibly the most significant fictional character in any of Sharon’s books, from the word go. Not quite in the same way as, for example, Llewelyn Fawr in Here Be Dragons – surely a romantic hero of historical fiction if ever there were one – but because I found Ranulf eminently identifiable: clever, enquiring, sensible, moderate, tolerant, unquestionably loyal but troubled at the realisation that war is never so simple as right versus wrong, the voice of sanity for many other characters but blind where it came to his own personal passions. I love Ranulf because he reminds me of myself. He’s that character that makes you say "Well, that’s what I’d do", and that’s why he’s such a roaring success. Sharon’s uncanny knack at recreating the grey characters from history comes less from her knowledge of the historical people and more from her understanding of the human condition. She’s applied the same understanding to creating Ranulf, and as a result he fits in flawlessly with Maude, Stephen, Henry and Eleanor. My only regret was that Ranulf was fictional, and thus could never take up Maude’s proffered earldom without warping history; I rather wished that Sharon would let the history slide just this once and allow Ranulf to take up the earldom he so clearly deserved! Sharon weaves together all these elements to create a spellbinding yet authentic story of at once epic and human proportions. There is no heavy-handed laborious "message" here, again readers are free to make their own conclusions, rather one is struck by a simple truth well known to historians: history is often random and accidental, and its inhabitants are a colourful maelstrom of individuals who are impossible to define as wholly right or wrong, good or evil. I haven’t even mentioned points such as the novel’s pacing, point of view or length – such elements are so spot on that they are unnoticeable, and that is the mark of a good book. The Sunne in Splendour may be Sharon’s Wars of the Roses magnum opus, the platinum standard for all other Wars of the Roses historical fiction, her Welsh trilogy begun with Here Be Dragons may be a sweeping tale of romance, triumph and tragedy, but When Christ and His Saints Slept will always be my favourite. A simply wonderful epic of the complex machinations and manoeuvrings of bloody civil war and the sophisticated, extraordinary, human characters it encompassed. 10 out of 10. Enough said.

2023-07-10 06:09