Cruising through a sea of history September 25, 2023
Posted by dolorosa12 in books, review reprint, reviews.Tags: books, historical fiction, jackie french, reviews
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This post is part of a series of articles that I previously published in various Australian newspapers when I was working as a reviewer between 2001 and 2012. The vast majority of these do not exist in digital format, and I’ve decided to reprint them here for digital preservation. Much of what is said in these republished reviews does not represent my current thinking, but rather my understanding at the time of writing and original publication. The titles of the posts are the titles that were given to the articles by subeditors upon publication.
Although many popular ideas about the Vikings are no more than 19th-century inventions, we can be sure that they were fierce warriors and masters of the sea.
Even their sketchy history, then, can provide fertile soil for Jackie French, one of Australia’s most prolific children’s authors.
Inspired by reading the Icelandic sagas, French has written They Came on Viking Ships, a novel about Viking settlement of Greenland and ‘discovery’ of America during the time of Erik the Red and Leif Eriksson. However, French being French, the story has a twist, and so the focus of the book is not on these two relatively well-known historical figures, but rather on two unlikely friends: a feisty Viking feminist and her captured Scottish slave.
This is a story of adventure and exploration, and so it is a stroke of brilliance that French has chosen for her protagonist Hekja, a bewildered 12-year-old who has never left the boundaries of her tiny village in northern Scotland. She is captured by Viking raiders and becomes a thrall — a slave — to the sword-wielding, free-spirited Freydis Eriksdottir.
With Freydis (and her faithful and intelligent dog, Snarf), Hekja travels north to Greenland — Freydis’s father, Erik the Red, was an outlaw banished from Iceland who founded this new community — and later to America. Hekja’s distress at her new status is not quite so great as her amazement at the wonders of the wider world which she is now experiencing.
Hekja has never seen goats or sheep, never seen a weaving loom; even the very words are unfamiliar to her. Her ignorance of the wider world is used to suggest the wonder of her experiences, and, as a young adolescent, her physical journey beyond the rim of the known world parallels the metaphorical journey into adulthood which she is just beginning.
Interestingly, French does not give in to the temptation of moralising. The book is remarkably free of judgement, which leaves its readers to make up their own minds. Ultimately, Hekja has little resentment at her treatment, even though her mother was killed, as were most of the people in her village, by the raiders. Instead, she almost seems grateful that her capture made adventure and exploration possible. At the same time, although French revels in the strength of her heroines, Freydis and Hekja are not the focus of a feminist tract.
As in much of French’s writing, this and all other themes are secondary to her passinoate belief in the power, beauty and uncontrollability of nature. She is able to convey much of the sheer wildness of the land — its rocks and fjords, ice and snow — through her prose. In They Came on Viking Ships, French links this awe of nature with a strong appreciation of the bravery of the people who live at its mercy.
The reader cannot help admiring the combination of the hardiness and resourcefulness demonstrated by the Greenland colony, and their utter dependence on nature and each other is portrayed as a beautiful and genuine way to live.
Despite the harshness of the weather and the slim pickings to be had from their farms, the people find plenty to celebrate.
French’s storytelling ability is enhanced by her obvious deep historical research. This is demonstrated in far more than the footnotes or the brief note at the end of the book. It is in her ability to create a world into which her reader is happy to tumble for several hours, and in her talent for making history as enjoyable as the best story.
This review first appeared in the 16 April, 2005 issue of The Canberra Times.
‘Only the Angevins would see a rebellion as an opportunity for brotherly bonding’ April 12, 2009
Posted by dolorosa12 in books, reviews.Tags: books, devil's brood, historical fiction, reviews, sharon penman
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A new Penman novel is always cause for celebration.
The Historical Novels Review.
Well, yes. When I saw her latest, Devil’s Brood, I had to buy it in hardback. There aren’t many novels for which I’d make such a sacrifice! Luckily, my money wasn’t wasted.
Devil’s Brood is the conclusion to her trilogy about the Angevins and Poitevins (the first was about the civil war between Maude and Stephen, the second could’ve been subtitled Henry and Eleanor: The Early Years). This book covers the last decades of Henry II’s rule and the beginnings of that of his son, Richard I. Otherwise known as ‘And here is where it all fell apart’. Penman is a master at showing how families, united, can never be defeated, but when there’s conflict in the family, the betrayals are deeper, the hatreds more vicious, the conflict much more poignant and deadly.
She’s also excellently even-handed. All her characters act on deeply-held beliefs and a sense of the justice of their actions. For Penman, all problems can be traced back to deep-seated tensions, resentments and flaws within families.
For her Devil’s brood of Angevin children, these problems lie in their parents’ marriage – a marriage of two fierce, passionate, frighteningly intelligent people who just can’t manage to be on the same page. At one point, Eleanor mournfully points out that she married Henry (the man) and he married Eleanor for her lands. Their marriage is a battleground, and the battle ranges across their combined empires, drawing in their children, with disastrous consequences.
That’s not to say that Penman reduces history to soap opera. Her works are always meticulously researched.
That being said, her Angevins do tend to be larger than life. Where she excels is in marginal or traditionally maligned figures (Joanna, the illegitimate daughter of King John, Llewelyn Fawr, King John himself, Richard III). In this trilogy, the role is filled by illegitimate children. (Penman gives Henry I, grandfather of Henry II, an extra illegitimate son, Ranulf. Since Henry apparently had 20 or so illegitimate children, Penman figured one more couldn’t hurt.) The half-Welsh Ranulf, who cares deeply for his nephew Henry II, forms the emotional heart of the story.
No historical fiction writer perfectly captures the voice and character of medieval people. Their most objectionable characteristics (passivity and lack of education for women, misogyny and violence for men) must be toned down to make them palatable to modern readers. Penman’s books are no exception. But in spite of this, her books have an authenticity and veracity. So far she’s rehabilitated Richard III (in The Sunne In Splendour), caused me to fall in love with Henry, Eleanor, Llewelyn (Fawr and ap Gruffydd) and Joanna (in her Angevin/Poitevin trilogy and her Welsh trilogy), made me a passionate partisan of Simon de Montfort (in Falls the Shadow, the second of the Welsh trilogy) and respect Maude (in the first Angevin book, When Christ and His Saints Slept). She’s even successfully transformed King John into a tragic figure (in the first book of the Welsh trilogy, Here Be Dragons. I can’t wait to see what she’ll do next.
Geata Póeg na Déanainn 