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The Wolf Hunt & Passenger to Frankfurt
Feb. 21st, 2023 11:35 pmThe Wolf Hunt - Gillian Bradshaw
A retelling of the Marie de France lai of Bisclavret (werewolf story). I absolutely loved this novel. 10/10. Enjoyment through the roof. I love Bradshaw in general - her Arthuriana is my favourite version - I've basically liked all the books I've read of hers, and this one is no exception.
The novel opens with Marie, a young heiress at a convent, being told her brother has died and that she needs to leave because the inheritance will fall to her next. Owing to the often complicated ties of personal loyalty that structured medieval life, and her personal feelings about breaking her word, she successfully escapes her escort of knights on their way to deliver her to a rival duke, and walks into the forest. In the forest she stumbles across a spring and a wolf napping there, which she scares off with a stick; she's then attacked by outlaws and rescued by Tiarnan, who is nearby. The outlaw and Tiarnan converse in Breton, which Marie doesn't understand at the time, but he uses the word "bisclavret", which turns out to be crucial later.
The plot is quite complicated - Tiarnan is one of Duke Hoel's favoured subjects, and although he is soon blissfully married to Eline, she convinces him to tell her his secret (vanishing for days into the forest). When he tells her he turns into a wolf, she is violently repulsed. She rejects the idea of annulment suggested by the only other person who knows Tiarnan's secret, a hermit, and asks her other previous suitor to steal the clothes and indefinable thing that Tiarnan leaves under a rock when he transforms, which traps him in the wolf form.
Marie's role is woven in well, as is Tiher, who is the cousin of Eline's other suitor Alain. The wolf, having been hunted and brought to bay, unable to outrun or escape the many relays of dogs and hunters, in desperation licks Duke Hoel's boot, and is taken alive as his pet. The account of the wolf's perspective both during and before the hunt are honestly a little harrowing. Tiarnan's consciousness isn't fully subsumed into the wolf, and the wolf is hungry, cold, and afraid. On top of all that is the human's fear, anger at his betrayal. Eline successfully petitions the king of France to be allowed to remarry immediately, and is reluctantly granted Tiarnan's manor and permission to marry. Although Tiarnan is loved by his dependents, they don't recognize him; Eline and Alain, on the other hand, do, and they try their best to kill him.
One ting I have always enjoy about Gillian Bradshaw's novels is her characterization. Without being mushy, a lot of them have noble personalities, often willing to do the right thing no matter what - and this works particularly well considering its basis in the medieval lay and the way art of this time was so centered around chivalry. Tiarnan tries to do the right thing, of course, but so does Marie. Although her escape attempt is eventually unsuccessful and she's recaptured, her quick thinking and ability to think ahead as soon as her first solution fails endeared me immediately. Her declaration at the gate as well as to Duke Hoel, upon being presented, is maybe a little foolhardy - I can certainly see the scene playing out differently, especially since Marie's only leverage is her noble standing, which isn't much when having a heiress as your ward presents such excellent opportunities. Even Eline, who is probably the most cruel, is portrayed sympathetically when it comes to her real revulsion to the wolf reveal - she feels unclean. I think her deliberate cruelty to trap him in wolf form, kill him, and have his estate as her spoils does push her firmly into an antagonist role. Alain is cruel too, but foolish. I also enjoyed a lot of the medieval life woven into this - Alain has a conversation with Duke Hoel, who is his lord, where Hoel advises him strongly to not be stupid: have a Breton speaker not a French bailiff, especially since the French one is already acquiring a reputation for cruelty and stealing; to not raise rents immediately upon inheriting a manor from a beloved former lord, despite what Alain says about rents on his father's land elsewhere being higher, etc. Alain, being a dolt, decides his own judgement is better, and having a weakness for new things and also afraid of Tiarnan's ghost, decides to plunge himself into debt buying horses, clothes, furniture, and so on. To do so, he doubles the price at the mill, and forbids his serfs to go elsewhere to grind grain. Alain's foolishness and unsteadiness - he runs off to try to reason with Eline and literally abandons his actual job of escorting Marie - is initially papered over because his cousin Tiher is there to steady and make excuses for him. As the novel progresses, Tiher - not handsome like Alain, but rueful and reasonably clever - rises in the Duke's estimation, and Hoel plans to grant him land as soon as he can.
==
Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie
I hadn't realized this was a thriller instead of a mystery when I picked it up. I've read so many Christie mysteries and they're always great, and I can't say the same of this. It was published in 1970, so very recently, and starts in the Frankfurt airport. Sir Stafford Nye agrees to swap places with a strange woman who says she needs to get to England under a different identity, otherwise she'll be killed. He drinks the drugged glass willingly and after waking up, proceeds with his journey back to England, saying his passport is stolen. He is then dragged into some kind of secret agent plot alongside the strange woman, Renata Zerkowski/Mary Ann. This is where I had trouble. It's all about this world driven by conspiracy, where random movements of armaments, jewels, money, etc are all directed by this big worldwide organization. The youth are rising and are committing mass violence, backed by this shadowy organization headed by Big Charlotte. There's this insane storyline of Hitler not being dead, swapping places with a mental patient who believe he's Hitler; that he had a son in South America and now the son is the golden youth Siegfried, a gifted orator and in peak physical condition, the icon of the movement. It culminates in this climax where - after Stafford Nye's old great-aunt tells this Admiral about a scientist who was able to invent a drug to induce benevolence in people - the scientist and a bunch of governmental ministers assemble and try to convince the scientist to reconstruct his drug work. Lord Altamount is shot and this motivates the scientist to retrieve his supposedly destroyed notes, and work on them again. The novel ends with an epilogue where Stafford Nye marries the strange woman. I honestly didn't even realize this was the end of the book. The next page was headed Murder at the Vicarage (me, brain sluggishly firing: "isn't that the Miss Marple story Agatha Christie wrote? Is this some weird 4th wall break?") and as I paged further on I realized the rest of the ebook was just the endpapers with advertisements for her other books. Baffling. I went back and re-read the last two chapters. I guess Benvo, the drug, was successfully created and distributed, which created "permanent benevolence", a permanent change in people to whom the drug was administered, which stopped the riots. The young Siegfried is being invited to an English church to work as an organist.
What.
1970 is pretty near the end of Christie's career - Passenger to Frankfurt is her 40th novel, which is a huge accomplishment. So some slipping is honestly fair enough, she would have been 80 by then. I think it was conceived with an eye to the youth counterculture movement, but it's just so weird and detached. Most of the danger is conveyed via governmental ministers or (presumably) MI5/6 officers talking about unrest, which isn't exactly scary. Also, I had a hard time keeping all the names and employment straight. I'm really not looking for hard-hitting or grittiness in Agatha Christie, absolutely the opposite, but this was really muddled. It also indulges in what I think is the stupidest part of all conspiracy theories - the presumption that the shadowy leaders are actually competent. When I look at the broad-daylight operations of legitimate entities, who are able to recruit freely, audit, apply for legal/political help, etc, and see how many errors and problems they run into...imagine trying to do that secretly and perfectly. You are talking about organizations numbering in the thousands to do logistics alone, and perfect cooperation, perfect execution and secrecy, etc. But her next novel is Nemesis, which is actually quite good - it's a continuation of A Caribbean Mystery (itself quite good). I don't think I want to read any more of Christie's thrillers.
A retelling of the Marie de France lai of Bisclavret (werewolf story). I absolutely loved this novel. 10/10. Enjoyment through the roof. I love Bradshaw in general - her Arthuriana is my favourite version - I've basically liked all the books I've read of hers, and this one is no exception.
The novel opens with Marie, a young heiress at a convent, being told her brother has died and that she needs to leave because the inheritance will fall to her next. Owing to the often complicated ties of personal loyalty that structured medieval life, and her personal feelings about breaking her word, she successfully escapes her escort of knights on their way to deliver her to a rival duke, and walks into the forest. In the forest she stumbles across a spring and a wolf napping there, which she scares off with a stick; she's then attacked by outlaws and rescued by Tiarnan, who is nearby. The outlaw and Tiarnan converse in Breton, which Marie doesn't understand at the time, but he uses the word "bisclavret", which turns out to be crucial later.
The plot is quite complicated - Tiarnan is one of Duke Hoel's favoured subjects, and although he is soon blissfully married to Eline, she convinces him to tell her his secret (vanishing for days into the forest). When he tells her he turns into a wolf, she is violently repulsed. She rejects the idea of annulment suggested by the only other person who knows Tiarnan's secret, a hermit, and asks her other previous suitor to steal the clothes and indefinable thing that Tiarnan leaves under a rock when he transforms, which traps him in the wolf form.
Marie's role is woven in well, as is Tiher, who is the cousin of Eline's other suitor Alain. The wolf, having been hunted and brought to bay, unable to outrun or escape the many relays of dogs and hunters, in desperation licks Duke Hoel's boot, and is taken alive as his pet. The account of the wolf's perspective both during and before the hunt are honestly a little harrowing. Tiarnan's consciousness isn't fully subsumed into the wolf, and the wolf is hungry, cold, and afraid. On top of all that is the human's fear, anger at his betrayal. Eline successfully petitions the king of France to be allowed to remarry immediately, and is reluctantly granted Tiarnan's manor and permission to marry. Although Tiarnan is loved by his dependents, they don't recognize him; Eline and Alain, on the other hand, do, and they try their best to kill him.
One ting I have always enjoy about Gillian Bradshaw's novels is her characterization. Without being mushy, a lot of them have noble personalities, often willing to do the right thing no matter what - and this works particularly well considering its basis in the medieval lay and the way art of this time was so centered around chivalry. Tiarnan tries to do the right thing, of course, but so does Marie. Although her escape attempt is eventually unsuccessful and she's recaptured, her quick thinking and ability to think ahead as soon as her first solution fails endeared me immediately. Her declaration at the gate as well as to Duke Hoel, upon being presented, is maybe a little foolhardy - I can certainly see the scene playing out differently, especially since Marie's only leverage is her noble standing, which isn't much when having a heiress as your ward presents such excellent opportunities. Even Eline, who is probably the most cruel, is portrayed sympathetically when it comes to her real revulsion to the wolf reveal - she feels unclean. I think her deliberate cruelty to trap him in wolf form, kill him, and have his estate as her spoils does push her firmly into an antagonist role. Alain is cruel too, but foolish. I also enjoyed a lot of the medieval life woven into this - Alain has a conversation with Duke Hoel, who is his lord, where Hoel advises him strongly to not be stupid: have a Breton speaker not a French bailiff, especially since the French one is already acquiring a reputation for cruelty and stealing; to not raise rents immediately upon inheriting a manor from a beloved former lord, despite what Alain says about rents on his father's land elsewhere being higher, etc. Alain, being a dolt, decides his own judgement is better, and having a weakness for new things and also afraid of Tiarnan's ghost, decides to plunge himself into debt buying horses, clothes, furniture, and so on. To do so, he doubles the price at the mill, and forbids his serfs to go elsewhere to grind grain. Alain's foolishness and unsteadiness - he runs off to try to reason with Eline and literally abandons his actual job of escorting Marie - is initially papered over because his cousin Tiher is there to steady and make excuses for him. As the novel progresses, Tiher - not handsome like Alain, but rueful and reasonably clever - rises in the Duke's estimation, and Hoel plans to grant him land as soon as he can.
==
Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie
I hadn't realized this was a thriller instead of a mystery when I picked it up. I've read so many Christie mysteries and they're always great, and I can't say the same of this. It was published in 1970, so very recently, and starts in the Frankfurt airport. Sir Stafford Nye agrees to swap places with a strange woman who says she needs to get to England under a different identity, otherwise she'll be killed. He drinks the drugged glass willingly and after waking up, proceeds with his journey back to England, saying his passport is stolen. He is then dragged into some kind of secret agent plot alongside the strange woman, Renata Zerkowski/Mary Ann. This is where I had trouble. It's all about this world driven by conspiracy, where random movements of armaments, jewels, money, etc are all directed by this big worldwide organization. The youth are rising and are committing mass violence, backed by this shadowy organization headed by Big Charlotte. There's this insane storyline of Hitler not being dead, swapping places with a mental patient who believe he's Hitler; that he had a son in South America and now the son is the golden youth Siegfried, a gifted orator and in peak physical condition, the icon of the movement. It culminates in this climax where - after Stafford Nye's old great-aunt tells this Admiral about a scientist who was able to invent a drug to induce benevolence in people - the scientist and a bunch of governmental ministers assemble and try to convince the scientist to reconstruct his drug work. Lord Altamount is shot and this motivates the scientist to retrieve his supposedly destroyed notes, and work on them again. The novel ends with an epilogue where Stafford Nye marries the strange woman. I honestly didn't even realize this was the end of the book. The next page was headed Murder at the Vicarage (me, brain sluggishly firing: "isn't that the Miss Marple story Agatha Christie wrote? Is this some weird 4th wall break?") and as I paged further on I realized the rest of the ebook was just the endpapers with advertisements for her other books. Baffling. I went back and re-read the last two chapters. I guess Benvo, the drug, was successfully created and distributed, which created "permanent benevolence", a permanent change in people to whom the drug was administered, which stopped the riots. The young Siegfried is being invited to an English church to work as an organist.
What.
1970 is pretty near the end of Christie's career - Passenger to Frankfurt is her 40th novel, which is a huge accomplishment. So some slipping is honestly fair enough, she would have been 80 by then. I think it was conceived with an eye to the youth counterculture movement, but it's just so weird and detached. Most of the danger is conveyed via governmental ministers or (presumably) MI5/6 officers talking about unrest, which isn't exactly scary. Also, I had a hard time keeping all the names and employment straight. I'm really not looking for hard-hitting or grittiness in Agatha Christie, absolutely the opposite, but this was really muddled. It also indulges in what I think is the stupidest part of all conspiracy theories - the presumption that the shadowy leaders are actually competent. When I look at the broad-daylight operations of legitimate entities, who are able to recruit freely, audit, apply for legal/political help, etc, and see how many errors and problems they run into...imagine trying to do that secretly and perfectly. You are talking about organizations numbering in the thousands to do logistics alone, and perfect cooperation, perfect execution and secrecy, etc. But her next novel is Nemesis, which is actually quite good - it's a continuation of A Caribbean Mystery (itself quite good). I don't think I want to read any more of Christie's thrillers.
