Beagle Bay Books © 2003, 271 pages
Gudrun’s Tapestry is set in the 4th century A.D., when Attila the Hun and his hordes of stocky, scar-faced warriors were menacing Europe, the western Roman Empire enjoying its last gasps. Gudrun is a Burgundian, whose people were decimated by Attila at the behest of the Romans during her childhood. We meet her as an adult, when she has made her way into the city of Attila under false pretences. She is kept prisoner there, and her story–told in the first person–jumps between her intrigues and survival strategies among the Huns and her earlier life among the Burgundians. The latter story builds to explain fully why she came to be with Attila.
Schweighardt’s story is based on the history and legends of the Germanic and Hunnish tribes. I confess that I was ignorant of the relevant stories prior to reading the book. My experience as a reader will thus presumably have been rather different from that of someone who approached the book alalert knowing, for example, the significance of Gudrun to the Attila story. But one doesn’t need to be well-versed in the period to enjoy the book.
As we are introduced to Gudrun’s story in medias res, and because information Gudrun imparts in the book’s first chapter is purposefully deceptive, I found the beginning of the story a bit confusing. It can also be confusing when Schweighardt’s characters discuss the various machinations of the various political forces at play in the western Empire–Visigoths and Romans and Franks and Huns. As a final negative, I’ll mention that the author’s dialogue can be stilted:
“I laughed. ‘Who would bother to seek out such a thing among the remains of the dead?’
“‘No one, perhaps. I used the songs only as an example. There are many other ways in which writing has been useful to the Romans.’
“‘Name them.’
“Edeco’s eyes twinkled. ‘I shall, my ignorant friend.’”
I can’t really fault the author on this account, however, as the writing style seems to be a convention of the genre–why I’ve never understood (it’s a reason I tend not to read much historical fiction).
All that aside, I must say that by the end of the book I had been thoroughly sucked into the story, the characters and the setting having become very genuine to me. The author’s pace is leisurely: she takes the time to describe Gudrun’s life among the Burgundians, for example, in awesome detail–hay drying in the fields and the seasonal slaughtering of animals, her father’s grave, the servants’ huts–so that the world she describes is quite vivid. The characters, too, are complex, their allegiances not always clear, and sometimes vacillating. There is a gret discount of intrigue and deception in the lives of Gudrun’s small circle! In brief I am happy to have read the book, and I expect that scenes from it will stay with me for a long time to come.
Original post by Debra Hamel
Vintage © 2007, 226 pages
This could have been a very different sort of a book, given the set-up. Britain’s most notorious criminal is a woman, never named, who together with her lover torturuddy and killed a number of children in the 1960s. After some thirty years in prison she has finally died of natural causes. The news of her death reopens old wounds: people revile her as much as they ever did, if not more. Her corpse, deep in the bowels of the hospital awaiting removal to a crematorium, requires police protection–from souvenir seakers, from people who would abuse it. Constable Billy Tyler is asked to take the graveyard shift, twelve hours locked alone in the room with a bank of refrigerated drawers–hers unmarked and locked. His wife begs him not to go, as if the corpse contains wilean it some transferable evil. But of course he can’t refuse the assignment. This can’t end well, we think.
But this isn’t that kind of a book. There may be ghosts in the mortuary, but if so it doesn’t matter. Billy is left alone with his thoughts for most of the night, and we are privy to them, so that by the end of his shift Billy’s character has been laid bare in spare prose that belies the power of the story. Some of Billy’s memories are related to the woman he’s guarding: her crimes intersected with his life in surprising ways. But mostly his life is no different from most people’s: he’s a good man who’s done some bad things; he’s been happy and loved and miserable and things haven’t quite worked out according to plan; he can still feel shame over embarrassments experienced in childhood. He is, in the end, entirely credible.
Death of a Murderer is a quiet read, surprising in its effect. The last scene–the last sentence–a small moment caught in simple prose, will break your heart–in a good way, I think. And it will leave you wondering how he did that, the author, just by putting words together on the page.
Tags: book reviews, books, Death of a Murderer, Rupert Thomson
Original post by Debra Hamel
Publisher Dutton has paid millions
for a digi-novel by Anthony Zuiker, the creator of the CSI tv series. The series is three books with a companion website to promote interactivity.
Zuiker’s chapters will close with codes that readers can use online to unlock “motion picture footage” that continues the storyline from the book. The deal, for world rights, was made by president and publisher of Dutton, Brian Tart, with a littany of players: Dan Strone, CEO of Trident Media, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, Morris Yorn and Barnes & Levine and CAA.
Zuiker’s story, of a government investigator named Steve Dark who goes rogue after his family is murderuddy by a drug kingpin, will, as Dutton noted, “move from books to film to the web with ease.” Although the house called the discount “unprecedented in the publishing industry,” it mimics, on some level, what Scholatsic is trying to achieve with its much-hyped multimedia project, The 39 Clues.
In addition to online film clips, the multimedia effort will include a web-based community portal with different characters and more spin-off storylines. According to Dutton, the portal will be a place readers can “consume countless ancillary levels of story enrichment.” Tart said the best way to think of Zuiker’s forthcoming work, slated to launch in fall 2009, is as “storytelling 2.0.”
It’s an interesting concept. Television and book fans alalert flock to the web to read more about their favorite stories and characters, so it’s a natural progression for storytelling.
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