Once Upon a Bookshelf

In all five years of high school English classes, I only actually enjoyed three books we studied - To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies and this one. It’s been about five years since I last picked it up, so thought it was about time to revisit it, and have come to the conclusion that since it was just as good as I remembered it to be, I really ought to actually go out and buy myself a copy for that time in another five or so years when I want to reread it yet again.

Fifth Business is the first in the Deptford Trilogy, by Robertson Davies, but stands quite well on it’s own. It has it’s beginnings in a small Canadian town at the beginning of the 20th century, and is written as the memoir of Dunstan Ramsay. The book follows Dunstan through childhood right through until he is retired from being a teacher at a boys school.

Dunstan plays the role of Fifth Business in the story - neither the hero nor the villan, but without whom the story could not have folded out. In the beginning of the book, Dunstan and a childhood friend get into a bit of a snowball fight; one of the snowballs ends up hitting a young woman (Mrs. Dempster) and causing not only the premature birth of her son Paul, but also seems to make her not all there. The guilt that Dunstan feels about this shapes most of his character and the events that happen for the rest of his life. He ends up taking care of Mrs. Dempster and her son as a child, and continues to take care of her in his old age. Though Paul ran away as a young child, Dunstan manages to run into him numerous times as an adult.

One of the many reasons I enjoy this book is how Dunstan talks a lot about how saints are so similar to figures in mythology. After reading Joseph Campbell’s stuff regarding mythology and the hero myth, it’s so easy to see how many things in Christianity is similar to other religions and myths, and for years I’ve found all of that fascinating. It’s interesting to read a fictional book that compares these things too.

Ah, Horatio Hornblower is such a wonderfully nice break from those fantasy epics I had been reading right before this.

In this installation of Forester’s series, it’s the early 1800’s, and Hornblower is the captain of a ship of the line, and under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Percy (Lady Barbara’s husband). Hornblower and co are positioned near Spain, and he has to deal with finding enough people to man his ship, the Spanish not always living up to what they say, and, of course, the French.

I have a feeling that A Ship of the Line has been my favourite in the Hornblower series in a while, though I can’t quite figure out why. As much as I like Lady Barbara, I was quite pleased that she was only in it for just a little bit. Maybe it’s because it meant I got more time with the boys.

One of the other captains serving under Percy also happens to be Bolton, who had served on the Indy with Hornblower, and oh! I always love it when Hornblower meets up with other people from the Indy. It gives me such a feeling of homecoming! Even if they didn’t have a big role, just the mere fact that they served on the same ship makes me think of Pellew, and that is enough to bring a smile to any girl’s face.

Also, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’ve decided that the reason I adore Bush so much is because of how he thinks of Hornblower:

Bush had the queer feeling – he had known it before – as he looked at Hornblower’s haughty expression that he was a father dealing with a high-spirited son; he loved his captain as he would have loved a son if ever he had had one.

But oh, that last battle scene, where Horatio is fighting off the four French ships; the despair he feels at the end of it, is so … tangible, and I was feeling his despair along with him. Poor little Hornblower…

This is the third, and last, book in the Crucible Series by Sara Douglass. The series takes place in fourteenth century Europe, and this particular book starts after Hal has taken the throne of England from King Richard II.

The series centres around Thomas Neville, once a church man devoted to a job the angels have given him - banishing all demons back into hell. Things changed drastically once he realized that demons really are only people who were fathered by angels. Neville knows that the future of humanty depends on him, and has been given a choice - either he will hand his soul on a platter to a whore, or he will enslave all humanity to the angels forever.

I had a very hard time with the second book of the series, as that’s when it started with the idea that Jesus wasn’t really the Son of God, but that he was just another demon walking around the earth. I wasn’t really sure whether I should continue with the series… but I couldn’t just leave the story hanging and not know how it was finished. Needless to say, I was slightly skeptical coming into this book, but didn’t find it as squicky as I had been thinking it would be, which is always a very good thing. Not that there weren’t parts of the book that didn’t make me uncomfortable (for example, in the book there is no God, but it is really just an idea the collective of angels created in order to get control over humans), but I think I was expecting it more this time around. It also struck me as rather odd for a book that was so much about how there is no God, that the characters (especially Thomas Neville) had to trust so implicitly in Christ that he would make a way for the world to end up not in the clutches of the angels (who are apparantly completely evil), as well as the fact that love is always the answer.

I was proud of myself, though. I’m getting better at guessing which way Douglass will go with her books… but still there are so many things in her stories that I never see until it hits me squarely in the face. While I figured out who exactly Mary was, I still had no idea what Neville was.

Hum, methinks it’s definitly time to take a break from fantasy epics for a while now.