Try as I might I couldn't fathom this novel at all, a strange blend of love triangle and weird Victorian ideas on mediaeval Alchemy. I thought Alchemy was the attempts to turn base metal into gold usually by men in pointy hats and long white beards. Obviously I'm wrong as it is actually trying to understand the different elemental forces at work in our world to give us the meaning of life or love or something. That’s the problem, it makes little or no sense to me at all - great chunks of the narrative waffle on about goodness know what. I kid you not it really makes no sense at all, I'm not a pin head and I do understand philosophy but this was way out in the clouds. The title comes from some 15th(?) century Alchemical text - I looked it up and to be honest reading the actual text would make this novel an award winner for Plain English!
There is a plot of sorts - three people in Victorian times link across time with three in modern times as the modern three attempt to unravel the secrets of the former three in their struggle with Alchemic forces formally lost to mankind. There that’s the synopsis - throw in marital strife, some nookie, women's bits, and men's bits attached or otherwise plus the Pope, CND, and Quakers (religious or the oats) and you have the fullest idea of the 1989 Whitbread winner.
If I have come across difficult reads in the past but manfully pressed on I have usually been rewarded at the end, describing them usually as "challenging". This isn't that, the tedious inevitability that there won't be some big denouement to bring all the threads together comes by the final third of the novel so leaving one with the depressing prospect of all those pages left to read. I nearly needed my eyelids stapling to my forehead with a croquet hoop to stop me falling asleep whatever time of day I read. My recommendation? Leave it on the shelf or at least get a big fan to fully enlighten one to begin with - but then again if they tell you what it means they may have to sacrifice you to a sun god - or was that a moon or a man with a moon for a head or a woman for that matter or…………….
Just say no.
There is a plot of sorts - three people in Victorian times link across time with three in modern times as the modern three attempt to unravel the secrets of the former three in their struggle with Alchemic forces formally lost to mankind. There that’s the synopsis - throw in marital strife, some nookie, women's bits, and men's bits attached or otherwise plus the Pope, CND, and Quakers (religious or the oats) and you have the fullest idea of the 1989 Whitbread winner.
If I have come across difficult reads in the past but manfully pressed on I have usually been rewarded at the end, describing them usually as "challenging". This isn't that, the tedious inevitability that there won't be some big denouement to bring all the threads together comes by the final third of the novel so leaving one with the depressing prospect of all those pages left to read. I nearly needed my eyelids stapling to my forehead with a croquet hoop to stop me falling asleep whatever time of day I read. My recommendation? Leave it on the shelf or at least get a big fan to fully enlighten one to begin with - but then again if they tell you what it means they may have to sacrifice you to a sun god - or was that a moon or a man with a moon for a head or a woman for that matter or…………….
Just say no.