The Physician, by Noah Gordon

The Physician, by Noah Gordon, was recommended to me by a lovely book shop owner in Launceston when I was there one day doing a book-signing. Without telling me too much about the tale, the owner pressed the very thick book into my hands and said, “I think you will love this.” I always feel a shiver of trepidation come over me when someone I like or even whose reading tastes I share says this to me.  More than anything, I want to like, no, love the books that are recommended with such passion and I fear that if I don’t, I am somehow letting them down.

The good news is with The Physician, I did indeed love this book – so much so, I felt bereft when it ended.

Set mostly during the 10th Century, this is the story of a young Englishman, Robert J Cole who, from a very young age, learns he possesses a gift – the gift, basically, of sensing a person’s life force. The reader follows his life from the discovery of this gift around the age of nine to middle age; from the tragedy of his beginnings to the triumphs of his later years. Rob J has a varied and amazing life and how and why he becomes a physician and the journey he takes to train is, quite simply, sensational. We’re taken around England and given insight into the peripatetic life of a Barber-Surgeon (to whom Rob J apprentices himself), to France, across Europe and to war-riven Turkey and then Persia and its amazing culture and religious Otherness. Determined to train under the man he’s been told is the best physician in the world, Rob J makes incredible sacrifices: physical, emotional and, above all, spiritual. But in making these he gains more than his heart and mind’s desire.

The pace is wonderful, the characters so well drawn you feel emotionally attached to them in ways that are sometimes painful but always deep and meaningful. The settings are magnificently and realistically drawn and the different cuisines, the food and drink are mouth-wateringly described. I adored this book – the detail, the humanness of it and the way the macroscosm of the worlds and religions Rob J encounters are also microcosms of the everyday – of the humanity (or lack thereof) in us all.

Shaman is the sequel and I will read that with joy – only, for now, I want to savour the affects of this magnificent book – rightly hailed as a triumph. I cannot recommend it highly enough, so much so, I dare to say, read it, “I think you will love this…”

 

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Book Review: Inferno by Dan Brown

Dan Brown’s books come laden with so many expectations – and not all good. Savaged by many critics, and often unfairly, it is for his fans to decide whether or not one of his books deserve the kudos the sales suggest and, if you go by those alone, then his books are not only popular, but eminently readable.

Inferno, the fourth Robert Langdon book, is a strange and ofttimes predictable beast. While I have thoroughly enjoyed the previous Langdon outings (love a book that makes an academic an intellectual and action star – shades of Indiana Jones – and has as its core mystery literature, art and symbols) Inferno, for all that it presages the passionate poet Dante, flames and the burning heat of hell, left me mostly cold.

Once again, a quest features and a puzzle that’s centred on a famous work lies at the heart of the mystery, a mystery that begins when Langdon awakes in hospital in Florence with no memInferno (Robert Langdon, #4)ory of how he got there or why. When strangers try to take his life and a beautiful and clever female doctor offers rescue and potentially some answers to the blanks his memory has become, Langdon jumps (literally) at the chance.

Pursued relentlessly, able to solve cryptic questions and read the stories into and behind famous and old art, Langdon moves around Europe and Turkey, discovering friends and enemies with abandon. All the while, the reason for his memory lapse and deadly pursuit starts to become clear – and, if Langdon doesn’t find the answers required of him in time, then not only is his life forfeit, but the safety of the world is at stake.

Blending very relevant and fascinating modern science conundrums and a pressing social issue (no pun intended), Langdon is once again up against an all-powerful megalomaniac who will stop at nothing to see his vision realized.

Brown has the formula for these “intellectual thrillers’ down pat now. Only, the rush of Angels and Demons, the development of plot and character that made his earlier works retrospectively well-liked, has been sacrificed to a degree for too much didacticism. In many ways, Inferno is part travelogue and part historical, literary, art, and scientific treatise, as if Brown wants to prove his research and travel credentials by packing all the information into the novel. As a result, some of the characters function as little more than mouthpieces who serve this purpose alone. We are given asides about art, buildings, and scientific research – not all immediately pertinent to the story – that could have been delivered more subtly or not at all. They tell don’t show and the story suffers as a consequence. Perhaps this is also why so many of the characters are black or white in terms of their ideologies and motivation. Even when Brown tries to paint shades of grey (and he does) they are tinged with obvious good or evil hues that makes them unsurprising and sometimes dull.

For all that, this is still a page-turner, even if sometimes I was turning them because I wanted the tale to end. Overall, however, it’s a good holiday, escapist read. I knew what I was getting and in that sense, wasn’t disappointed. I do think some critics judge Brown as if he should have written War and Peace, Mrs Dalloway, or The Dubliners or at least judge him by weighty and incomparable literary criteria, when what he does write is thriller cum potboilers that are, as sales and other evidence attest, definitely crowd pleasers.

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