Sarum...

Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Imagine a grand mural in a grand, several-storeyed palace. Imagine that palace has secret chambers, a humble attic or two. And the mural travels from space to space, beginning at the entrance. The mural is a story within many stories, a giant narrative of people and their descendants through time. Their stories spring from Salisbury, medieval Sarum. Watching over the lives of these people is one constant...Salisbury Cathedral. It too grows and changes and grows through time. Edward Rutherfurd's Sarum is a masterpiece, first chronicling one man's emergence from the world's darker place to the Salisbury Plain, then the interaction of many families and their descendants, all the way to World War II encampments. In between, the Black Death, colonisation, markets, cathedral challenges, loves and heartaches, social tensions and visions intercept the flow of many family lives. Here is time on a grand scale, but the intimacy of characters and emotions is not neglected. We feel Jane Shockley's yearning for Jethro Wilson. But that cannot be. They come from different worlds. We feel Jane's stoic dignity in accepting this fate. We feel many stories and we learn so much about the colours and the mores of many times passing. Indeed, this novel is a vivid mural painted with words.

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old worlds

many

old lifetimes

sometimes

the eyes of yesteryear

seem to watch

sadly

on new worlds

and wonder

why

The Red Poppy Begins

The Red Poppy (2012) - David Hill
opens with the words:
Jim McLeod wrote to his mother and his sister Edith. He said nothing about the day to come, nor the mud and the rats. He didn't mention the piles of stretchers waiting for the dead and wounded.




Even in war time
Even when the winds are sour
Somewhere is sweetness




I wrote a poetic review of The Red Poppy HERE!

Linking to:
Book Beginnings on Fridays

The Midnight Zoo Begins

The Midnight Zoo (2010) - Sonya Hartnett
opens with the words:
If the old bell had been hanging in the steeple it would have rung to announce midnight, twelve solemn iron klongs which would have woken the villagers from their sleep and startled any small creature new to the village and unaccustomed to the noise. But the bell had fallen from its height weeks ago, and now lay buried in silence beneath rubble; no small creature foraged in corners, because every scrap had already been carried away in beak and mouth and paw; and no woken villagers lay grumbling, for the people, like their bell, were gone.

In my last post, Poetry of the Midnight Zoo, I wrote a poetic review of this book.
But that opening still haunts me.


The fall of the bell
Like the fall of living souls
Like a parched silence


Linking to:
Book Beginnings on Fridays