{"id":8357,"date":"2020-04-06T13:04:40","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T17:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8357"},"modified":"2020-04-06T13:04:42","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T17:04:42","slug":"lent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/06\/lent\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jo Walton’s Among Others<\/a>\n<\/em>was one of my favorite novels from my reading of (nearly) all of the Hugo\nwinners, a perfect use of fantasy elements to elevate a brilliant story, rather\nthan relying on the fantasy (or sci-fi) bits to provide the entertainment. Her\nlatest novel, Lent<\/a><\/em>,\ngoes a bit further in leaning on a single fantastical quirk to take the\nreal-life story of Girolamo Savonarola, a martyred monk in 1490s Italy who was believed\nto have the gift of prophecy, and turn it into an extensive meditation on how\nsmall choices in our lives can have extensive, long-lasting effects on our world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first third or so of the book seems like a\nstraightforward telling of the last six years of Girolamo’s life, from 1492\nuntil the infamous “bonfire of the vanities” that led to a turning of\npublic sentiment against him and his eventual imprisonment, torture, and\nhanging at the hands of the “do as we say, not as we do” Catholic\nChurch. Girolamo preaches against corruption and secular art, gets under the\nskin of the Pope and other powerful clergy, and eventually they manage to win\nthe political battle and execute him. After his death, however, we learn\nsomething about Girolamo before he returns to earth, back in 1492, to try it\nall over again \u2013 but this time with the knowledge of what transpired in his previous\nlife, as well as that new bit of information, and thus can alter his choices to\nsee if he can get the outcome he ultimately desires. He’ll fail again, return\nto earth, make new decisions, fail again, and so on until the final chapter\nwhere we will learn if he gets it “right” in the last attempt in the\nnovel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That conceit itself isn’t new, but the reason Girolamo gets\nto play life as a sort of role-playing game where he restarts from his last save\nis a new twist that provides a stark backdrop to the choices he makes \u2013 and, in\nmany ways, makes some of them more selfless than before. Walton thus gives us a\nmeditation on free will and chaos theory within a story about grace and\nsalvation, one that upends traditional Catholic theology while playing around\nwithin its borders. There’s a slow build in the first section, but once you see\nwhat’s going on, and Girolamo himself is armed with the same knowledge, the\nentire concept becomes more interesting, and every subsequent decision that he\nmakes carries much more weight, even when you know that it’s going to ultimately\nfail and lead him back to restart the cycle from some point in his past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Girolamo himself makes for a fascinating protagonist as\nWalton writes him, although I think she’s softened his character a little to\nemphasize his generosity of spirit and belief in the church as a way to spread\nthe religious and mundane philosophies of Jesus Christ in the world, thus\ndeemphasizing to some extent his puritanical beliefs and attacks on secular art\nand culture. There’s one scene of a burning of secular or “profane” works,\nalthough even within that Girolamo is presented as more resigned to the event\nthan the fanatic he appears to have actually been. He becomes friends with more\nthan one character who is committing adultery, including a woman who would\ncertainly have been seen as “fallen” in that time, which seems like\nit may not have been consistent with the actual Girolamo (although it’s a\nreasonable use of poetic license).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The magic of Walton’s writing seems to be in the getting\nthere more than the destination itself, as I think it’s fairly clear where Lent<\/em>\nis likely to end; it’s how Walton gets to that point that captivates. I wish\nshe’d been able to give a bit more depth to the panoply of characters around Girolamo,\nmany of whom are interesting even when a bit two-dimensional and just required\nmore page time to help flesh them out, but the main character is so fascinating\n\u2013 as is the side character Crookback, whose real-life identity may be apparent\nto astute readers \u2013 that the book still soars without it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up: Jos\u00e9 Saramago’s The Double<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jo Walton’s Among Others was one of my favorite novels from my reading of (nearly) all of the Hugo winners, a perfect use of fantasy elements to elevate a brilliant story, rather than relying on the fantasy (or sci-fi) bits to provide the entertainment. Her latest novel, Lent, goes a bit further in leaning on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1161,1159,122,161,1058,524],"class_list":["post-8357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2019-books","tag-2019-novels","tag-fantasy","tag-highly-recommended","tag-novels","tag-science-fiction","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8358,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8357\/revisions\/8358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}