‘Privately, Cormac can’t see why the tasks of chapel-building and book-copying are so much holier than food-preserving. The ceaseless hum of prayer always rising from that little hive.’ The glory of the books reproduced there, and then generations of the copies’ offspring. The extraordinary pair of islands he found in the western ocean how he claimed the higher one for God, and founded a great retreat in the clouds. Is it arrogance to think it? The legend of how the priest and scholar Artt set off, with just two humble companions, in a small boat. ‘Artt finds himself wondering if perhaps tales will be told about him. For Artt, the priest and scholar who takes Cormac and Trian with him on his zealous crusade, faith is everything, all he lives for, and unsurprisingly, the means to his ends, that is, the way he intends on immortalising himself. For Trian, the faith is his salvation, as we come to know more about as the novel nears its end. His conversion to Christianity is not as altruistic as what would normally be required for a monk, there were other factors at play for him. For Cormac in particular, the oldest monk of the trio, he still has a living awareness of the old pagan ways, his family died of the plague before he was a Christian and they died as heathens according to his new faith. It was also quite spiritual in the sense that the three characters are Christian monks, their lives dedicated to a faith still quite new to Ireland. For a start, it was set in the seventh-century, and I have never read historical fiction set that far back to date. This was an entirely different novel to anything I’ve read before. She has such versatility, both in terms of style and subject. Emma Donoghue just keeps on giving and giving with every novel she releases.
0 kommentar(er)
