Lent (Jo Walton)

[jsburbidge]

The problem with reviewing Lent is that the hinge of the plot occurs halfway through the novel, and would constitute a spoiler, so one has to talk around it. At the reading / signing I picked it up at, her selection was well enough into the book but carefully just before the hinge point.

The first half of the novel is an outwardly fairly accurate historical narrative about Savonarola, from his viewpoint (tight third person). Internally, it's varied by the fact that Savonarola can actually see demons (and banish them) and has fairly accurate foreknowledge of a number of things in the immediate future.

(I'm pretty sure that, quite aside from the fantastic / supernatural elements, the historical Savonarola didn't think like that, either, because, essentially, nobody in the Fifteenth Century did. This is a regular problem with no general solution in historical novels; to make a character sympathetic the author has to be ahistorical. Or they can choose to have only unsympathetic characters, which would have destroyed this particular book. Or they can just have a take-no-prisoners approach and display characters as positive with all their period faults; Dunnett tends towards this last path, but not many authors do. Or they can choose a central character who really does seem to be radically unusual for their time, like Alfred the Great (cf. GGK's The Last Light of the Sun). Let's just note that there is a real debate about whether Savonarola should be viewed positively or negatively; and that he really did have affinities and friendships with contemporary humanists. There's even an ongoing argument whether he should be beatified. So the thrust of the characterisation is not wildly off-base.)

The second half of the book has been compared to the movie Groundhog Day, with multiple reruns of history. In the universe of this book it's certainly possible to change history, with different popes, different monarchs (in one iteration Richard, Duke of Gloucester is a mercenary leader in Italy rather than King of England), and different lifespans for some important historical figures. It just won't stay that way from a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. It's also about a learning and growth curve on the part of Savonarola. And it provides a mechanism for full apocatastasis, which is to this novel much as the Republic was to Thessaly.

There are clearly some versions of apocatastasis which are heretical; there are others which may be orthodox, though even those get some traditionalists hot under their clerical collars. (Hans Urs von Balthasar's Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? is a carefully reasoned defense of a version compatible with orthodoxy; despite von Balthasar's pre-eminence it provoked angry reactions from traditionalists.) One of the problems with full apocatastasis is that change is possible only in time, and change is required for repentance; it has been speculated (among those who speculate about these things) that the fallen angels fell in the instant of their creation, with no Miltonic war in heaven. Origen (who believed in apocatastasis) also thought that the whole temporal framework postdated the fall (he's an early example of reading Genesis allegorically).

As with the Platonic-universe-with-Greek-gods of the Thessaly books, this particular form of the Christian universe is a delivery mechanism for a story in Jo's hands; the orthodoxy of the presentation is rather peripheral, and of no great concern to her. But it's worth noting that the fact that some very acute minds have defended it renders its compatibility with our lived experience more plausible, along WSOD lines.

If I had to sum up the book in a couple of lines, it would be as careful stage-setting followed by a fun roller-coaster ride. As always, Jo's prose is clear and accessible, her characters engaging, and the ideas worth paying attention to.

Comments

[ndrosen]

I enjoyed reading your review; I posted a less learned review of the book some time ago.