Published 2013
This is a long story, over 700 pages, which takes place in New Zealand during the time of the gold rush. As one might imagine there’s plenty of wheeling and dealing and added to it are some tales of the opium trade, its origins in China and a few of the men, both English and Chinese, who were caught up in it there. In this story they brought the trade with them to New Zealand.
What a tangled web the lust for gold is in Catton’s story. Walter Moody, a well-educated young man from England, is newly arrived on the coast and has had a very rough crossing, one so rough he feels lucky to be alive. Still stunned by the ordeal and by a man, phantom or real, he still can’t make out, he makes his way to the smoking room at the Crown Hotel. Unbeknownst to him, a dozen local men have gathered for a meeting about the death of Crosbie Wells, a local hermit. At the same time the wealthy prospector Emory Stains has disappeared and is feared dead. On the same day Anna Wetherell, the most popular whore in town is beaten so severely she collapses and ends up in jail, which it turns out is a far better place to be than the local hospital. A fortune in gold is found Crosbie Wells’ cabin after his death, and a smaller amount of gold is found sewn into the seams of Anna’s dress. Moody learns bits and pieces of the story and gets drawn into it further by relating that he was brought to shore by a ship captained by Francis Carver, who was Emory Staines’ business partner. The characters are inviting and the story kept me looking forward to my next chapter.
Ms. Catton includes in the book illustrations and mentions of astrological signs and meanings that I admit were completely lost on me. I know that for someone who keeps up with astrology more than I do, the novel would take on a whole new depth of meaning, but I managed to enjoy the book immensely without it.
drama
The Last Templar, by Raymond Khoury
Published 2005
Since the publication of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, any book mentioning the Knights Templar is bound to intrigue. The story begins with the fall of Acre and the Templar’s last stand in the holy city in 1291. A band of knights escapes from the battle carrying a small chest wrapped in velvet, its contents a well-kept secret, even from all but a few of the Templars themselves. They make their way to the Falcon Temple, a galley ship waiting in the harbor.
Moving forward to the 21st century, four horsemen dressed as Templars ride out of Central Park and into, literally, the Metropolitan Museum of Art where, guns blazing, still astride their horses, they steal several of the items on display at a special showing of Treasures of the Vatican. Witnessing the theft of an unusual object from behind untouched exhibits, Tess Chaykin, is terrified. After the fact, and reunited with her daughter and mother, who had been in the ladies’ room during the commotion, Tess is intrigued. The daughter of a well-known archeologist, and a trained archeologist herself Tess begins to wonder why this particular object was taken.
Sean Reilly is the FBI agent in charge of the investigation. When he questions Tess regarding the incident he realizes that she is holding back something, but doesn’t know what. Tess calls on experts she knows in the field and discovers that the object taken from the exhibit was an encoder, an ingenious device which the Templars used to code messages making them indecipherable to anyone else, even within the Catholic Church. What she and Reilly find out later is that one of the horsemen has discovered one of these messages and needs the device to break the code. Meanwhile the other three horsemen are dropping dead like flies, presumably killed by their leader.
The story continues to flash back to the events immediately after the knight’s escape from Jerusalem in 1291, the path of a small band of knights, the sinking of the Falcon Temple during a storm, the enigmatic reason behind the Knight Templar’s rise to power and subsequent fall. Tess and Reilly, for different reasons, try to stay a step ahead of the lone horseman’s quest to unearth the mysteries of that last ill-fated journey out of the holy land.
The High Mountains of Portugal, by Yann Martel
Published 2016
This is a story which takes place over several decades, starting in December, 1904. At the beginning we meet Tomas, who is on a mission to find a religious relic created by Father Ulisses in the seventeenth century. This mission masks the devastation Tomas suffered when he lost his lover and their son, as well as his father, all within one week. From that time onwards, Tomas has walked backwards wherever he goes. It is a protest against a fate so cruel that he feels his soul has perished. Finding the relic will be give him purpose, prestige as a curator at the Museum in Lisbon. It will give him a reason to live. Tomas starts out on his journey by visiting his wealthy uncle, the older brother of his father. His uncle has provided Tomas with an automobile, one of the first in the country, in which to make his journey. When Tomas realized he has to drive the contraption himself, he almost gives up the quest. But having nothing else to live for he carries on, struggling with the automobile and with the crowds who gather to see it. He encounters flat tires, fires, an ongoing search for fuel in a country not prepared for auto travel. He develops a ruse to keep the people from knowing he has an automobile. Whenever he approaches a town, he parks the vehicle outside the city, walks in and says he needs to buy moto-naptha for some horses infested with lice, the product being used mostly for that purpose. Poor Tomas suffers onward and achieves his quest, he finds the relic in a small town in the mountains of Portugal, but when his goal is almost within reach he accidentally kills a small boy with the horrid automobile and so his victory has caused him more grief than he can bear.
The next section of the book begins on the last day of December 1948, with Eusebio, a hospital pathologist in a town not far from Tomas’ church containing the relic. He is working late on his autopsy notes when his wife Maria knocks on the door of his study. Maria is very religious and she wants to explain to her husband how she has found a relationship between the writings of Agatha Christie, whom they both admire, and their Savior, Jesus of Nazareth. After his wife leaves, another knock comes on the door, this time of another Maria, who bears the body of her husband in a suitcase. As it turns out, they are the parents of the child that Tomas has accidentally killed with his uncle’s automobile. This second Maria requests that Eusebio perform an autopsy on her husband, even though she knows that he has died of grief for their only child.
In the last part of the book begins in 1981 with Peter Tovy, a Canadian politician. Peter has a happy life until his wife becomes ill and shortly thereafter dies. His son and daughter-in-law divorce and Peter becomes estranged from his family. While in the midst of his grief over his wife’s death Peter takes a trip to Oklahoma, to the zoo. But the zoo is unfortunately closed for renovation so the administrator tells him of a chimpanzee refuge not far away. Peter visits and is compelled to buy one of the mail chimps, a very laid back primate named Odo. Having made arrangements to pick up the ape in a couple of weeks Peter realizes that he will have to move from Canada and decides to go to Portugal, the country where he was born before his parents immigrated to Canada when he was two years old.
This was a very strange story, told over several decades but the author tells an intriguing story. There is much more to it than just odd behavior like walking backwards, or even buying a chimp while on vacation. There is grief throughout but also humor and imagination intertwined with simple lives in the High Mountains of Portugal