The Lost Book of the Grail

By -


 The Lost Book of the Grail, by Charlie Lovett

A little while ago, I had this novel recommended to me as one of the best novels the person had read this year.  Given that she reads a good deal more than I do, this was quite a recommendation, so I got it from the library.  Lovett has a fun take on the Grail legend, planting it in Trollope's fictional county of Barsetshire.

Arthur Prescott teaches at the local university, but what he really likes is living in Barchester's cathedral close, going to Evensong (even though he's an atheist), and studying the Holy Grail in the cathedral's library.  Arthur's grandfather taught him that the Grail was real, and located right there in Barsetshire.  Then, to Arthur's dismay, Bethany arrives from the US to digitize the medieval manuscripts in the library, which might possibly be all right if it didn't raise the possibility that the cathedral would sell the books off.  And Bethany is suspiciously interested in the Holy Grail, too.  What if she finds it and hands it over to the American billionaire financing the project?

But Bethany is a fellow Grail addict, and Arthur finds her clever observations helpful.  They decide to team up with two more friends and see if they can solve the mystery of where the 83rd manuscript went, find the lost Book of St. Ewolda, and figure out whether the Grail might actually be real.

The modern story is interspersed with flashbacks to important points in the history of the abbey and cathedral.  Lovett puts in references to Trollope's books, scattering some familiar names across the story, but wisely never features a scene with those characters.  It's fun.

I was, however, a bit disappointed that Lovett never once acknowledges the existence of Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novels, which he could have done pretty easily without weighing down the story.  All three could exist together.

It is, however, a really fun story that winds in and out of history, and sets up a delightful puzzle.  The ending is entirely satisfying and I enjoyed it very much.  This isn't a cheap take-off, but a good story that many bookish Barsetshire and Grail lovers can happily read.

Comments

  1. Laurie @ RelevantObscuritySeptember 17, 2021 at 10:01 PM

    I thought this was such a fun book. I didn't like the romance, though, it didn't work for me. But all the talk about history and taking care of old books was really interesting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JeanSeptember 19, 2021 at 6:37 PM

      The romance wasn't the best part. (Come to think of it, is Bethany the dreaded MPDG??) The books were good!

      Delete
  2. ed.pendragonSeptember 18, 2021 at 3:14 PM

    I've had variable reactions to Lovett's previous work: his Shakespeare-themed first novel was quite enjoyable, but the conclusion of his Austen thriller failed to satisfy.
    https://calmgrove.wordpress.com/tag/charlie-lovett/?orderby=date&order=ASC

    And now there's this Arthurian title which tantalises this former enthusiast for the medieval tales, but I've yet to read any Trollope--will I be disadvantaged here?
    -- Chris

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JeanSeptember 19, 2021 at 6:36 PM

      Chris, no, I don't think that would be a problem. Lovett drops names and place-names from Trollope's books, but not more; it's more that fictional Barsetshire makes a nice place to imagine Grail adventures. There is actually not a lot of Arthurian material -- Lovett does not spend his time consulting every Arthurian storyteller, just Malory and Geoffrey of Monmouth. He plays more with Tennyson. There's a whole lot of English church history.

      Delete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more