The House of Doctor Dee - Peter Ackroyd

The House of Doctor Dee by Peter Ackroyd, Penguin Books, 277 pages

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

When we start looking for eternity, we find it everywhere.

A strange, complex book, neither biography nor historical fiction, but rather a writer's impression of John Dee and his strange work. Dee, a 16th-century English alchemist, is perhaps best known for having been Queen Elizabeth's personal astrologer and before that for serving time in the Tower under Queen Mary under the suspicion of treason. Ackroyd's unusual account of Dee's life recounts these facts, as well as information about John Dee's impressive personal library, his work as a mathematician, as well as his later interest in the occult, which included seances aided by a crystal ball. It is the supernatural that dominates the novel, and creates a strong and mysterious connection between Dee's 16th century London and the city in the present day, where Matthew Palmer, "professional researcher", inherits a house that once belonged to Dee. John and Matthew's stories are told in parallel; as Dee's ambition spirals out of control and he becomes more and more entangled in experiments with the paranormal at the expense of real human relationships, Matthew investigates the strange history of the house and the disturbing events that took place there, from the 16th century all the way through until his father's residence in Dee's old house. Along with Matthew, we learn about Dee's recipe for creating a homunculus - a miniature creature that resembles a human, grown by means of alchemy and magic - and his theories on the existence of a mystical, underground London which has been concealed from human knowledge since the time of Atlantis. Both characters undergo a transformation; Matthew, who starts out as a reclusive but perfectly ordinary historian, taps into the dark side of his personality under the strange influence of the house and the ghosts that seem to inhabit it. John Dee, on the other hand, appears to re-live the story of Doctor Faustus, as his wife's death makes him realise the importance of genuine human connections and the folly of seeking knowledge purely for the sake of power and ambition. It is not altogether clear how, but the characters gradually develop an awareness of one another and even appear to communicate across space and time at the novel's conclusion.

This was not an easy read, nor a pleasant one at times. I found myself increasingly repelled by Matthew, who appears to devolve into a crazed, animalistic creature as the power of the house and Dee's work sucks him in. He urinates and defecates outdoors, kills a bird with his bare hands and has extremely brutal sex with a woman encountered on a nighttime walk. It is as if he is unwittingly tapping into the dark powers that Edward Kelley, Dee's evil accomplice, wanted to harness to create the homunculus. In parallel with Dee's change, Matthew also grows to realise the importance of human relationships as he reconciles with his estranged mother and lets go of the memory of his twisted father; when confronted with a vision of the homunculus, he rejects the dark impulses it represents.

As my dislike for Matthew grew, I found myself gradually warming to the character of John Dee. Initially haughty, proud and emotionally dead, he is truly transformed and sees the error of his ways. When his father dies, all he can think of is trying to tease out clues from him about a possible buried treasure; in contrast, when his wife lies dying as a result of Kelley's scheming and maybe even poison, Dee cares for her tenderly and admits that his immense library and hard-won knowledge is worthless when he faces the prospect of losing his lifelong companion. His inner change is reflected in two contrasting visions he experiences in the aftermath of the strange seances he and Kelley undertake. The first is an image of a world without love, which includes a bizarre and unsettling scene of the queen conducting a postmortem on John Dee's own body in front of him, taking it apart piece by piece in a travesty of a medical investigation and then hungrily consuming the raw flesh. The second is a scene set in an Eden-like garden which represents knowledge gleaned not from books and experiments but from nature and the study of mankind; there, his companion is his late wife, who advises him to stop his mad quest for power and ambition.

The House of Doctor Dee is a strange, convoluted book that flits between modern-day events and something that is certainly a version of what John Dee's life may have been, but definitely does not claim to be a historical account of the past. Compelling at times, tedious and repellent as others, it's not a novel I can form a definite positive or negative opinion about. It's definitely one that had me wondering at the author's sanity. I don't regret reading it, but I can't say I fully enjoyed it.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? - Jeannette Winterson

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson, Random House, Kindle Edition

★ ★ ★ ★ ★  

I have a memory - true or not true?
Back in 1985, Jeanette Winterson burst onto the literary scene with her semi-autobiographical first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The heroine, Jeanette, grows up in the Northern town of Accrington, the adopted child of two evangelical Christians: her meek, introverted father, and his wife, the towering, larger-than-life madwoman she refers to as Mrs. Winterson. In a house where the Bible is the only acceptable reading material, Jeanette squirrels away paperbacks under her mattress and, when Mrs. Winterson finds and burns them, resolves to start writing her own books. The desire to escape the confines of impoverished, industrial Accrington grows in Jeanette, especially after her love affair with another girl is discovered and Mrs. Winterson, along with her fundamentalist church, quite literally attempts to exorcise the 'demon' of lesbianism from her. Finally, given an ultimatum, she chooses freedom and her sexual identity, and Mrs. Winterson kicks her out with the parting words, "Why be happy when you could be normal?"  

I am often asked, in a tick-box kind of way, what is 'true' and what is not 'true' in Oranges . (...) I can't answer these questions. Twenty-six years later, Winterson revisits her autobiography to fill in some of the missing gaps in Orangers. What emerges is a far sadder account of a deprived, sometimes violent childhood, and an adult life fraught with the lingering insecurities of someone rejected first by her teenage birth mother and then by her dysfunctional adoptive mother. In spite of the profound grief conveyed in this book, it is no misery memoir. Winterson emerges triumphant from a horrific bout of depression triggered by the end of a long-term relationship and the search for her birth mother that began with an adoption certificate found amongst her late mother's belongings. She describes regaining confidence in her ability to love and be loved, and a guns-blazing return to creativity. Stubbornly (and quite rightly) proud of her accomplishments, in Why be Happy, Winterson is as uncompromising and in-your-face as ever about the importance of art, language and education as sustenance for the soul in an increasingly utilitarian, consumer-driven society. Why Be Happy may be a more sombre and detailed version of the events first described in Oranges, but it holds no more claim to being 'true' than Winterson's first book. It hardly matters whether Mrs. Winterson's varicose vein really ruptured when Jeanette returned home and reasserted her identity as a lesbian, or whether it is possible that Jeanette's father could have slept through an air raid in which the house around him was reduced to rubble. Ultimately, to enjoy Winterson's work is to savour the elegance of language, drink up the writing like a fine wine and let yourself go enough to feel some of the same passion that inspired it.

Yes, the stories are dangerous, [Mrs. Winterson] was right. A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes, Vintage, 512 pages
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

An intriguing fictional account of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's real life campaign to clear the name of George Edalji, an English-born, Indian solicitor sentenced for the Great Wyrley Outrages, a series of vicious attacks on farm animals in rural Staffordshire. The events themselves, their background and their consequences are told alternately from Arthur and George's points of view, giving insight into their surprising similarities as well as cultural and personal differences.
Conan Doyle emerges as a truly larger-than-life character: successful doctor, athlete and eventually the famous writer we now know him to be. Although he resents being confused with Sherlock Holmes, his most famous creation, Arthur feels partly duty-bound and partly personally compelled to use his deductive powers to prove George's innocence. The case is brought to his attention as he fights apathy and depression following the death of his first wife and a crisis in his feelings for his mistress. The challenge of detective work proves to be his salvation, reinvigorating the middle-aged writer and bringing back his zest for life. In spite of his foibles and eccentricities, the biggest of which is his dysfunctional, pseudo-chivalrous attitude to women (he and his 'mistress' remain in a purely platonic relationship for a decade, and he vehemently opposes women's suffrage), Arthur's keen intellect and generosity make him a profoundly  sympathetic character. A touching illustration is his kind conduct when acting as a celebrity judge in a strongman competition: seeing the winner walk off alone with no money for accommodation, he puts the athlete up in a hotel room for the night.
George is the physical and in many ways psychological opposite to Arthur. Slight of stature, extremely near-sighted and highly literal-minded, George is a "nerd" by today's standards and considered odd even in his own time. The son of a vicar, with whom he continues to live well into his twenties, George leads a sheltered life and appears supremely naive and innocent. He holds the highest standards for himself and others, refusing to attribute his social isolation and eventual conviction to racial hatred. Indeed, his refusal to view himself as any different or lower in status to white Englishmen verges on denial. But like Arthur, George has the logical and (seemingly) objective, detached mind of a detective. Having heard of Conan Doyle and the Sherlock Holmes stories, he appeals to the author to help demonstrate his innocence. Interestingly, although he deeply appreciates Arthur's help, George also recognises that Conan Doyle's defence of Edalji is just as flawed and derived from conclusions based on circumstantial evidence as the original indictment. The vivid portrayal of these two eccentric characters is the main selling point of the book. The novel really comes into its own when Arthur and George eventually meet to exchange ideas about the case and discover each other's similarities: a keen intelligence, a mutual passion for justice, and a love of order and routine in life. Another fascinating part of the book is Conan Doyle's heated exchange with Captain Anson, Chief Constable of Staffordshire, who reveals hitherto unknown facts about George and maintains that he must be guilty. Ultimately, we hope that George is innocent and, like Arthur, want to believe it. But nothing is certain, there are no credible witnesses to the crime, and no one knows what happened; to this day, the Wyrley Outrages remain an unsolved mystery. It's not the solution but the detective work involved that brings satisfaction, as Arthur himself discovers. Getting to know the two characters through their own subjective points of view is a detective story in itself.
I rated Arthur and George 4/5 - overall, a fascinating story with well-depicted characters with a slightly disappointing ending which emphasizes Arthur's obsession with spiritualism.