By: Carrie DonovanThe front of the novel Heresy, by author J.S. Parris, states that the book is a ‘historical thriller.’
Perhaps "historically-based, occasionally kind of intriguing work of fiction" was too long to fit on the cover.
The novel is based on the story of Giordano Bruno, a 16th century Italian monk, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher whose insistence that the Earth orbited the sun and that the universe extended infinitely into space proved a bit too radical for his Catholic contemporaries.
It would be hard to imagine a more interesting or tumultuous setting than post-Reformation England, nor a more fascinating character than the rebellious Bruno. Perhaps then, it is Parris’ rigid structure alone that manages to transform her lovably free-spirited protagonist into the pawn of a formulaic plot that reminds the reader of a Dan Brown concept gone stale.
We are first introduced to the main character, affectionately known as Bruno, when he is caught in the monastery's latrine reading Erasmus' banned "Commentaries,” a crime punishable by death. After his escape to nowhere in particular, save wherever the Inquisition will not be, Bruno finds himself in London, where he receives a mission from Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, to root out Oxford University Catholics who may be plotting to overthrow the Protestant queen.
But apparently Bruno is also on a mission independent of the crown. He is aiming to uncover the whereabouts of a missing manuscript that purportedly contains the lost wisdom of the Egyptians, and a “secret that could destroy the authority of the Christian church.” Alas, both his official and unofficial missions are driven off course by a series of dramatic killings on the Oxford campus, which further complicates the Protestant-Catholic divide that threatens to destroy both the college and the kingdom as a whole.
Parris wastes no time in suggesting that things are not always as they seem. Not suggesting, so much as having various cryptic characters lay it out in painfully obvious terms. “No man in Oxford is as he seems, Doctor Bruno,” says the spiky and gnomic man in the corner.
Perhaps the art of foreshadowing could simply be left to the every-other-paragraph description of the weather, which always seems to be as gray and bleak as Bruno’s hopes of solving the murders before that cryptic-but-eerily-familiar symbol or Latin phrase that the unknown stranger slid under his door in the nighttime translates into that next we-should-have-seen-it-coming murder.
Then again, perhaps it is this predictability and comfortably familiar storytelling style that has propelled the novel from obscurity in the first place. It may not be wholly satisfying, but beneath the layers of exaggerated code-breaking ah-ha moments lies an underlying message that represents what Bruno was all about in the first place; a truth above the politics of religious difference.
Indeed, the bulk of the novel’s underlying message is probably easiest summed up by Bruno’s near death declaration that he only wants “to be left in peace to understand the mysteries of the universe in his own way." To which his adversary mockingly replies, "Ah. Tolerance." Whether it is worth tolerating the previous 430 pages to arrive at the moral fiber of this remarkably lackluster caper is another question entirely.
Perhaps "historically-based, occasionally kind of intriguing work of fiction" was too long to fit on the cover.
The novel is based on the story of Giordano Bruno, a 16th century Italian monk, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher whose insistence that the Earth orbited the sun and that the universe extended infinitely into space proved a bit too radical for his Catholic contemporaries.
It would be hard to imagine a more interesting or tumultuous setting than post-Reformation England, nor a more fascinating character than the rebellious Bruno. Perhaps then, it is Parris’ rigid structure alone that manages to transform her lovably free-spirited protagonist into the pawn of a formulaic plot that reminds the reader of a Dan Brown concept gone stale.
We are first introduced to the main character, affectionately known as Bruno, when he is caught in the monastery's latrine reading Erasmus' banned "Commentaries,” a crime punishable by death. After his escape to nowhere in particular, save wherever the Inquisition will not be, Bruno finds himself in London, where he receives a mission from Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, to root out Oxford University Catholics who may be plotting to overthrow the Protestant queen.
But apparently Bruno is also on a mission independent of the crown. He is aiming to uncover the whereabouts of a missing manuscript that purportedly contains the lost wisdom of the Egyptians, and a “secret that could destroy the authority of the Christian church.” Alas, both his official and unofficial missions are driven off course by a series of dramatic killings on the Oxford campus, which further complicates the Protestant-Catholic divide that threatens to destroy both the college and the kingdom as a whole.
Parris wastes no time in suggesting that things are not always as they seem. Not suggesting, so much as having various cryptic characters lay it out in painfully obvious terms. “No man in Oxford is as he seems, Doctor Bruno,” says the spiky and gnomic man in the corner.
Perhaps the art of foreshadowing could simply be left to the every-other-paragraph description of the weather, which always seems to be as gray and bleak as Bruno’s hopes of solving the murders before that cryptic-but-eerily-familiar symbol or Latin phrase that the unknown stranger slid under his door in the nighttime translates into that next we-should-have-seen-it-coming murder.
Then again, perhaps it is this predictability and comfortably familiar storytelling style that has propelled the novel from obscurity in the first place. It may not be wholly satisfying, but beneath the layers of exaggerated code-breaking ah-ha moments lies an underlying message that represents what Bruno was all about in the first place; a truth above the politics of religious difference.
Indeed, the bulk of the novel’s underlying message is probably easiest summed up by Bruno’s near death declaration that he only wants “to be left in peace to understand the mysteries of the universe in his own way." To which his adversary mockingly replies, "Ah. Tolerance." Whether it is worth tolerating the previous 430 pages to arrive at the moral fiber of this remarkably lackluster caper is another question entirely.
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