The Great Passion - James Runcie

The Great Passion by James Runcie is a historical fiction novel set in the early 1700s, centered on the creation by J.S. Bach of the Passion According to St. Matthew, BWV 244, which he presented at St. Thomas’s in Leipzig. The story is told through the eyes of a red-haired young man, Stefan Silbermann, who has been sent to the school at St. Thomas’s to distract him from the pain of losing his mother to an unnamed disease. Because he has red hair, he is picked on by the other boys. He runs away, is befriended by an oboe player, and eventually returned to the cantor - J.S. Bach. Stefan also has a beautiful soprano singing voice.

Runcie portrays the musical turmoil that surrounds the many members of the Bach family, the rivalries between musicians, visits from Telemann, Silbermann’s childhood crush on Bach’s daughter, the sudden devastating death of another daughter, and the horrific execution of a thief. All of this is interspersed with religious quotations in Latin and German, as though you are reading through a symphonic score. The story gradually builds to the presentation of the Passion, which occurs at the end of young Silbermann’s school term, after which he returns home to carry on the family business of building organs, reluctantly leaving behind his mentor and the love of his life.

Passion is reflected on many levels throughout this story, which portrays Bach as a complex family man whose head is bursting with music, all of which is driven by a passion for God. It is rare to read a book where work produced by a central character can be listened to while you read, almost as though he is sitting beside you.

The German and the Latin slow the story down, but the novel is a well-written portrayal of a remarkable musical genius.

Canary Girls

Canary Girls by Jennifer Chiavernini is the story of Lucy, April, and Helen and their friends who work in an arsenal in London during World War I making explosive shells. They are from different backgrounds and have different motivations to take the jobs, adding powdered TNT into the shells. They were known as munitionettes and the TNT made their skin turn yellow and took the color from their hair.

April is a 19-year-old former housemaid who follows her co-worker, Marjorie, to the city and the factory for higher wages and greater freedom.

Lucy is the wife of a star footballer who is compelled to join a fighting force.

Helen is the daughter of a German professor who falls in love and marries one of her father’s promising students, who turns out to be the son of a wealthy family that owns the arsenal.

Much of the book occurs when they are all together at the factory. They form a football team for recreation and end up playing in a regular munitions league. It seemed quite fitting to be reading this during the World Cup.

I found this book to be unnecessarily long. One of the issues of historical fiction is the difference between the temporal chain and the causal chain of events. As an author, it is easy to get swept away describing the historical events that naturally follow along, day after day in a temporal chain. The characters’ experience arc are a causal chain. When a character sits next to a beautiful woman in a bar and they end of having an affair, that is a link in their causal chain - this happens because of that. Leaning on the events in the temporal chain - Wednesday happens because it comes after Tuesday - does not change the character arcs which is the point of telling a story about people.

Another problem with following the temporal chain is maintaining the point of view. How does the protagonist know how the war is going? Too often in this book Chiaverini loses that point of view, diving into a magic narrator, that relates the history to the reader. I think about 100 of those pages could have been cut.

Becoming Mrs. Mulberry

Becoming Mrs. Mulberry by Jackie French is the tale of an Australian woman, Agnes Glock, who wanted to be a doctor and went to Scotland to study. The story begins in Australia in 1924. The Great War wreaked havoc on the world, and remotely affected citizens didn’t like it. They did all they could to avoid seeing the injured and maimed, despite the sacrifices made.

One of the injured was Douglas Mulberry, who suffered through several horrific events in the war, including being buried under a pile of dead bodies. He was from a wealthy Australian family who now appears to be eager to bury him again under a label of insanity in order to acquire control of the family fortune. Douglas’s sister, Hortense Louise Victoria Mulberry or Mulberry Puddin’ does not want that to happen because she loves her brother, and from a personal point of view, her own income would be cut off by their uncle once he declared Douglas insane and gained control of the Mulberry fortune. Puddin’ convinces Agnes to marry Douglas, and she rescues him, marries him, and takes him back to Australia. Agnes does not easily fill the role of a wealthy society woman. She is too kind and thoughtful, so instead of becoming the Mrs. Mulberry society expects her to be, she builds her own version of the role.

Jackie French is an excellent writer. Her scenic and food descriptions are exceptional. There are a lot of unusual animals in Australia that do a lot of unusual things. French connects nature to the characters harmoniously.

The plot clearly shows Agnes struggling with her new role and her new resources, but the characters develop more effectively than the story itself. There is the ongoing conflict with her trying to settle into her role, but the sub-story drama rises and sets too quickly, with not quite enough color to fully develop.

Becoming Mrs. Mulberry is an interesting travelog of post-Great War Australia and a good read.