I admire Bayle’s handling of some of the problems he set for himself. I’ll start with the level of diction in the dialogue. His milieu requires straight every-day speech between characters, as does any novel’s, really, but he sets a tone that keeps it from sounding like 21st Century conversation. And neither is it too stilted. It’s hard to see how it could be improved.
His pacing is strong, even jolting at times, as deathly threat and delivering rescue happen in rapid succession. We spend the bulk of his book as baffled as is the lead character about why he should be so maniacally sought, rescued, and re-sought by the two opposed sides. And who are these two warring parties, anyway? Bayle pulls off one of the trickiest effects in the book, the hero’s slow-dawning realization, and consequent growth into, his role in the world, about as well as it could be done.
I wondered a few times about the plotting. I was troubled by his initial desperate flight from his home abbey. One expects daring escapes, hiding in laundry baskets as thuggish churchmen comb the town, that sort of thing. And instead we get a sort of leisurely conversation with a witch-like figure, a forlorn beggar in a muddy street, who gives Brother Jan his initial deliverance. As the rapid-fire events of the book unfold, however, my questions faded.
The book contains another strong attraction: the leader of the side that wants Brother Jan alive engages him in a lengthy theological and liturgical discussion near book’s end. It rings true for anyone familiar with Luther’s objections to the 16th-Century Church. The young monk, although extensively read, is eventually dazzled by the learning, the logic, and the charitable thinking of his guide.
Above all, this is a rousing adventure, and I read on avidly as each rescue and hair’s-breadth escape delivered our hero safely. It’s unusual that such an ecclesiastical dispute with so much death and destruction could be kept secret, which it is even within the book’s constructed reality. Once you get past this sticking point, you can enjoy the adventures for what they are, good fun as a larger mystery unfolds.
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