I hesitate now, before posting this review of Rhiannon by Vicki Grove (GP Putnam Sons, 2007). The fact is I wanted to fall head over heels in love with this story. For one, I respect the editor who sent it to me. Two, Grove is a Midwesterner and I tend to be a one-woman pep rally for what I call local writers. And three, how excited was I to receive a free copy to celebrate its release. I was one step away from being among those lucky folk who get ARCs!
I probably wouldn’t have made it past Chapter One if it weren’t for those reasons. I’d pick it up but find myself nodding off a few pages into it. Still I picked it up each day, hoping to find a reason to stay up past my bedtime.
I tried to put a spin on the disappointment. How could this experience improve my own writing? Why didn’t it work for me? I should like it. The time: 12th century England, its lingering pagan habits in conflict with a growing, powerful Christian movement. The settings: a picturesque bluff, Roman ruins, an eclectic medieval village. The plot: a brutal murder with an unknown victim and a wrongly accused man. The characters: a family of women who offer solace and healing to The Forgotten, a kind monk, a feisty and reckless chicken mistress, a mysterious Man Who Sleeps, a ghost who wanders the forest.
I think it came down to point of view. Grove created fully developed characters with compelling motives and backstories. She writes beautiful, descriptive passages. But often I’d find myself fully aware I was reading historical fiction written by a modern writer. And the faint lure would vanish. I’d see a load of laundry to be folded or remember that episode of Ugly Betty was still on the DVR, and I’d put the book down.
True, historical fiction usually isn’t the first thing I pull off the shelf, but I’ve read excellent examples. In her debut A Curse Dark as Gold, Elizabeth C. Bunce never once gives you a chance to recall that you live in the 21st century filled with laptop computers, plasma screen televisions and hybrid automobiles. No, you live at a nineteenth-century woolen mill in the clutches of a vengeful curse. And a ten-year-old Depression-era orphan named Bud tells his tale in Bud Not Buddy, not a master storyteller named Christopher Paul Curtis.
Maybe regular readers of historical fiction would love this book, find the POV just fine, the language natural, the reactions organic. I’m glad to say I found a reason to keep reading Rhiannon, even if it was just perseverance, and I’m glad to know how things turned out for Rhiannon and her family, Thaddeus, Jim and all the other Forgotten. But love – nowhere in sight. And I’m still disappointed about that.
