The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd

I bought this paperback of Rutherfurd's The Forest back in 2001. It's his fourth novel but my introduction to his work. Not being familiar with Rutherfurd's work,  mostly picked it up because of the subject. During my days in college the New Forest had been mentioned several times as an example of how small scale management practices can lead to a very diverse ecology. Rutherfurd focuses more on the history of the place of course, but the two are so intertwined that a lot of what was mentioned in my ecology classes does show up in the text. From then on I have tried to read one of Rutherfurd's books every couple of years. His works require so much research that he only publishes one every three or four years. Currently he has eight novels out, of which I have yet to read two. Maybe I'll try his latest novel Paris (2013) next year.

The Forest describes his history of the New Forest in the south of England almost from its creation as a royal hunting reserve to the present day. William the Conquerer helped himself to this vast stretch of land around the year 1078. Rutherfurd starts his tale in 1099, with the events leading up to the death of William Rufus in 1100. He then follows successive generations of eight fictional families: the Albions, the Puckles, the Tottons, the Martels, the Furzeys, the Prides, the Grockletons and the Seagulls. Each of these families represent different faces of the Forest in different times and often their life intersects with real historical figures. In effect, Rutherfurd is taking the James Mitchener approach to historical fiction.

This novel is the third novel by Rutherfurd set in a relatively small area. His first novel Sarum (1987) describes the history of the Salisbury plain just north of the New Forest. In London (1997) he tackles the history of England's capital. England's history is rich of course but he still runs the risk of repeating himself. As such, this book is slightly more concise than the other two. Both Sarum and London top 1300 in mass market paperback and start in prehistory. The Forest has to make do with just under 900 pages and 9 centuries of history. Although the books are meant to be read individually, Sarum and London in particular have links between them. Given the proximity to the New Forest, Sarum shows up in the pages of this novel several times as well.

The New Forest really is a unique bit of England. Many people would see it as a wilderness, a large stretch of natural forest, bog and heath and Grassland. Nothing of course, could be further from the truth. The land has been managed in a variety of ways, resulting in the landscape we see today. As one fictional ecologist in the final section of the novel points out, the Forest is a dynamic ecosystem where man has played an important part in creating and maintaining certain balances and occasionally upsetting them. What Rutherfurd also shows in the text is that it is constantly under pressure in various ways. Population growth tourism and economic pressures being the greatest threats in modern times.

Although the New Forest was set up as a hunting reserve for the crown, the local population retained a lot of rights for other uses of the forest. They could let their cows and ponies graze at certain times of year, use the underbrush for firewood, turn out their pigs to feed on beechnut and acorn in fall and  to cut peat for fuel to name a few. Many of these rights were linked to cottages or landholdings and have been in effect ever since the founding of the New Forest, although they weren't recorded until the 17th century. Some of them are still in effect, although the system in under threat. These rights gives one an impression of the numerous ways in with the environment was used but that was not nearly all of it.

The New Forest housed large populations of various deer species. In medieval times these were important to keep the royal court fed and punishments for poaching were very harsh indeed. The deer had a large impact on the forest, eating large quantities of saplings and the lower branches of trees. Later on timber became more important. As the English fleet expanded, the forest's oaks turned into a valuable assets. Selective felling of trees and the appearance of enclosures to grow trees for use as timber again shaped and changed to landscape. When you think about it, this piece of England was far more intensely used than may people realize. Of course it is never enough for some. The many uses of the land, the way these uses are governed and the ways in which this government is evaded are the backbone of the novel and in my opinion a marvelous set of themes.

Rutherfurd also weaves a lot of history into his tale of course. He is quite detailed on the events leading up to the Spanish Armada attempting to invade England in 1588, the reigns of Charles I and Charles II and the English civil war, and the Victorian era, when industrialization and clashes with the traditional ways of life in the forest and the emerging recognition of the region as a valuable ecosystem. The author lectures on the history of England and the Forest in various places, especially to bring the reader up to speed on what happened in the periods he skips. Personally I think there is no point to reading Rutherfurd's novels if you don't appreciate this sort of thing but it has to be said that he has gotten a lot better at it in the years since writing Sarum. These overviews of England's history are inserted much more seamlessly.

Since reading this novel for the first time back in 2001 I've read several thousand pages of other material by this author. Books like Russka (1991), Dublin: Foundation (2004) and New York (2009) impressed my but even after this reread, The Forest is a personal favorite of mine. It's not often you find a book that points out humanity's relationship to the environment and landscape in such vivid detail. This combination of ecology and history gives this novel something extra compared to Rutherfurd's other novels. This is of course my own personal bias. I like books that show a certain awareness of the environment or explore the implications of upsetting an ecological balance. In that sense the novel is a wonderful read. It makes me regret I haven't visited the region myself.

Book Details
Title: The Forest
Author: Edward Rutherfurd
Publisher: Arrow Books
Pages: 883
Year: 2001
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 0-09-927907-X
First published: 2000

London - Edward Rutherfurd

London (1997) is Edward Rutherfurd's third novel. I reviewed his début Sarum (1987) last year and concluded that he has gone on to write better books. I'm skipping his second novel for the moment. Ruska (1991) is the odd one out in his bibliography so far, it's the only one that is not set in an English speaking part of the world. I've read it a number of years ago and I may reread it at some point in the future. Given the size of these novels, London weighs in at over 1300 pages in mass market paperback and that is a few pages less than Sarum, I decided to read London first. Like all Rutherfurd's novels, London takes the Mitchener approach to historical fiction, in this case covering twenty-one centuries following the lives of a number of fictional families.

Where Rutherfurd covered ten-thousand years of history in his first novel, he takes a slightly less ambitions approach this time. After a brief section detailing the geological history of the region, the story kicks off in 54 BC with Ceasar's invasion of Britain. It ends with an epilogue set in 1997. The period up to the Norman invasion in 1066 takes up less than 200 pages, a lot of which seems to be tied to archaeological finds in the region. I suspect it would be interesting to visit the Museum of London with these sections as a guide. The emphasis of the novel is on medieval and early modern history of the city. Given the enormous amount of historical material available on this topic Rutherfurd could probably have written another book as big as this one. It's obvious a selection had to be made and Rutherfurd has chosen to stay very close to developments in the city, not letting himself get distracted by events in the rest of the world.

London is one of three novels set in relatively close to each other in the south of England. In Sarum he covered the Salisbury Plain region, in London the city of that name and in The Forest (2000), the first book by Rutherfurd I've read and still something of a favourite of mine, the New Forest region. One of the things that struck me, now that I've read all three, is how careful the author is not to repeat himself. The history of these places is of course tightly linked to that of England as a whole. Major decisions by kings and parliaments affected the whole nation and sometimes reached far outside the borders of the Kingdom. It would have been easy to focus on these periods of upheaval that most readers would remember from their history classes. Although Rutherfurd doesn't ignore them completely, he shows that there is a wealth of historical material that is much less well known but, for a lot of readers, will fit in nicely with what they do know of the history of England.

One of the parts I thought particularly interesting was the section London Bridge, which in part deals with the Peasant Rebellion of 1381. It was a curious affair really. The rebels could have razed the city and the King would not have been able to stop them. It's very hard to adopt the mindset of a medieval peasant but I guess it shows how deeply ingrained the feudal structure of society was. Despite Ball's preaching it would take centuries for the last remnants of it to disappear from the legal system. It's the King overstepping is bounds in the existing framework that triggers the rebellion as much as a desire for greater freedom that causes the rebellion. What the leader of the rebellion did to cause his eventual death is still a bit of a mystery. Rutherfurd gives us his own interpretation of what might have happened here, one of many instances where his fictional characters play a small part in the history of the city.

A second part that receives a lot of attention are the religious conflicts in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rutherfurd pays a lot of attention to the slightly absurd events that lead up to the establishment of the Anglican Church and the consequences of its inability to decide whether to seek reconciliation with the Catholic Church or develop into a full-fledged protestant form of Christianity. The religious struggles in England took quite a different path than those in on the continent. Rutherfurd pays attention the the Puritans in particular, and the influence they had on the development of what would become the United States.

The City is portrayed as a place of trade for almost its entire history. There's a lot of attention to the workings of guilds, trade and the rise of finance and banking that has made London one of the financial hotspots of the world. The rise and fall of generations of merchants, the ways to make or loose their fortune, is the backbone of the story really. I guess we see London more as a city of finance these days, in this novel Rutherfurd makes the link between them very clear. The brief mentioning of the South Sea Bubble of 1720 forms a nice link to Rutherfurd's most recent novel New York.

If there is an overarching theme to the entire novel, the treatment of women is probably it. Throughout the novel there are plenty of instances that detail the place of women in society and Rutherfurd makes it clear that for most of history, a woman's options were limited indeed. Forced marriages, being considered property, the risks of childbirth and sexual violence, not much is spared the female characters in this book. Rutherfurd sticks to the historical framework. These women know their place in society, know what they can expect and to a large extend accept this, or at least don't attempt to stretch custom and law beyond what could be reasonably expected. It's interesting to see how views of what would make a good wife or husband shifts over time. Personally I think it is one of the strengths of this novel but that is something not all readers will agree on. One of the last sections of the novel, The Suffragette, partly deals with the struggle for women's right to vote. Reading this novel I got the feeling Rutherfurd was building up to this.

On the whole I thought London was a better novel than Sarum. It's more balanced I suppose. Rutherfurd doesn't need to make to many large jumps in history since there is plenty of material from the Norman Conquest onwards. It makes the ride a bit smoother. I thought the way Rutherfurd managed to keep the attention focussed on the city, always using the outlook of London's citizens on events in the wider world in his story very well done. With twenty-one different sections set in different periods and using different characters, the novel is still quite a challenging read. It helps to have some knowledge of the general history of England. Even if you know more than a bit, there is still quite a lot of new things to learn in this novel. I enjoyed reading this book a lot but I have to admit, Rutherfurd's way of telling a story is one that doesn't suit all readers. If you are tempted to try it, London is probably a better introduction to his work than Sarum.

Book Details
Title: London
Author: Edward Rutherfurd
Publisher: Arrow Books
Pages: 1302
Year: 1998
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 0-09-920191-7
First published: 1997

Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd

Last year I reviewed Rutherfurd’s latest book New York: The Novel. I had read several books of this author before then but given the enormous size of most of his works they tend to linger on the to read stack. I wanted to read at least one of the before the end of the year so I decided to take one with me on vacation to Germany. Sarum is Rutherfurd’s first novel and it might well be the biggest of the bunch (although the two books on Dublin could be considered one very big novel I suppose). My mass market paperback weighs in at 1344 pages. Even with a lot of reading time available it took me almost a week to read it. Like the other books I have read by Rutherfurd I found it a fascinating read but not nearly as good as some of his later books. It feels a bit unbalanced and the characterization leaves something to be desired.

Sarum covers the history of Rutherfurd’s home town, today known as Salisbury. It is an ambitious attempt to cover a hundred centuries of local history through the lives of a number of families in the region (I think of this as the James Mitchener approach). Rutherfurd starts the story at the end of the last ice age and shows us the hunter Hwll, who witnesses the formation of the English Channel, realizing he is now cut off from mainland Europe. An event thought to have taken place some 7500 before the birth of Christ. The author continues to cover the construction of Stonehenge, the Claudian invasion of Britain, the twilight of the Roman era, the reign of Alfred the Great, several periods from Norman England, including the building of the cathedral, the great plague and the blossoming of the cloth and wool trade, the war of the Roses, the reformation, the civil war and glorious revolution, the expansion of the British empire, the Napoleonic wars, the height of British colonialism, the second world war and a brief episode in 1985 (right before the book was published). In short, Rutherfurd stuffs a lot of local and global history into this one novel.

With a hundred centuries to discuss the author has had to make choices. He admits in his foreword that there is enough material for a book many times this size. There were a couple of things that struck me about his selection. With Stonehenge and quite a few other prehistoric monuments in the region there is of course no escaping this part of the region’s past. With only archaeological evidence to go on, not a whole lot can be said for certain about the people who constructed them or even the purpose of the monuments. It gives Rutherfurd a lot of freedom to fill in the blanks himself. Rutherfurd chooses a very dark story to explain the construction of Stonehenge. On the whole, I was not quite sure what to make of the prehistoric section of the novel.

The second thing that struck me about Rutherfurd’s selection is the rather heavy emphasis he puts on the medieval period. I guess this is the period in history that Salisbury was at its most influential. Rutherfurd goes into detail on the wool trade and the building of the cathedral in particular. His detailed look at daily life in and around the city and the struggle to shake the town clear of the influence of the bishop but the dynastic struggles of the English Kings or the English involvement in France don’t seem to touch daily life in the city too much. As a result Rutherfurd spends a lot of pages on providing historical context that is only marginally important to the story of the characters he is telling.

After the reformation the importance of Salisbury as a centre of the wool trade declines and so does the attention of the author for these periods. There is a bit on the 18th century, when most of the story takes place in various corners of the British Empire. The whole 19th and most of the 20th century (the book was published in 1987) have to make do with some 200 pages. Although the history of the town as such may not be all that exciting during this period I can’t help but feel the author ran out of stream after the Glorious Revolution.

Having read his most recent book a while ago, I noticed quite a bit of progression in the writing. In Sarum I felt that the providing of historical context, which frequently takes the form of several pages of summarized history told by the narrator, was at times slowing the book down. I would not recommend this book to anyone not having an interest in history but even if you do, at some points you’ll probably be telling the author to get on with it. I didn’t have that feeling quite so much in New York, or The Forest for that matter. Both books he wrote later and both book dealing with a shorter time frame.

His growth as a writer also shows in the way he tells the story of his characters. Covering such a time span, Rutherfurd creates quite a few of them for this book. Most only receive a limited number of pages and their stories are not always fleshed out very well. A lot of them are quite predictable too. Especially early on in the novel the characterization isn’t handled very well, later on in the book it improves a little. It is very obvious that Nooma is going to get screwed or how the trial of Godric Body is going to end. If I compare that with what the author did with his characters in New York, there is a world of difference.

There are quite a few aspects of this novel I am not thrilled with. That being said, I did enjoy reading it once I got going. The history of the region is quite interesting and Rutherfurd is obviously intimately familiar with it. The cathedral in particular is an element that receives a lot of attention. It is one of the constant factors in the later part of the novel. I passed though the region once, twenty years ago, on the way to a vacation in Cornwall. We only made a brief stop to visit Stonehenge. After having read this novel, I will no doubt look at the area with different eyes if I ever visit again.

There is another interesting aspect about this novel. Rutherfurd has written three novels situated in a geographically close setting. Sarum is the first, London, a novel which I have yet to read, the second, and The Forest, dealing with the New Forest area, the third. Despite their proximity these places have quite a different history. The New Forest and Salisbury, practically neighbours, are quite different books. I am looking forward to reading London to find out if Rutherfurd succeeded in making this third novel as different.

On the whole, I feel Rutherfurd was a bit too ambitious in writing this first novel. Sarum feels a bit unbalanced by a mediocre start, a very detailed section of Roman and medieval times and a hurried conclusion. If you are interested in the history of Salisbury and the Sailisbury Plain it is a good book to read but it could have been done in a bit more compact fashion and with the history lessons not quite so obvious in the text. Rutherfurd has gone on to write better books, which I suppose, is not the worst that could be said of a début.

Book Details
Title: Sarum
Author: Edward Rutherfurd
Publisher: Arrow Books
Pages: 1344
Year: 1992
Language: English
Format: Mass market paperback
ISBN: 978-0-09-952730-5
First published: 1987