Ariadne's Children [Hardcover]

Roderick Beaton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 1995

Fate brings Lionel Robertson to Crete. The assassin's bullet in Sarajevo in 1914, Minoan gemstones, a bad marriage, all lead to his obsession with Europe's earliest civilization and the excavation of Ariadne's Summer Palace. But a curse emanates from the site for later generations of his line.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

First-time British author Beaton blends narrative forms- -history and fiction, mystery and myth--with ease in this unusual (if occasionally overwrought) story about a multigenerational obsession that refuses to die. Writer, photographer, and amateur archaeologist Lionel Robertson is the imposing patriarch of a tumultuous family in a complex saga that effortlessly spans nearly a century. With WW I looming (in the opening scene Lionel, dressed like a proper Englishman in ``Edwardian whites,'' improbably witnesses the assassination of the Archduke and Duchess in Sarajevo), Lionel escapes from England to Crete and launches an excavation of Ano Meri, an ancient Greek palace that will later become known, thanks to Lionel's discoveries, as Ariadne's Summer Palace. He unearths some carved gemstones at the site that gradually become a family obsession. Decades later, Lionel's grandson Dan--a disgruntled employee at the Institute of Chronometry who specializes in dating clay pots--must deal with accusations that either his father (who also worked at the internationally renowned site) or grandfather secretly excavated a part of the palace, left no record of his findings, and then covered up the excavation as if there were something to hide. Dan begins to search through his family possessions for the records in the hope that these strange activities can be explained. His father Daniel, having been largely abandoned by Lionel as a child, died young but managed even so to strike up a relationship of sorts with his father; and now Dan's daughter Lucy, training to become a psychoanalyst, helps him sort through the nightmares he has inherited from his obsessive ancestors, nightmares that will, in all likelihood (Beaton suggests), never end. Despite some extravagant twists that strain credibility, and a number of overlong patches, a generally captivating ``dig'' into the ancient as well as more recent past. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; First Edition edition (February 9, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0297815229
• ISBN-13: 978-0297815228
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,553,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Strange family!, April 9, 2000

By 

andrew fox (Coventry UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ariadne's Children (Hardcover)

This book doesnt seem to have an ending, I was looking for another chapter or sequel. I think Lionel would deserve this inconclusive ending but not Dan. Being in Sajeavo on the outbreak of civil war with an arranged marriage certainly leaves more questions than answers. Does it become a real marriage? What of his real girlfriend? What of the war? I like resolution and happy endings in books this does not give it. Basically it a good read that jumps about a bit in time to tell the story on a need to know basis and avoids annoying when doing so. I wonder about the real excavators of Crete and if he was using any facts to fit his story into and would like to follow that up. Its an OK book that travels about well but seems to end a bit previous. RB probably thinks that is about par for the course for this particular (disfunctional?) family, and maybe he is right. I would recommend it but only 6/10.