A Booke of Days: A Novel of the Crusades [Paperback]

Stephen Rivele (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 1998

A Booke of Days is the captivating story of a young French nobleman, Roger, Duke of Lunel, who leaves his home in Provence in the 11th century to join the forces that will attempt to recapture Jerusalem from its Turkish occupiers. Forced to leave his new wife by the sacred commitment of an armed pilgrimage, he is plagued by guilt over a secret sin from his past and his own religious doubt that arises during his mission. The holy crusade on which Roger embarks soon degenerates into a savage campaign dogged by betrayal, deceit and greed. Yet this was the greatest adventure of its time, where a hundred thousand medieval men who had previously never traveled much beyond their own villages undertook a journey halfway across the known world for the promise of salvation. Most would never see their homelands again. And for Roger, this greatest of all spiritual undertakings is an intensely human quest: a war of new and old ideas, a collision of cultures, an awakening prompted as much by slaughter as sanctity, a battle of the flesh as well as the spirit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This intriguing historical novel is a standout in the genre. Rivele (coauthor of the screenplay for Oliver Stone's Nixon) structures his fiction debut as a journal kept by Roger, Duke of Lunel, an 11th-century French nobleman who joins thousands of knights, soldiers and pilgrims on the First Crusade against Turkish forces occupying the Holy Land. Roger enlists in the pilgrimage to atone for guilt he feels over his illicit courtship of the "dark and handsome" Jehanne, whom he marries after the death of her first husband, Eustace of Valdevert. But he discovers that the price of remission of a sin may be far greater than the sin itself. As a chronicle of war, the journal works effectively, distilling the immense scope of the Crusade through the filter of Roger's perspective as knight and pilgrim. His recounting of battle scenes may not rise to the grandeur of traditional historical epics, but his record is all the more personal and moving since it contains the weary, often disillusioned thoughts of an officer at the end of a long day. The diary also describes the fierce rivalry, even treachery, among military and church leaders, as well as the obstacles of disease, starvation, desertion and alien landscape. Suffering is not the whole story, however, for Roger is a man of contemplation and reflection who continually questions the true motives of the pilgrimage. His European-bred prejudice against the Turks dissolves when he observes them, especially in light of the ever increasing barbarism of his fellow Christians. Then his views of religion, duty and love are altered forever by his relationship with Yasmin, an educated Turkish woman. Roger's honest, tenacious quest for redemption in the midst of the Crusade's inhumanity and ignorance makes this an absorbing and intelligent look at a remote period of history.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Rivele, who coauthored the screenplay for Oliver Stone's film Nixon, has written a structured story of the Crusades. Highly detailed, it is told in diary form by Roger, Duke of Lunel, apparently an ancestor of Rivele. Roger, whose character is priggish in the extreme, joins the First Crusade to liberate Jerusalem from the Turks and leaves his wife and home in Provence. He travels across many lands and meets many people, most of them very unfriendly to him and his cause. After many gory adventures and having spurned many acquaintances as unworthy, he surprisingly falls in love with a woman who is his polar opposite, a young Muslim poet. Love does not make him any more likable, and his affair ends sadly. Eventually, with much sturm und drang, he ends up back home, worse off than before. This work is exquisitely detailed with interesting annotations on many of the pages, but the story never really takes off. It reads like nonfiction, and tedious nonfiction at that. Recommended only for serious students of the Crusades.?Lesley C. Keogh, Bethel P.L., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 452 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 1st pbk. ed edition (February 16, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786704624
• ISBN-13: 978-0786704620
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #961,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fictional history is not a recent invention, January 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Booke of Days: A Novel of the Crusades (Hardcover)

I'm rather surprised in reading some of the other reviews at the confusion some are experiencing in deciding whether or not this book is a factual account of the Crusades. Well, be assured this book is fictional. The single biggest hint is the reference in the opening page after the dedication that this is "a novel".

The next most obvious indication is that there isn't a single facsimile of the original - this would be a virtual requirement in any book purporting to be a translation of an historical record.

Finally, there are a few errors of fact. For example: Roger's reference to sacred musical polyphony that came from the St. Martial monastery at Limoges is about 50 to 100 years too early. The first records of this polyphony date from the 12th Century. In addition, he makes the mistake of assuming that this practice had become widespread. Unfortunately, the use of such practices was really quite slow to catch on.

And easily the most striking feature of the manuscript is it's conversational tone. I can't think of any book before 1600 that takes on quite such an air of familiarity with the reader. Even a casual glance at someone such as Montaigne would reveal this.

However, full marks for Rivele for trying to give us a view of the 11th Century through a 20th Century lens. I'm not sure that we shared quite so much in common with the Crusaders as he would like us to believe, but the story had its moments of poignant sentiment.

The obvious model for such books is Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" which hasn't really been bettered here. For something even more fanciful readers of such books might enjoy his more recent, "The Island of the Day Before".

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A vivid FICTIONAL account of the First Crusade, February 20, 2001

By 

gwellington (Ottawa, Ontaro, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Booke of Days: A Novel of the Crusades (Hardcover)

I can understand how someone new to the subject might be taken in by the author's introduction, but I can assure you that this book is fictional and not the publication of a hidden manuscript. Anachronisms in phrase and thought aside, I have never seen it - or mention of it - in any history text, and I am a history major. Furthermore, it's in the "Fiction and Literature" section....

That aside, buy the book! Not only is Roger's diary a vivid and unromanticized account of the Crusade itself, but it offers some interesting points on Christian theology and the early medieval view on divinely sanctioned violence. The pseudo plot-twist near the end prevents a five-star rating, but it alone doesn't undermine the rest of the book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good read for someone who knows nothing about the Crusades, May 24, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Sydney, Australia (but my heart's in Provence)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Booke of Days: A Novel of the Crusades (Hardcover)

I was totally taken in by this book and found it an amazing page turner. Read it in a couople of days snatched reading at work and sleepless nights. I've then logged on to amazon.com only to find that it's completely fiction, with historical inaccuracies too apparently. Damn! Now I don't know what to think. I really did enjoy this book, but I think most of my enjoyment was rooted in the fact that I thought I had been reading an incredibly important historic document. Alas, it is (apparently) a Hollywood scriptwriter's version of events. At least I can be thankful that he didn't come home, get the girl, win the money, and retire to a life of product endorsements like every other Hollywood script. Hell- they even give Islam a positive report, so that can't be all bad.