Customer Reviews

A Stolen Tongue

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you think "A Stolen Tongue" is going to dish up some musty old history of the Middle Ages, with chanting monks, swooning princesses and gallant young men on prancing steeds, you've got it all wrong. The main character, Felix Fabri, starts out by overseeing a group of galley slaves who fish a bloated, drowned German guy out of a harbor and parade him through the streets of town to his burial site. Later on, he helps a cohort slice open another dead guy and pull out his intestines. And all through this book there is plenty of vomit, rotten things, people burned alive, human waste, worm-infested water, decaying bodies, hacked-off limbs, pus-filled wounds -- and there's Fabri's beloved Saint Katherine, whose decapitated body shoots out milk instead of blood. Oh, and Fabri carries a dried human tongue around in a pouch that he wears around his neck. Not that I choose books by their gore-index mind you. I simply say all this to drive home the point that the events Holman describes are vividly corporeal. The reader is drawn close to the action and really sees, hears, smells (usually gross smells, by the way), tastes (also often nasty) and touches the things the characters encounter. I love to read about life in other eras, and this book, along with being a great read, put me right into the center of the action. And lo and behold if I didn't learn more than a few interesting facts about medieval life, too!

I've read some wonderful books this year, but the one which sticks in my mind is The Stolen Tongue. Friar Felix is one of the most finely etched characters in historical fiction. And wow!--what a journey he goes on. Felix is on a pilgrimage to the Sinai desert to meet with his spiritual wife, Saint Katherine. Along the way, we have relics, lots of relics, lice, mad men and women, devotion, love, prayer, and of course, death-- all written in fine detailed language! It's one journey I won't easily forget and Sheri Holman writes it with great skill. She is easily one of the best writers I have read. Don't miss this book. It's a great story.

A STOLEN TONGUE is a brilliant first novel. The complexity of character, motive, setting, and intrigue is technically magnificent, and the rich historical fabric and the philosophical/theological asides are nothing short of ingenious.

The emotional involvement of Friar Felix with an idealized St. Katherine and her demented avatar, The Tongue, compel the reader into the novel's underlying sense of spirituality, while the matter-of-fact descriptions of everyday fifteenth century hardship ground that spiritual mood in a real and very difficult world.

I read this novel after THE DRESS LODGER and was immensely pleased at the differences in narration, setting, and overall mood between the two books. Ms. Holman is a very talented author.

A quick note to the reviewer before me: whether you spell Catherine with K or C has to do with the tradition you come from: C is the Latin spelling, which made its way into English and French; K comes from the Greek, which made its way into German (English is influenced by both of these traditions so we see both of these spellings in English). Felix Fabri is a German so it's not improbable that he would refer to Katherine with a K; "the Tongue," Arsinoe, is also (I believe) a Greek woman. In any case, I picked up this book because of professional and pedagogical interest in the topic, and by and large, I have to say that I enjoyed reading it. Some things about this book are really excellent: the description of the material conditions of the middle ages, the pilgrimage descriptions themselves (some of which, esp. the complaints about the immorality of fellow travelers, are taken from Fabri's own comments), and the interactions with Muslims. However, the sort of achingly romantic tone that the character Fabri takes when speaking of his spiritual bride, Katherine, is out of place. While there was a mystical quality to late medieval piety that we might today term "romantic" (in the wake of the 19th century), the statements that the character Fabri makes about wanting to have sex with his spiritual bride, Catherine, or admiring her breasts, etc., are out of place--these would have bordered on heresy in the middle ages, which used these concepts at most in a highly figurative way. Holman seems to confuse the figurative chivalric "romantic" qualities of the late middle Ages with an overstated nineteenth century romanticism that would have been foreign to the period itself. Another issue that bothered me: Fabri's continual reference to how dirty everything was, which I think is overstated. Everything in the MA was probably indeed dirty and disgusting--but it was that way because it didn't bother people to the extent that it appears to bother Fabri. To sum up: the author uses a lot of authentic detail taken from Fabri's own words, but she misinterprets significant aspects of it. For the historian, the fact that she tells an exciting story does not entirely mitigate this problem.

This is the story of Felix Fabri, a Dominican from Ulm in Swabia, daring a 1483 pilgrimage to the obscure tomb of Ste. Katherine of Alexandria somewhere in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula. He imagined himself betrothed to the saint and it is this spiritual marriage that drives him to find her earthly remains. Lugubrious Felix was an actual historical figure (1441-1502) whose compulsive yearning was recorded in Aubrey Stewart's The Wanderings of Felix Fabri (1896; reprinted AMS Press 1971). It would have helped the reader to discover the historical orientation at the very beginning of the book instead of hidden away in the "Author's Note" on p.341. But Holman prefers to startle the reader by beginning in midst of one of the dreadful days of the journey and then feeds bits of information until the reader gets the idea. Alas, this is not a mystery novel where you would expect an unravelling of "who did it?". Instead the story moves exceedingly slowly through a world of superstition and religious mania with few noteworthy events. Felix narrates on several levels: with his fellow pilgrims, with the imaginary presence of Ste. Katherine, but mostly ghostlike with his confratres back in the Ulm monastery. It's likely that most readers will initially experience confusion and wonder who is talking to whom. There is a gimmicky element in Homan's style, as if she intends to vex, even confuse, the reader. Perhaps her acrobatic narrative skill tries to conceal the fact that there isn't really much of a story. And fickle Felix isn't much of a protagonist - there are no conflicts to be solved, no values to be defended. In short, there's no hero with whom the reader can sympathize or identify. Uncanningly clever metaphors and similes try to make up for this lacuna. Unfortunately, the effort stuffs the story so chockful of deliria and hallucinations and obscure metamorphoses that its pace slows to murky meanderings. When Felix finally says, "I can play this game no longer, brethren," many a reader might concur and seek a quick end to the book. Nonetheless, Holman's talents as a writer cannot be dismissed. Language's malleability achieves genius in her narration and her stunning vocabulary. She is an obedient follower of writers' workshops that insist on casting exposition into lively dialogues and even clever word games (the pilgrims associated saints with spices: St. Dominic = hot pepper; St. Anthony of the Desert = oregano). Holman's surrealistic scenes are interesting; for example she juggles metamorphoses of the woman Arsinoe into her own husband, into Ste. Katherine, and into a number of other vague entities. It is apparent that Holman thoroughly researched the physical and cultural conditions of the Middle Ages. (Among tidbits: In 1969 the Catholic Church annulled Friar Felix's spiritual marriage and Ste. Katherine was removed from Catholic canon). This is a difficult book to review as it mingles genius with gimmickry and leaves important dimensions unfulfilled.

The path of the pilgrim, in historical and fictional treatments, has been marked by guideposts of greed, of lust, of avarice -- any number of deadly sins. Yet Sheri Holman's Felix Fabri, a holy man of mortal fallabilities, clings tightly to a fierce brand of faith on his pilgrimage to Mount Sinai. Holman has endowed Felix with a spiritual desire so strong, and a sense of humanity so true, that we are swept up in the journey to face the mysteries and horrors when the sacred and profane collide.
Holman's research and remarkable eye for detail -- historical, religious, and personal -- never fail. A very strong debut by a new voice in historical fiction. This is one "Tongue" that must be bitten.

The first commandment of historical fiction is: Make it real. Make it seem like the reader is there in that time period, and this Sheri Holman does exceedingly well with her first novel. In 1483 a friar travels from Germany to the Sinai desert on a pilgrimage. The clothes, the modes of travel, the smells and tastes are drawn well enough to bring the reader into the time period, but here also the author has created the mental landscape, the beliefs, misconceptions, fictions, prayers and foundations of medieval knowledge that seem so wrong and at times humorous to us. Then there is the mystery, who to trust, people getting killed; pursuit abandon despair and heroics all rolled into a well told story.

A must for anyone with an interest in the time period. It works on many levels.

From turbulent seas, stinking pilgrims, blood, guts, gore, sand storms, stolen body parts... all integral parts of a great tale of a pilgrimage of one Friar Felix Fabri and assorted others from Crete to Sinai. The story centers around Father Felix and his "wife" the martyr Saint Katherine of Alexandria. While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it is one you have to devote all your attention to. I found myself having to reread paragraphs at times to make sure I understood the true meaning of what Sheri Holman was saying. I did find Felix's "devotion" to Katherine to be a little overdone, but it's not obnoxious. Beautifully written, with attention to all details, it is a wonderful book, and I enjoyed it as much as I did The Dress Lodger.

As other reviewers have stated better than I can, this is a wonderful, well written book. What struck me the most is how it brings back all the memories for me of growing up in Catholic school in the 1950's and 60's. The only reading material we had in the early grades were "lives of the saints" - which I read over and over. This novel helped me understand where all the "saint stuff" came from, how it was used, and the purpose of it in the church ruled society. As anyone knows, who grew up during my time, it's all gone now. Indulgences, martyrdom, and St. Agnes eating the putrid bandage as penence - Wow! I found it well worth reading for the insights.

Sheri Holman is one of the best historical fiction writers to emerge during the past ten years or so, and her writing technique is flawless. "The Dress Lodger" is a fascinating book, and is a must-read. "A Stolen Tongue", on the other hand ...

It actually IS a good book; in fact, I am stunned by the amount of research she must have done in order to write this book. The writing itself is beautiful. However, personally, I have to have a lot of action in the books I read -- it's just a quirk of mine. So, this book wasn't really for me. Yet, I would still recommend it to others.

If you're new to Sheri Holman, I would suggest reading "The Dress Lodger" first.