Customer Reviews

The World is Not Enough

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's pretty easy to sit in the comfort of a 21st Century easy chair and comment that a work of fiction depicts life in 12th Century France as depressing. Love is very much a commodity in our media-drenched culture--Oldenbourg is able to give romance much more value in The World is Not Enough. What a fine work of art for depicting love amid the chaos! And there are many romances throughout its pages-some successful, many are not. But romance gives these characters hope, and in describing the many relationships throughout the novel, Oldenbourg succeeds in telling us much more about how people during the time of the Crusades viewed life, death, family, money, marriage, hate, and love. When I finished the book, I felt very moved. Lucky to be born 50 or so generations after these characters, for sure, but nevertheless grateful that I was able to see how they endured (and overcame) hardship. This book is mostly about passion for life amidst a world/time/place where death was all too common. Here's the bottom line on what a romantic semi-intellect such as myself looks for in great historical fiction: if a novel can make you feel more passionate about love and your own life in the present (and this one does, admirably), then by all means recommend it to others who seek similar enlightenment. So, pick it up and find out the value of love during the tough times when Europe began to make its way out of the Dark Ages. And see if it doesn't teach you anything about the present.

"At Christmas time their parents had settled the amount of the dowry and the other details. The bridegroom's father was old and he wished to see grandchildren of his race and lineage. That was why tonight Alis of Puiseaux would have to go to bed with a boy."

Thus begins THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, when 14 year-old Alis marries Ansiau of Linnieres, himself only 16. Ansiau is the son and heir of a minor baron whose fiefdom is centered on a dreary, inconsequential castle in the countryside southwest of Troyes in central France. Once the Old Man dies, Ansiau becomes Lord of the Castle, and Alis his Lady.

This historical novel is about the relationship between Ansiau and Alis from the day of their marriage in the Year of Our Lord 1171, to well into the first quarter of the 13th century. The book's strengths and weaknesses derive from the details about their lives, and their kinships within an extended family, as they grow old together. It's an epic of multiple pregnancies, miscarriages, births, diseases, wounds, deaths, infidelities, debts, superstitions, treacheries, feuds, battles, flea-ridden castles, mud, cold, mold, damp, dust, heat, flies, mosquitoes, and other assorted attractions of the good ol' days.

The two defining incidents of their marriage are arguably the Crusades that Ansiau embarks upon in 1179 and 1190. During his first absence from home, the storyline focuses on Alis as she learns to be a strong, self-reliant mistress of her domain. During his second adventure, we follow Ansiau and his adult sons to the Holy Land as they fight Saladin alongside England's Richard the Lionheart. Upon the baron's return to Linnieres, the couple is followed through ever increasing marital difficulties to final old age and infirmity, but still loyally together as the book's last lines indicate. (There's a lot to be said for togetherness in old age.)

"She (Alis) shook her head and rested her cheek on the baron's shoulder. A huge red sun set behind the forest."

The author, Zoé Oldenbourg, took a great liberty with the dating of the Crusades in which Ansiau participated - a liberty that seemed unnecessarily cavalier. The Third Crusade certainly took place around 1190, but none whatsoever occurred in 1179. Rather, Oldenbourg seems to have altered the date of the Second Crusade (?) of around 1148 to fit the plot. For some reason, that really annoyed me.

Despite my pique over the dating, I rate this as a creditable, maybe exceptional, piece of historical fiction. But, it certainly isn't an uplifting one. Moreover, I found it way too long at 490 pages in a large paperback format. (That doesn't sound like much, but the print is really small.) If you want to read a novel about roughly the same time period, and which also depicts a Crusader's experience, I would suggest the much more focused A BOOKE OF DAYS, also rated by me on this website.

This is a fine novel about a French baron and his family in the late 12th century. We follow him as he fueds with his fellow estate owners, lusts after various comely damsels, plans for his legacy, and travels to the Holy Land in the Crusades. Equally importantly, we learn about his wife and her daily travails, and his children and relatives.

It was not an easy life. The castle, for example, had one normal bed with cloth sheets. Everybody else slept on straw, flea-ridden pallets. In the winter they were cold, in the summer they were hot. Mosquitos were unbearable. The streets of the town were muddy; yellowish mud with the dung of oxen mixed in. Death, sickness and disease were commonplace. The baron picks up his first child one day and is delighted by his beauty--marred only by the flea bites on his cheeks.

The church has an enormous influence. The years, months, weeks and even hours of the day are marked by religious holidays, or events. Yet they are all ignorant, and superstition plays a role almost equal in importance. The baron, for example, promises a church elder that he will donate a silver plate he can't afford, if only a daughter (illegitimate) will survive her sickness. She does, and he frets over how he will pay his debt, fearing that if he doesn't, she will be stricken again.

We get a sense of what war is, and how, inevitably, it mostly effects the poorest among us. During a feud with another baron, for example, the two barons get revenge on each other by burning houses in either's village. When they meet each other, their encounters are brutally violent. The stories of the women are no less compelling, with their eternal burdens of childbirth, and their philandering husbands, which they were powerless to do anything about. They work from dawn to dark, are mostly cold and uncomfortable, often lonely, and age quickly.

This is a fine, fine novel, which only one blemish. Unfortunately, there is much too much character summary, which sometimes goes on for pages, and which detracts greatly from the narrative. For example, we learn how a daughter cried when she didn't get her way, and never smiled when put into bed, and treated the other children disdainfully . . . that sort of thing. We don't want to be told it, we want to be shown it.

This is a bit of a distraction, but other than that, this is a fine read.

I first read this book as a college student 35 years ago and was transported to a fully imagined medieval France. There is a whole world here served up by a respected medieval scholar whose nonfiction works on the Crusades are still in print. I was so glad to see her work show up in print again, long after I had despaired of finding myself another copy. This is not one of those costume dramas where the author dresses up modern personalities in fancy dress. This is an era of mindsets, goals and values different than our own. Before long you adjust to this different way of life. But like our own world and real life everywhere, not all problems get neatly resolved, not all people worthy of love find their soulmates, not all the sons understand their fathers, and not all lost people are found. This for me was one of the most profoundly mind-blowing books I read as a young woman, not just for what it taught me about history but what it taught me about life.
And now years later I find myself teaching World History. Partly because of my experience with this book, I now require my sophomore history students to read a well-researched historical novel as part of the curriculum to give them a better sense of how it was to have lived a life in another time and place. This is the book I suggest to a few gifted readers who are drawn to the medieval period, are not deterred by a thick book and want nothing more than a life-changing read. They too have been transported.

Ansiau of Linnieres and Alis of Puiseaux are wed at the ages of 16 and 14, respectively, on the arrangement of their parents and because Ansiau's old father longs for a grandson before he dies. This very special occasion merits red wax candles, a rare luxury for members of the petty baronage of France in the late twelfth century. Thus, as the callow groom and his frightened bride spend their first few married nights in private room with a bed all to themselves - a first for both of them - a new dynasty begins.

When she fails to become pregnant immediately, Ansiau's father berates his little daughter-in-law. Finally, however, she does give him the grandson he craves; indeed Alis spends most of the next 30 years pregnant.

She does enjoy some respite from continuous maternity: Ansiau joins two Crusades to the Holy Land. Here, Oldenbourg takes the one historical liberty I noticed in this very large book. While the Third Crusade is accurately placed at 1188-92, she has moved the Second Crusade forward by 40 years or so, to about 1179. This is especially interesting, considering that Oldenbourg is perhaps better known for her highly respected nonfiction works on the Crusades. As you read, the reason for her taking this liberty becomes obvious: The "Second" Crusade happens almost entirely offstage, the narrative staying with Alis and her travails during her husband's absence - dealing with household and harvests, managing the endless renegotiation of their mortgages with the Jewish moneylender, coming into her own as a woman and as lady of the castle. For a time, Ansiau is thought dead, and, thinking herself a widow, Alis falls in love with and nearly remarries a handsome young knight named Erard.

The Third Crusade is Ansiau's story entirely, and there probably is no better fictional treatment of that war anywhere. Oldenbourg even goes so far as to quote passages directly from contemporary chronicles. The Crusades were politically as well as religiously charged, and Oldenbourg succeeds in making the machinations and counter-machinations of the western Christians, the eastern Christians, and the Muslims *almost* accessible (no mean feat). We also see inside the hearts of the Crusaders, understand what drove them, experience firsthand how they were affected by the holy wars they fought. Shortly after his second return from the Holy Land, Ansiau indulges in a love affair of his own - one so scandalous that it makes Alis's dalliance with Erard seem almost innocent by comparison.

This novel depicts much that the modern reader who is unschooled in medieval European culture will find unfathomable, probably even objectionable: Different standards of hygiene; questionable sexual ethics and contradictory attitudes toward women; Christian kings whose conduct in war doesn't exactly adhere to the Geneva Convention; a Christianity that sometimes seems more superstition than religion. But we see these things in their proper context. They are rendered, although not always agreeable, at least comprehensible.

Oldenbourg's style is a delight. She writes in a way that publishers don't allow anymore because of the volume of paper it requires. (This edition is printed in a tiny font to make up the difference.) The story could probably have been told in about one third fewer words, but that would have forced the sacrifice of Oldenbourg's rich prose style, her fascinating character sketches, and the uniquely clear lens through which she examines a profoundly complex time period.

First in a trilogy that continues with THE CORNERSTONE and then DESTINY OF FIRE, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH is a saga; there is no one tangible plot that begins on page one and resolves on page 491. This is, to put it simply, the story of Ansiau and Alis and their family; it's worth telling because of the tumultuous time in which they lived, and because their society held the earliest glimmers of the one we know today. For those of us with western European roots, the day-to-day struggles depicted through nearly 40 years of Ansiau and Alis's marriage grant a rare look backward at how our forebears lived, and how we began to be what we are today.

This is one of those books that I didn't want to get to the end of. I wanted the story to go on and on. The book brought me back to medieval France and kept me there for 3 weeks. I learned to feel what it was like to be alive back then, and I came to know the characters better than I know myself. The lives these people led were fascinating. A person who wants to experience medieval European adventure, love, pain and daily life would like reading this book. For those interested in historical accuracy, the book is right on. You can go to the Met in NYC to see the armor they wore, and the cities in France that were mentioned were indeed on an important medieval fair route. It also seems to jibe with William Manchester's "A World Lit Only by Fire."

This is the best book I have purchased on this site so far. It has in plenty what I appreciate most in historical novels - realism of depicting. The epoch - violent and passionate - comes to life so that you will be re-reading this book to savour every detail once more. The people look, talk and behave as they probably would have been in the 12th century. They are loving and caring, cruel and merciless, aspiring and constantly warring. The violence, filth, blind devotion or unacceptable, to "modern" times, customs and concepts, is what makes the book different. I have bought 2 more books of the same author afterwards.

Although this book was interesting, it wasn't one of the best that I have read. The characters were not very three dimensional and it was hard to picture them as real people. The writing also came across as somewhat stilted although this may be due to the translation. The little dialogue present was not all that inspired either. I won't be rushing out to buy anymore of Oldenbourg's books, but if I came across them in the future I wouldn't be opposed to reading them.

This book has none of the painfully grating anachronisms that mar most historical fictions. Nor does the author fall to the seemingly irresistible urge to view history with contemporary values. If you want to get a feel for the medieval world without reading text books, this isn't a bad place to look. Unfortunately, *I* found the story to be about as readable as a textbook. The author went on and on with character summaries (which made the book painful to get through) yet still somehow managed to have characters which were rather two dimensional. If the author was going to drag on (and on...) about something, I'd have preferred to read more about the medieval world. To heighten the reading difficulty, the storyline is somewhat choppy. 2 stars for readability. 5 stars for true-to-life facts. Since I couldn't give 3.5 stars, I was seriously tempted to give it 3 stars (ie. average) but decided to rounded up to reward historical accuracy.

Long on historical accuracy and description - which cannot fail to capture the reader's imagination - the storyline is unfortunately episodic and very uneven in it's momentum, thereby diminishing its narrative force. Deserving a higher rating for its historical content, it nonetheless is flawed by the narrative's lack of cohesion. A must for student's of the period, but may disappoint those looking for a good story.