'Lydia' by Paula Gooder

Summary: The New Testament tells us very little about Lydia, a seller of purple cloth who was living in Philippi when she met the apostle Paul on his second missionary journey. And yet she is considered the first recorded convert to Christianity in Europe.
In her second work of fiction, Biblical scholar and popular author and speaker Paula Gooder tells Lydia's story - who she was, the life she lived and her first-century faith - and in doing so opens up Paul's letter to the Philippians, giving a sense of the cultural and historical pressures that shaped Paul's thinking, and the faith of the early church.

MY THOUGHTS:

This is a factual novel about Lydia of Thyatira, the 'seller of purple' whose elite business was based in Philippi, making her a first century version of an entrepreneur dealing in designer labels. Back in that time and place, purple dyed fabrics were considered tokens of their owners' wealth, opulence, prestige, and fine taste. 

A deeper delve down the Google rabbit hole informs me that the coveted color was truly rare and fiddly to attain, deriving from thousands of tiny sea snails named 'murex.' This is why anyone lavish enough to wear it as clothing or decorate their homes with purple curtains or upholstery were people who could clearly afford it, and therefore seen by the snobby as worth knowing and admiring. 

Lydia is mentioned specifically as being one of the Apostle Paul's very first Christian converts in Macedonia (Acts 16: 11-15). She offered the apostle and his team heartfelt hospitality, and her connection to the city's elite opened Paul's message to a far wider audience. Lydia's home church was one of Paul's favorites, addressed lovingly in his letter to the Philippians, which he sent from prison in Rome. 

This re-imagining of Lydia's tale blends many people mentioned in Scripture with other totally made-up characters. In this version, Lydia has adopted the little girl with the python spirit who Paul healed, to her owners' distress. That child is now a grown-up young woman named Ruth. And working as a cook for Lydia's household is a young woman named Artemis, whose brother, Epaphroditus, travelled to see Paul in prison. They've received word that Epaphroditus is seriously ill, but nothing since. At least not at the start of the story. 

The large, sometimes unruly cast certainly highlights the awkwardness of trying to operate a fledgling faith movement. There is so much potential for egg on people's faces. The story shows quite clearly that nasty splits may begin by the magnification of small disagreements. I appreciate some of the finer details when Paul's letter is read aloud to this disparate bunch. Jonathan and Akiva, proud custodians of Jewish customs, are deeply hurt when Paul blasts those 'evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh', prompting Epaphroditus, who brought the letter, to tell them, 'If you know a description of yourself to be untrue, you don't have to accept it.'  

Lydia herself, moves into an unexpected and hard-won application of Philippians 4: 6-7 (Do not worry about a thing). Her thread in the story contains shocking moments.

There is a villainess named Aurelia, who is exceedingly dangerous because she wields so much power and carries such a long hit list. This lady is said to be the niece of Seneca the stoic, an interesting detail considering how he and his peers are enjoying plenty of time in the sun in our own era. 

We are told the story is rigorously researched. Dr Gooder is first and foremost a noteworthy Bible scholar. Her hard work shows, as the actual story comprises a mere two thirds of the book. The remaining third is a wedge of extensive notes, explaining details in each chapter. I'm glad this lengthy exposition is placed discretely at the back, rather than crammed into footnotes or even chapter endings. As a lover of fiction as an art form, I believe the flow of stories shouldn't be handicapped in any way. Any attempt to combine a story with didactic teaching always seems like a cheap trick to make history lessons more palatable, and as far as I've seen, nobody who positions it more in our faces ever manages to pull it off. (Check out this book as a prime example of what I mean.) 

I think including a hefty appendix is the only wise choice, even though it comes with the risk that some readers won't bother to read it at all. Yet the sort of reader who would skip it might also ignore footnotes or additions to chapter endings anyway. So three cheers to this novel for honoring the whole point of being a novel! The details are there if we want them, yet we don't get bogged down in minutiae, whether we like it or not.

There is no romance element. It is, rather, a love story about a whole dynamic community. The character Lydia is lovely, and I'm glad that her new Christian faith doesn't see her close down her lucrative business out of any zealous conviction that catering to clients' status and vanity might be a poor use of her time. The world is big enough for both conviction and craftsmanship.

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'The Daughter of Time' by Josephine Tey

Summary: Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant is intrigued by a portrait of Richard III. Could such a sensitive face actually belong to a heinous villain — a king who killed his brother's children to secure his crown? Grant seeks what kind of man Richard was and who in fact killed the princes in the tower.

 MY THOUGHTS:

This vintage book was first published in 1951. I've seen it praised as fascinating and remarkable so it seemed a good investment for $3 at one my favorite coastal secondhand bookshops.  

It all takes place from one hospital bed. Police Detective Alan Grant is convalescing from a broken leg. He's feeling restless and irritable, so his friend, Marta, brings him a packet full of assorted historical portraits from the National Gallery. She knows that Alan is fascinated by the nuances of faces and hopes to cheer him up for a few hours.

What nobody expects, least of all Grant himself, is that he'll end up applying modern criminology methods to 500-year-old evidence, to prove to his own satisfaction that Richard III, the final king of the Plantagenet dynasty, couldn't have possibly committed the appalling crime he is renowned for. 

The portrait of Richard by an anonymous artist first triggers Grant's consuming quest. He perceives no traces of villainy one might expect, even given the brutal fifteenth century when royalty often seemed to lash out at their relatives, letting political ambition turn them vicious. Instead, he senses a young man of sensitivity, mildness, even kindness. 

Yet the annals of history, including every school text book, seems crystal clear. Richard is conceived of as the wizened, hunch-backed younger brother of the handsome, heroic, and athletic Edward IV. As the legend goes, after Edward's death, Richard arranged to have Edward's young kids, his own two nephews, discreetly smothered to death in the Tower of London. That is certainly what I'd always heard. As Alan Grant puts it, 'The faithful and patient small brother had turned into a monster.' 

Yet the deeper Grant delves, the more overwhelmingly this appears to be false. Since this is not the sort of novel to suffer from revealing plot spoilers, I'll outline his threefold conclusions in a nutshell. 

Firstly the two little boys had been declared illegitimate offspring, so Richard had no motive to go to the trouble of organizing, then covering up their murder. Since he was already crowned king at the time, their existence posed absolutely no threat to his reign. This in itself contradicts what is in the history book on my shelf, that Richard was merely 'Protector' until his eldest nephew came of age to rule.

Secondly no evidence of the princes' absence or murder were ever recorded during Richard's actual reign. The nasty rumors circulated after he was killed and unable to defend himself. In fact, all of Richard's recorded history concerning his brother, Edward, reveals an extremely loyal and devoted supporter.

Thirdly and perhaps most chilling, all of the subsequent evidence about Richard that we regard as gospel truth originated from Tudor sources, who aimed to discredit Richard. As well they might! Throughout this story Alan Grant dredges up enough condemning evidence that they, in the person of Henry VII at the time, might have been the real villains. 

Sir Thomas More's definitive account of Richard's reign was commissioned by the Tudors. Therefore Alan Grant rejects it as not merely biased propaganda but a dirty smear campaign brimful with outright lies. And subsequently other authors, including Holinshed and Shakespeare, believed its veracity and unknowingly added to the heinous and untrue character assassination of an innocent man. 

(Not to mention their own biases. I discovered a quote from Geoffrey Doran of the Royal Shakespeare Company who says, 'You have to remember Shakespeare was writing under Elizabeth I and her granddad bumped off Richard III.' Hence, his 'histories' may be taken with a grain of salt anyway.)

Here is what sends shivers down my spine. Has Josephine Tey, in writing this novel, proven Richard's innocence beyond a doubt? Probably not, although she's definitely made the waters murky. But what she has done, as far as I'm concerned, is whispered the disquieting suggestion that even classic texts we consider watertight may be full of pernicious, misleading holes. Might this apply to generations of school text books? Sure, why not.

Conspiracy theorist or principled whistle-blower? You read it and make up your own minds. I'm keeping neutral, for Grant, and his creator Tey, are equally biased on Richard's side, of course. But I do find myself getting a bit hot under the collar since reading this, whenever I consider how generations of students are taught that Richard III was proven beyond a doubt to be a murderous crook. 

On the whole, The Daughter of Time is history-heavy, reasonably slow moving, dry in spots, and probably aimed at far nerdier history buffs than myself, but I found it well worth a read. It does my head in, because I love certainty, but perhaps we need the occasional wake-up call not to be herd-like readers.     

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'Lila' by Marilynne Robinson

Summary: Marilynne Robinson, one of the greatest novelists of our time, returns to the town of Gilead in an unforgettable story of a girlhood lived on the fringes of society in fear, awe, and wonder.

Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church - the only available shelter from the rain - and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.

MY THOUGHTS:  

This third novel in the Gilead Quartet plumbs the background of Lila, the enigmatic mother of John Ames' precious young son, born to him in his old age. As a tiny girl, Lila was kindly kidnapped from her kin by a tough lady named Doll, who evidently thought they were a bad lot. Yet life for Lila is rough notwithstanding, including a nomadic, hard-working lifestyle on the road, some very undesirable jobs, and the unsolved mystery about her real family's identity. Life deals her some trust-shattering blows, so when she meets her future husband, she has plenty of emotional baggage to sort through, with his loving support.  

Marriage to a Protestant minister has emotional perils of its own though. Lila picks up some very concerning details from listening to the silver-haired, theological Dream Team, (her husband and old Boughton). She quietly deduces that loved ones from her past, especially Doll, her surrogate mother, might not be among the 'elect'. In other words, since considering Christian ways was never remotely on their radar, their souls are bound straight for hell. In turn, this notion had never occurred to Lila either. She understandably tends to stew over it. Lila's own sense of justice chafes at the idea of 'souls just out of their graves having to answer for lives most of them never understood in the first place.' 

I love the comforting words Marilynne Robinson (a self-proclaimed 'hopeful universalist' herself) places in John Ames' mouth at this point.  

'Thinking about hell doesn't help me live the way I should. And thinking that other people might go to hell just feels evil to me, like a very grave sin. So I don't want to encourage anyone else to think that way. Even if you don't assume that you can know in individual cases, it's still a problem to think about people in general as if they might go to hell. You can't see the world the way you ought to if you let yourself do that. Any judgment of the kind is a great presumption. And presumption is a very grave sin. I believe this is sound theology in its way.'

(Whew, heady stuff for certain. I'm sure many of us have come across other ministers and pastors who don't share Ames' scruples, and would, in fact, think he's talking heresy. What a thought-provoking novel, prompting us to consider two sides of a question. We get no definitive answers, of course. 'The old man always said we should attend to the things we have some hope of understanding, and eternity isn't one of them.') 

There is a fair bit to shock in this book. The main couple's courtship and marriage strike some members of the congregation as unconventional bordering on scandalous. If I was among them, I'd probably agree. It is such an unlikely romance, and the age gap merely scratches the surface. John Ames instantly accepts Lila's sudden marriage proposal, when she's only ever behaved in a prickly, brusque, and secretive manner toward him. What a reckless impulse from a long-time shepherd of men and women. No wonder he can't relax in their early months of marriage, anxiously worrying that she might abscond with their child (when it's born), leaving no trace.

 As for Lila, referring to her husband, in her own thoughts, continuously as 'the old man' strikes me as odd. Granted, she also thinks he's 'beautiful', but it's still strangely generic and impersonal. Although Robinson makes it work for these two, I'd never recommend any readers to follow suit. So if you're an elderly minister and a wild child who are contemplating marriage, please think carefully before going ahead.  

What makes Lila, the character, so special and memorable, though, is the boldness of her contemplative, Mary-style heart. Lila knows full well that she's a tabula rasa, a blank slate, but delves into her study of Scripture anyway. Grappling with theology is brand new to her, but instead of growing intimidated and overwhelmed, she simply resolves to understand what she can. I honor her for that. Lila is resistant to the discouragement that comes from knowing she'll never grasp it all. And perhaps approaching study with an open heart, free from biases picked up after years of well-meant indoctrination, is a great springboard.  

She is definitely a character to remember, and draw from her mojo, for those moments when we think, 'This is too hard to bother trying to understand.' The snarls and mysteries of theology are particularly thorny, but if Lila can attempt to hack through them, so might we. (I now have a Post Grad Diploma in Divinity and this holds true more than ever!) 

Check out my reviews of Gilead and Home. And now stay tuned for my upcoming review of the fourth and final novel in the quartet, Jack. 

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