One for the Books: Page-turning bestsellers
- Mary Louise Ruehr
The current crop of bestselling fiction includes books I’ve eagerly awaited, and they’ve turned out to be page-turners filled with adventure, great characters, and ideas to ponder.
Ken Follett gives us another historical-fiction winner in “Circle of Days.” Set around 2500 B.C.E., its 688 pages tell the story of how Stonehenge was built. Like his other epics, it’s completely immersive, with action and adventure as well as thoughtful moments. Unlike some of his epics, this has one continuous timeline, with the same characters throughout the story.
Follett again creates characters to love and hate. Seft is the innovative builder who leaves his brutish family to find a wife and create a happy home. Joia is a priestess (“A key function of the priestesses was to keep track of the days. … They had secret knowledge no one else possessed.”) who shares with Seft a vision of a future monument of stone. Troon is a bully who wants to stop the progress of the monument.
Peaceful tribes of farmers, herders, woodlanders, flint workers and more assemble at the monument every season to honor the sun. “People knew that everything that kept them alive came from the sun, so they worshipped it.” The monument was “a ring of upright stones … called bluestones. In the middle was a wood circle, and this was completely different … a large ring of tree trunks, taller than the bluestones. The timber uprights were joined together at their tops by lintels or crossbars, which made a continuous circle that was perfectly level. … Within that circle Seft made out a second, smaller ring, an oval of freestanding pairs, each pair having a crossbar but detached from the others. … By comparison, the outer stone ring seemed haphazard and careless. Seft wondered whether it was older and had been erected by less skilled folk.”
Follett creates an entire prehistoric society, describing how people lived and worked, what they ate, their value system and community rules — everything. Wow! Some tribes are sexist, some brutal, some with close and warm friendships. It’s a bit reminiscent of Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series (“The Clan of the Cave Bear”). And if you like to read about Stonehenge, there’s an older book I enjoyed, “Pillar of the Sky” by Cecelia Holland.
Be warned: It isn’t until about halfway through that the monument building begins. Well, not the first building of Stonehenge, but when the inner rocks were added. I wish he’d included how the original outer stones were placed, but that’s left to the realm of myth and magic.
“The Secret of Secrets” by Dan Brown, a 677-page Robert Langdon novel, follows Brown’s long-successful thriller format, but it contains a huge, thought-provoking premise!
Langdon, a professor of religious symbology (which of course comes in handy while solving the puzzles), is in Prague to hear a lecture given by Katherine Solomon, a noetic scientist. “Noetic science is the study of human consciousness. … Since the dawn of history, we have sought answers to the enduring mysteries of the human mind … the nature of consciousness and of the soul.” Solomon has written a book, about to be published, that will set scientific theory on its ear. She says, “I believe … we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and, in fact … the very nature of reality itself.”
When she suddenly disappears, so does her manuscript, and Langdon finds himself wanted by the police. All the while, a determined force of evil — a “golem” on a mission — seeks vengeance. In the monster’s words, “You’ve built an underground house of horrors. … You all deserve to die.”
Brown gives us murder, chase scenes, brutal violence, and not just plot twists, but also character twists! His fascinating “fictional” premise turns out to be right on point.
Concurrently, I was reading the nonfiction “After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond” by Bruce Greyson, M.D., which also discusses human consciousness, and I found the same ideas and some of the same metaphors used in both books!
It WILL make you think about non-physical phenomena. It may even change your way of thinking about thinking!
“Atmosphere” comes from another great storyteller, Taylor Jenkins Reid. It’s set in the 1980s around the NASA space shuttle astronaut program, with strong characters and action-adventure, this time in space.
Joan Goodwin, professor of physics and astronomy and lifelong stargazer, eagerly applies for the NASA program the minute she hears they’re allowing women to join. “Being an astronaut is not just about getting up there. It is about being a member of the team that gets the crew up there. … Astronauts train to go into space, yes. But they also help design the tools and experiments, test out food, prep the shuttle, educate students on what NASA can do, advocate for space travel in Washington, talk to the press, and more.” During training, she discovers that it’s still a big boys’ club. Years later, when there’s a hair-raising catastrophe (fictional) onboard the shuttle, Joan has to help bring it back to Earth.
Joan loves to study the stars. “Astronomy was history. Because space was time. … When you look out at the sky, the farther you can see, the further back you are looking in time. The space between you and the star is time. … To look up at the nighttime sky is to become a part of a long line of people throughout human history who looked above at that same set of stars. It is to witness time unfolding.” Her journey in life includes a Sapphic love story, at a time when being gay was forbidden by NASA. The women have to keep it secret; knowledge of it would ruin both their careers.
Something to ponder: “Well, we are the stars, … and the stars are us. Every atom in our bodies was once out there. Was once a part of them. … We are made of the same things as the stars and the planets. ”
Happy reading!
Mary Louise Ruehr
Mary Louise Ruehr is a books columnist for The Portager. Her One for the Books column previously appeared in the <em>Record-Courier</em>, where she was an editor.