He touched the shed’s wall, gingerly, as if fire might have begun in the damp fibres of the wood. Can it be, he thought, that the transformative process is already underway? In these days, he no longer worked in metal, but practised on human nature; an art less predictable, more gratifying, more dangerous. The scientist burns up his experimental matter in the athenor, or furnace, but no scientist, however accomplished, can light that furnace himself. [p. 101]
Reread: I last read this in 2007 (my previous review; 'other times, other manners', as Fludd reflects.) and had forgotten almost all of the plot. It's set in a Catholic village, somewhere in the north of England, in the mid-1950s. Father Angwin is instructed by the bishop to remove the 'idolatrous' statues in the church, a task to which he does not warm. Shortly a young man named Fludd appears, and Father Angwin and his housekeeper Miss Dempsey assume he is the promised (or threatened) curate. However, Fludd's business is transformation, and his greatest work is the unwilling nun Philomena -- though Father Angwin, Mother Perpetua and Fludd himself (not to mention the statues) are all changed by Fludd's arrival.
This time around I was especially charmed by the neighbouring hamlet of Netherhoughton, who are rumoured to play football with human heads, and whose little children play with ouija boards in the church aisle during services. 'Up there, they were still gossiping about the Abdication; not that of Edward VIII, but that of James II. Their quarrels stretched back to time immemorial; they had grievances that pre-dated the Conquest.' And Fludd, of course: Fludd is fascinating, because we are afforded only tantalising glimpses of his thoughts, his heart, his history.
I do like Mantel's Cromwell novels (and one day shall get around to reading The Mirror and the Light) but I have a secret preference for her early, unsettling, slightly supernatural novels, such as Fludd. The precision of language and vividness of imagery remain, but the black humour has mellowed in her later work, and I miss it.
The Kindle edition does not start at the beginning, which is vexatious. In the print edition, the novel opens with a description of Sebastiano del Piombo's 'The Raising of Lazarus': in the Kindle edition, that content is still present, but the 'beginning' of the book is set as the first page of Chapter One, describing the arrival of the bishop. I had a nagging sense of something missing but would have continued to miss it if I hadn't reread my own review. The Lazarus reference is highly relevant to the novel, and its omission removes an important element of the plot.
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