book review, Volume 1, number 1, January 1999 A Vote for (Classy) Mind Candy It takes every skill the slippery mind can muster to get through January in the Interior and come out reasonably sane into February. It’s the month to be coped with—and evaded, as possible. Which is why it’s my month for reading mind candy, without apologies. You know what mind candy is—lightweight entertainment between glossy, bright-colored covers. Put mind in neutral and coast to someplace else, sharing the adventures of people unlike the friends and neighbors of Ester and environs, in climes very different from winter hereabouts. Mind candy may not be intellectually nourishing, but it’s yummy, and provides a little quick energy. Christmas brought me a perfect mind-candy bonbon, a little paperback called An Excellent Mystery. It’s one of the Brother Cadfael series, mysteries written by the award-winning British author Edith Pargeter under the name of Ellis Peters. They take me not only elsewhere, but elsewhen—and into a place about as far from the mindset of Ester as one can get: their chief setting is a 12th-century Benedictine abbey in western England. Though An Excellent Mystery is one of a series, it stands alone comfortably. The author deftly sketches the late-summer setting of a peaceful Shrewsbury town and abbey, while not far away the troops of the rival Empress Maude and her brother King Stephen battle for posession of the throne. From the havoc caused by that warfare, two strange Benedictines come seeking asylum with their brethren at Shrewsbury abbey, one older and crippled, one younger and mute. They come trailing puzzles and mysteries, circumstances proving irresistible to that inquisitive herbalist and former soldier in the Crusades, the novel’s lead character Brother Cadfael. The hints of possible murder past and probable violence future make Cadfael’s concerns more than idle curiosity.... The threads of the plot involve love (of several sorts) and loyalty, courage (of many varieties) and cowardice, faith and honor. With such heavy themes, reading the book could have been as much fun as trying to juggle lead bricks, but author Peters knows what she’s about. She is precise, letting details do the telling that less able writers would belabor for paragraphs. One typical example occurs as Cadfael observes his friend Hugh Beringar, the district sheriff, interview a farmer whose uncle is suspected of a crime. Set at ease by the sheriff’s adroit methods, the farmer suggests that his kinsman might be with his sister in a neighboring village, where she moved after she married "a bastard Norman he was, a little dark fellow." Just before the sheriff’s party rides off, the farmer notices with puzzlement the blazing smile on the face of "the little dark Norman lord on the tall, raw-boned dapple-grey horse." In a mere handful of words, Peters thus reminds her readers of a whole depth of historical and political context—the Norman conquest of England was not that long in the past when this action occurred, and it did not sit lightly on the country nor comfortably on its bicultural inhabitants. She has sketched the wise sheriff’s character delicately: Norman he may be, but offended he is not, and he prefers ability to appearance or he would not have chosen a "raw-boned" horse over a more handsome steed. (The author’s ability to pick the telling detail enhanced this book’s escapist value for a bitter January. Her descriptions of warm breezes over sunlit meadows, the day’s stored heat radiating back from thick stone walls, the coppery glare of sun high overhead...I could close down the wood stove’s damper a notch.) Beyond showing a mastery of basic storytelling skills, Peters also plays some more subtle games. Not for her the jittery, short-attention-span prose advertisers use to reach the MTV generation; her sentences, like her sandalled Benedictines, move at stately pace, taking time and deliberation to reach their goals. This is calm writing, measured, unhurried, but not boring, entirely suited to the conjuring of a less rushed if far more confined and structured time. I find it entirely consistent that, although the tale centers on religious life and gives not a nod to cynicism and irony, I could not guess whether the author herself was a Catholic, a Christian, or a believer of any sort at all. She simply sets forth the inner and outer lives of believers believably. Not, fortunately, that she writes perfect prose. Every so often, a sentence appeared in An Excellent Mystery that reminded me that I was indeed reading the work of an elderly British lady ("He did not begrudge the effort such labour cost him, nor feel his unskilled aid to be menial, for the fuel that fired him within demanded a means of expending itself without, or there could be no sleep for him in his bed, nor ease when he awoke.") Mostly, though, the book did just what I wanted: I was somewhere else, in the company of interesting strangers, soothed by a storyteller’s comforting voice while engaged by a puzzling tale. That’s mind candy at its best—and it ruins neither diet nor teeth. Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael mysteries can be found often at Into the Woods, usually at Gulliver’s, sometimes at the Post Office exhange shelves, and always at Amazon.com. Happy reading!
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