Brooks HansenBesprekingen

Agree with this review
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/brooks-hansen/the-chess-garden/

This much is true. Sometime during the late nineteenth century, a young woman drowned in the Seine, and the gypsum death mask created to memorialize her face became famous. What a face it was — serene, people said. Others spoke of her innocence, her beauty. The poet Rilke wrote of her deceptive smile and what knowledge might lie behind it. Artists studied the re-created face as a model; copies of her likeness could be found in Parisian studios and academies. Nabokov had a character write a poem about her. Camus, it was said, showed her off at parties. Man Ray photographed her.

To all, the dead woman’s mask represented a quality that touched them, so they invented her story, a biography, a mystery, and how she might have met her end. That background brings us to the current novel, beguiling, occasionally baffling, which offers a coherent explanation, as tense as any whodunit and as meticulously observed as any narrative of any kind.

Hansen’s story begins with a scene in a morgue, November 1889, after the unknown woman’s body has been on display for a month — yes, they did that, apparently — after which the mask maker plies his craft. It’s a prologue, therefore unfortunate by nature, and a bit confusing, at that. But Hansen skillfully rewinds the intrigue from there, chiefly through the eyes of Émile Brassard, a gendarme who’s had a checkered career, partly because his brilliance upsets people, a circumstance the author understates with deft hand.

In fact, if any single word describes The Unknown Woman of the Seine, it’s “understated.” I admire novels in which nothing is predictable, yet whose randomness derives entirely from characters with opposing goals (not authorial convenience). I also admire those novels that ask me to draw inferences rather than explain themselves, which involves me in the narrative and lets me meet the story halfway, rather than have it spooned into my mouth.

That said, Hansen demands a lot of his readers, and I’m not always up to it. A dose of bewilderment works wonders, though, for you share Brassard’s curiosity and puzzlement. He first sees the woman in the woods far from Paris, while she’s burying a corpse — and none too deep, because subsequently, the wolves get to it easily. Brassard might arrest her, but he can’t, because he’s applying to be reinstated in the gendarmerie after military service in Indochina, so he’s not officially on duty. Moreover, he’s traveling to his reinstatement hearing, so his time isn’t his own.

Consequently, he must walk a tightrope, following the woman while covering his tracks from both the participants and his superiors. Hansen does a marvelous job integrating his hero’s employment troubles with the mores and politics of the time, folding that into the detective’s quest to figure out who the woman is and why she was burying the dead man. If she killed him, as is likely, Brassard assumes there are extenuating circumstances, and he wants to know the story. So do you.

However, he, and the reader, must have infinite patience before things start to make sense. Also requiring patience are references to images of Buddhist philosophy, which go above my head, and which seem — to me, at least — to have little relation to the story. No doubt I missed something.

But the reader who can stick it out will be well rewarded, especially those who like dogs — Brassard’s is quite the canine investigator, perhaps a little too good to be true, yet their relationship is marvelous. The journey the narrative follows could not be more beautifully rendered, whether Brassard’s thoughts, the landscape, or the city of Paris, particularly the presence of that newly built tower, Eiffel’s monstrosity, as some think of it.

Hansen’s magnificent writing rolls easily into your mind, creating inner life, physical setting, and tension, all at once. The narrative’s final pages lack the clarity I would have liked, but the essentials are there. The manner in which Brassard — and Hansen — pull together the evidence makes for a thoroughly satisfying and remarkable tale of mystery.

Was a little slow starting, but picked it up! I loved Chess Garden so much, an all time favorite, so I figured I would enjoy this one. Hey, one novel every six or seven years, why not.

A great story idea, but wasn’t this really an origin story for a new detective series?? There’s no way that Hansen can put out a book every year or so, could he?

Also, read nearly this entire book cooped up in isolation in our spare room
with Covid. Merry Christmas!

A very interesting work. Like Toole and The Neon Bible, it is hard to fairly assess a work when it looms in the shadow of the true greatness of another of the author's own works. However, the benefit of the doubt must apply here due to the fact that this same man wrote The Chess Garden.½

A very solid performance from the author of The Chess Garden. An interesting premise of Napoleon in his final exile befriended by a young girl on the island.½

This is a remarkable love story that is also a fantasy and a story of one man’s philosophy. Sometimes the different elements don’t exactly seem to jive, but it kept me going despite having gotten a bit bogged down in the philosophical aspects. Wasn’t quite sure where I was headed or where I ended up, but the main character reminded me of my father and that pulled me through.

This book contains one of the best religio-philosophical ("spiritual," if you must) fantasy allegories I've read -- I'd class it with the Well-built City Trilogy of Jeffrey Ford, George MacDonald's Lilith, and the Renaissance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. It takes place in the "Antipodes," an island country populated by animate game pieces (and thus evocative of Through the Looking Glass).

But the allegorical fantasy is framed by a modern novel that recounts a philosophical/theological quest on the part of a Dutch pathologist-cum-mystic, and the community that he inspires after settling in Dayton, Ohio. It provides a compelling human story set firmly in the real world of "American metaphysical religion" detailed in Catherine Albanese's excellent history A Republic of Mind and Spirit, and motivated by some of the fundamental dilemmas involved with scientific and humanitarian impulses.

The most powerful allegories are bearers of real human pain and struggle. I didn't cry over the Hypnerotomachia until I had completed months of study following my first full reading of the book. For The Chess Garden it took only until I started to consider this review and to reflect back on the identities of some of the figures in the allegory.

The settings and characters of the fantasy's frame--or foundation, rather--are so well-researched and so credible that I ended up exploring reference materials out of curiosity to know which of the supporting characters were from the actual history of medicine, belles lettres, and alternative religion. Many of them were. There was a little comparative weakness in the treatment of gaming details. The text's only anachronism that was obvious to me was the mention of the game Pente (first published in 1971) in a letter supposedly written in 1901.

Ultimately, an important reflection of this book concerns the power of fantasy narrative to effect spiritual growth and healing, and to that extent, it might be classed with such works as The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride. In both of those books, there is a recognition of how such stories can be a bridge between children and the wisdom of their elders, but the emphasis there is decidedly on the subjectivity of the children. In these "Twilight Letters," it is the subjectivity of the elderly Dr. Uyterhoeven that takes the foremost place, with significant implications also for his wife-then-widow.

I can see how this book escaped my notice for twenty years. Despite the comparisons I've made here, it is unique in the way that it combines the quotidian and the fantastic, and it could be challenging or even off-putting for readers who depend on the immersive conventions of either fantasy or realistic narrative. The rewards of reading it, however, far exceed the challenges.

In Ohio at the turn of this century, the wife of Dr Uyterhoeven receives a series of strange letters from her husband, who reports being shipwrecked on his way to South Africa, and landing in a fantastical country inhabited by chess pieces, dominoes and dice.

Intercut with these letters, the story of his life unfolds: his youth and marriage in Holland, his troubled scientific career in Berlin, the genesis of his unusual philosophy and of the chess garden. History and allegory are expertly interwoven in this tale of spiritual progress, a novel of dazzling imagination.

A wonderfully bewitching compendium of stories told in a lucid prose that is free of any stylistic gimmickry. A highly absorbing and endlessly inventive antipodean adventure.




*note to self. Copy from A.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did, especially since The Chess Garden was so sublime. Perlman's Ordeal at least held my interest enough for me to finish it, but it didn't stick with me the way The Chess Garden does to this day.

This book is why I read. Bought a copy and sent it to my Dad in Florida.

I remember reading this in the lobby of a run down hotel while under house arrest in the Bahamas waiting for my work visa to come in.

I don't read a ton of historical fiction, but when I run across a good book in the genre I'm usually pretty happy. John the Baptizer was pretty entertaining and engrossing. It took me longer than usual to read because I kept wanting to look things up to either find out more about events or see if the book jibed with other accounts, plus I also dipped in and out of the bible a bit. It's very readable and Hansen did a good job bringing these people to life.

Good book. A bit long, but kept my attention for very long. Interesting and addictive. Author was captivating in telling the story. Th author has done the research and a very good job.

I was intrigued by the book prior to reading it. While I learned a little about John, I felt too much of the focus was on Herod. I thought it was slow in parts, but, I probably would recommend it as a decent piece of historical fiction. I believe I will come back to the book a second time to see if I can sift through the slow parts. I feel like I missed something...especially since others I've talked to really enjoyed reading it.½

This novel, based upon the person commonly known as John the Baptist, has much to offer. The book stays on track with the Biblical account, and never wanders too far from this, and yet it has not become a slave to the scriptures, either. The "plot" keeps moving forward at a good pace. The book doesn't ignore the issue of the Hebrew and Aramaic tongues, and gives enough to flavor the story, but not so much as to be cumbersome to those who aren't up to task of understanding a number of terms in their original tongue. Furthermore, the author makes excellent use of the culture and of a moderate knowledge of the rites that the priests were required to perform in the temple service, and other daily patterns of life in this era.

I opened the book expecting it to be "too orthodox" for my tastes, and to have a major Christian emphasis, as could be expected by books in this genre, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it takes a fairly neutral, balanced view of the mission of John in relation to that of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Epilogue and the Author's Note at the end of the book are invaluable in treating the subject of the Mandaeans (a sect of followers of John the Baptist, that are neither Christian nor Jew nor Muslim, and that continue to exist to this day, although their numbers are now diminishing.) This is done in a relatively fair manner. The author also raises excellent questions about how John saw his own mission, and the idea that he may not have seen himself as a forerunner to Jesus, examining the implications underlying the biblical story carefully, and going beyond what is traditionally accepted at the text's face value.

This story is simultaneously filling the role of fiction and history, but I think it successfully leans towards the history side, filling in the gaps in the well known Biblical story with educated insight gleaned both from Mandaean and Christian sources. Don't get me wrong though, the author invents characters to fill in the blanks, and puts dialogue in the mouths of characters. It is not a mere recapitulations of the facts given in the ancient texts, and does incorporate a great deal of creative license on the part of the author. But, because it leans so far to the historical side of things, it may actually fail to have a strong literary sense of plot, so I think this will be more interesting to people reading it from a religious or historical point of view, rather than someone just looking for an entertaining story.

The book is also nicely typeset, with several careful features such as the inclusion of some diagrams of some ancient semitic alphabet characters, poetry set line by line, and a nice series of maps and other reference material apart from the body of the text itself.

Well done.

I enjoyed this book. I felt that the author struct the right balance between historical accuracy, religious beliefs, and just telling a good story. I enjoyed his descriptions of the Herodian Dynasty, and how the politics and religious moments of that time were so interconnected with each other.

The characters had a real quality about them, yet John was able to keep some of the magical mysticism that seems to always float about his character. Also the author allows the reader to keep asking questions about this remarkable time, without saying there is only one way to interpret this story.

If you like historical fiction you will like this book. If you like esoteric literature, you should like this book, and if you just want to read a great story that will make you think, you will like this book.

Overall I thought this was a pretty awesome book - exactly my brand of historical fiction. True events, wrapped with mysticism and speculation. I also enjoyed reading from all the different perspectives.

What originally drew me to this book was the "fictionalized biography" aspect . I have, without exception, enjoyed other books of this type by other authors though admittedly they were written about artists or authors. I decided I needed to expand my horizons and delve into what would otherwise be an inconsiderable topic for me...that of religion.
While Brooks Hansen's writing did all the right things to bring me into the biblical world of John, Jesus, Elizabeth, Salome, and others, at the end I found myself void of emotion or thought. It did not elicit the excitement I need to consider a book a good read. I did do some side research on John the Baptist and feel if nothing else the book encouraged me to take an interest in the people of the book and compare history with fiction.
Since I truly believe it was the subject matter that kept my enthusiasm at bay I would certainly give another one of Hansen's works a try. If bible stories are your thing, then this book may be a good choice for you.

A really good read. I found it a little difficult to get into at first but the author has done a fantastic amount of research and it is packed with interesting information about the corruption of the royalty during the time of John the Baptist, John's ministry and relationship to Jesus. Very well written. I found it especially interesting that there are still followers of John's ministry who are being persecuted. Description of the characters in the book make them become very real.½

I love this book and everyone should read it. It opens up your heart, mind, and soul. On most books I hate the first fifty pages of so, but this book is so amazing. I loved it from page one.½

Brooks Hansen has drawn from religious texts, literature, music, and works of art for this intriguing portrait of John the Baptist and the Herodian dynasty that eventually ended his life.

This is not a theological work, nor an attempt at a definitive history, but rather a thorough imaginative endeavor to inhabit John’s story and, as Hansen notes, “how it has grown and evolved and survived in the disparate prayers and imaginations of so many distant, different, and far-flung seekers.”

John is an individual in Hansen’s creation, yet he also remains steadfastly a myth. This work casts a convincing light on how radical first John and then Jesus must have seemed to their contemporaries, and one of the book’s strengths lies in leaving uncertain the nature of John’s association with Jesus.

I found “John the Baptizer” most engaging when it dealt with the intrigues of the royals; however, it is the figure of John that has remained with me, that resonates.

“John the Baptizer” was my first encounter with Brooks Hansen, and I hope to check out “The Chess Garden” soon. (I was pleased to pass on the book to my mother to recommend to her book group. This hardcover edition was made beautifully, by the way, from the cover design to the paper selection to the typography.)

Before reading this book, I knew three things about John the Baptist: (i) he was Jesus’ cousin who “leapt in the womb” when Mary came to visit her sister Elizabeth; (ii) he spent most of his life as a “voice in the wilderness” prophesying about Jesus’ imminent arrival while urging people to repent their sinful ways, often through the act of baptism; and (iii) he was beheaded by Herod Antipas at the request of his wife Herodias and step-daughter Salome. However, I knew nothing—and I would guess that I’m not alone in this—about the details of these few events, to say nothing of what transpired during the long stretches of time between John’s birth, his ministry, and his execution.

Brooks Hansen’s motivation for writing this sometimes extraordinary work of historical fiction is that it is unfathomable that we should know so little about one of the central characters in the Bible, a man who effectively bridges the Old and New Testaments. Drawing on both traditional canon as well as Gnostic scripture, the author does a fascinating job of imagining—fleshing out, really—the story behind each of these three episodes. In particular, the telling of John’s conception and birth is most compelling and the recreation of the events of his final days is nothing short of remarkable. On the other hand, far less time is spent developing John’s life between the end of the spiritual training he received as a youth and the beginning of his preaching as an adult.

An interesting aspect of this fictionalized biography of “The Dipper” is the fact that the author devotes about half of the book to developing the history of the Herodian Dynasty. Hansen makes the point that it would be impossible to tell John’s story without knowing the culture and politics of the time, an exploration that must begin with understanding Roman intervention into Jewish laws and traditions. This is quite likely true, but the emphasis placed on the various intrigues of the Herod clan at times seemed excessive and distracting from the main point of the novel. No doubt, describing the exploits of a murderous, unscrupulous, and lecherous group of sovereigns is simply a lot more fun than those of a contemplative ascetic molded in the tradition of the ancient prophets.

The author does an excellent job of blending received fact with speculation in building the story, particularly when in comes to some of the more controversial aspects of John’s ministry. For instance, Hansen leaves open the issues of how it was that both John and Jesus had disciples recognizing each of them as the Christ as well as the apparent doubts that John expressed regarding Jesus’ status as Messiah. While Jesus preached a new message of salvation, the author makes it clear that John’s message was one of judgment in fulfillment of the covenant.

John the Baptizer is not a perfect book, nor is it among the best I’ve ever read. However, it is a significant achievement in terms of both its scholarship and creativity. The author accomplishes his mission of rendering a more complete picture of this singular historical figure and I suspect that those images will stay with me for quite some time.

The book is highly readable, but of the four novels by Hansen that I've read it's my least favorite. Hansen's full range of literary skill is not on display here. He's a wonderful writer with an ability to touch profound intellectual depths with language that is simple and admirably lacking in abstraction. His CHESS GARDEN was a revelation and probably remains my favorite of his books. MONSTERS OF ST. HELENA and PERLMAN'S ORDEAL were also entrancing, their language resonant, beautiful. JOHN THE BAPTIZER, by contrast, is very flatly written. It is without the richness of previous novels. Whereas, for example, The Chess Garden moved in and out of fantasy, realism, philosophical treatise and so forth, JOHN THE BAPTIZER for the most part sticks to a single narrative voice throughout. There are scenes of God's plan unfolding by way of supernatural events, still, JOHN THE BAPTIZER is Hansen's least ambitious, most conventional effort. (Though it is not without its pleasures. My favorite scene being the bacchanal thrown by Antipas, the king of Jerusalem, that appears toward the end of the book.) I hope there will be a time when Hansen can return to a prose that exhibits all the intellectual rigor and fluency of which he is capable.

I can't decide whether to keep this for myself, or pass it on to a favorite niece. A very lovely story - new but feels like a classic.

I guess that I cannot complain too much about the book, considering the fact that it had been free, but was a great disappointment especially since I had been looking forward to reading it since October (the original set date it was to come out before being postponed). It was just so fictionalized as to reduce it triviality. I had expected it to be more factual. Several instances were out of sequence, others just the figments of the author's imagination.
Hanson was undoubtedly influenced by Blackburn's " The Emperor's Last Island", & states as much in the bibliography, but where Blackburn had succeeded, Hansen failed miserably.