Louis Post-Dispatch “TALES OF LOVE AND HONOR, DECEIT AND VIOLENCE, INHERITANCE AND LOSS.” –San Jose Mercury News But the real success is in how Rutherfurd paints his picture of the wooded enclave with images of treachery and violence, as well as magic and beauty.” –The New York Post “ THE FOREST IS MICHENER TOLD WITH AN ENGLISH ACCENT.” –St. Rutherfurd sketches the histories of six fictional families, ranging from aristocrats to peasants, who have lived in the forest for generations.
A sprawling tome that combines fact with fiction and covers 900 years in the history of New Forest, a 100,000-acre woodland in southern England. (Apr.“AS ENTERTAINING AS SARUM AND RUTHERFURD’S OTHER SWEEPING NOVEL OF BRITISH HISTORY, LONDON.” –The Boston Globe “Engaging. Though the geographic landscape is rich, Rutherfurd rarely generates enough focus and excitement to sustain interest in the mundane anecdotes he strings together, and longwinded passages of exposition and description overwhelm his ambitious narrative.
Following a droll chapter on the ill-fated Spanish Armada, the next segment dramatizes the beheading of Alice Lisle for her role in the 1685 Monmouth uprising, and there is a mention of Leonard Hoar, an infamous early president of Harvard. The introduction of other characters is similarly quixotic. A segment that opens with a romantic version of the death of Rufus, son of William the Conqueror, in which he is shot by a wayward hunting arrow from the bow of Walter Tyrrell, introduces a Druid-like presence in the character of Puckle, a gnarled old man who darkly personifies the Forest. Beginning in 1099, the story is divided into seven uneven parts: ""The Hunt,"" ""Beaulieu,"" ""Lymington,"" ""The Armada Tree,"" ""Alice,"" ""Albion Park"" and ""Pride of the Forest."" Intermingling real and fictional characters, the narrative traces the lineage of several families, mostly unknown outside rarified circles of Anglophiliacs. In this volume he expands his Chaucerian tapestry to include the chivalrous past of the storied New Forest bordering the south coast near the Isle of Wight.
Charting an entire millennium in his newest saga, Rutherfurd continues to pursue-in meandering prose and at tedious length-his fascination with nugatory events in English history, picking up loose threads from his sprawling bestselling novels London and Sarum.
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