Books Set in Europe, Barcelona, Spain

Cathedral of the Sea, by Ildefono Falcones (2006)

Cathedral of the Sea is a historical novel set in 14th Century Barcelona.  The novel spans from 1320 to 1384 and follows the life of Arnau, who was born into a serfdom.  His mother was brutally raped by the landowner on her wedding night and was later forced to become wetnurse to the lord’s family.  Arnau’s father escapes with his son to the free city Barcelona where they attempt to make a life together.

Life is not easy, but Arnau and his father find contentment.  Arnau became friends with a young boy near his age who becomes his adopted brother, Joan.  As children, the two boys were inseparable.  They find comfort worshiping at the foot of the Virgin Mary in the cathedral that is being built.  Arnau joins the stone-worker’s guild, called bastaixos, while his brother joins the Church.  Ultimately, Arnau becomes very wealthy and is instrumental in providing funds to the king for protecting the city.  In exchange for providing funds, the king forces Arnau into a marriage with Eleanor, a spiteful baroness.  It is a loveless marriage that was never consummated and could be Arnau's downfall.

Arnau befriends members of the city’s Jewish community.  This puts him at odds with the Church and the inquisition.  Joan has become an inquisitor, Arnau is hauled before his brother to answer for his sins.

[Spoiler Alert: The reader was led to believe that Arnau's mother had died.  She appears deep into the novel as a prostitute in Barcelona.

This is a very long novel and was originally written in Spanish.  I liked it, but didn’t love it.  Perhaps something was lost in translation.

Read:  May 27, 2023

3.5 Stars

Books Set in North America, Europe and Asia

Edge of Eternity, by Ken Follett (2014)

This novel is the third book in Ken Follett’s The Century Trilogy.  The first two books are Fall of Giants and Winter of the World.  The trilogy follows the generations of 5 families, whose lives are all intertwined, spanning from the early years of the 1900s through the century.  The first book, Fall of Giants, focused on the Russian Revolution and World War II. Winter of the World focused on World War II.  This final book covered a host of social issues beginning with the Cuban missile crisis, the erection of the Berlin Wall and the American Civil Rights marches and ending with the election of Barack Obama.

We meet the later generations of the families from the first two books in the series in this novel.  We experience the Cold War through the eyes of the Franck family who lived in Berlin until almost overnight it became East Berlin.  Families were split – some members free to travel about in the West while other members stuck under the regime of the Stasi in East Berlin.  The novel takes us through to the fall of Communism of the1950s to its collapse in the late 1980s.

The twin sibling in the Russian Dvorkin are close but are on opposite sides of the political structure.  Dmitri gets a job as an aide to Khrushchev, while his sister, Tanya, writes for TASS, but sneaks the dissident writings of a political prisoner to the free world for publication (reminiscent of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn).

We experience the Civil Rights Freedom rides through the idealized eyes of young George Jakes, a young man with a black mother and white political father.  He later becomes an aide to Bobby Kennedy and watches the progression of the enactment of Civil Rights laws.

We move on to the music and drug scene in San Francisco in the mid-1960s.  We experience Vietnam through the experiences of a young naturalized citizen.  The characters in the families grow from idealized young people out to change the world into harden by life with some of their dreams realized, while others are left behind.  Nixon becomes President, then we see the cause of his downfall.

The original families depicted in the first book are the same throughout the series, one need not have read the first two books to appreciate this one.  This novel is cram filled with historical events and facts.  It is well researched and provides on of the best explanation of the Bay of Pigs and Cuban missile crisis that I have read.

The book is long (nearly 1100 pages), but it is a page-turner.  It kept my attention even though I knew the outcome of the historical events described in the book.  I greatly enjoyed this novel and felt I got to know most of the characters in the families living through these momentous events.

Read:  March 24, 2020

5 Stars

The Century Trilogy:

     Fall of Giants; Book I (Read: August 3, 2011)

     Winter of the World; Book II (Read: March 17, 2015)

     Edge of Eternity; Book III (Read: March 24, 2020)

Books Set in Europe: Ireland

Cashelmara, by Susan Howatch (1974)

I first read this book in 1978.  I remembered that I liked it and that it was a family/historical saga told in many voices.  When I found an electronic copy of this book, I decided to read it again.

Cashelmara is a historical saga that follows three generations of deSalis family and is told in the voices of several of the characters.  We begin with the elderly widower, Edward DeSalis.  He is an Englishman with landholdings throughout England and a favorite estate in Ireland.  He marries the young Marguerite and brings her back to his homelands, where she encounters his children from his first marriage.  The story then changes to Marguerite, and we see life from her point of view.  The story continues with the marriage of Edward’s eldest son, Patrick, who marries the young and spoiled American Sarah, who was raised in privilege, but whose family was on the verge of bankruptcy.  The young couple quickly run through all their money and are forced to live on the Irish estate of Cashelmara, a favorite resort of the elder deSalis, but seemingly too remote for Patrick and Sarah.  The marriage of Patrick and Sarah was doomed from the start, but neither acknowledges the failure until Sarah encounters Patrick’s nemesis, Maxwell Drummond.  This is a nice thick family drama that also informs the reader about the potato famine of the 1800s.

Read:  April 21, 1978 and July 10, 2016