Avalon

Honestly, you start a book called Avalon and what do you think you\’ll be reading? I imagined something about Arthur or one of his descendants – in other words a fantasy. Instead, I got a brilliantly written history lesson that didn\’t feel like a lesson at all. It\’s part history, part romance and part geography. Pay attention and you may learn more than you\’d think and not feel like you\’re sitting through a class. It\’s a fascinating book and one I\’ll probably pick up and read again.

Years ago I read two books by Anya Seton: Katherine and My Theodosia. I remember loving both of those and I\’m currently working on my own novel set in tenth century Sweden and England. I decided to read Avalon partly as research and partly because I knew I would enjoy it. In my memory, the other two Seton novels were more powerful than this one, but that could be due to the span of years since I read them. In any case, this is a five star read. The plot tells the story of Rumon, a French nobleman, and Merewyn, a young Cornish woman, whom we first meet as a teenager. Rumon, whose formal name is Romieux de Provence, is on his way to serve in the court of Edgar I, the current King of England. He encounters Merewyn, whose mother has just died. Rumon agrees to bring the young woman to her Aunt Merwinna, the current Abbess of Romsey Abbey. As with Anya Seton\’s other novels, this is fiction based on historic fact. Many of the characters are historic figures. I believe Merewyn is fictional, but Rumon has some connection to a real character. The story also includes King Edgar I, King Edward (Edgar\’s son), Queen Alfrida, King Ethelred (Alfrida\’s son by Edgar – known as “the unready”), Dunstan (the Archbishop of Canterbury), Erik the Red, and Leif Erikson (Erik\’s son). The settings include England, Ireland, Greenland, and a brief stay in North America. The history of this era has conflicts and voids, but I felt that Anya Seton did an excellent job of resolving those. Avalon feels accurate in historic fact, portrayal of the hardships people faced at that time, and in the personalities of the characters, both fictional and real. Steve Lindahl – author of Hopatcong Vision Quest, White Horse Regressions, and Motherless Soul

Too much animal cruelty for me and very unnecessary. Book would have been much better without. Doubt that I will buy another book by this author.

What a pleasant surprise this was! A very entertaining book, well written, well researched, and with generally realistic characterizations. I only knew Anya Seton through two works: a very bad 1946 movie version of Dragonwyck and the (in my opinion) highly-overrated “Katherine.” Dragonwyck may be a good novel, I don’t know, but it was a very confused, choppy movie (a major character disappears midway through the movie and is never mentioned again). “Katherine” was about Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, and I found it to be shallow and trite (Katherine is so beautiful that men either lose control and rape her, or almost lose control and rape her), and sadly laughable in its view of romanticism (she falls in love with a man who raped her). I owned Avalon for quite some time before I started reading it, what with two loser Setons on my record. However, once I started, I couldn’t put it down. It starts as a very conventional romance. Handsome Romieux de Provence, descended from royalty, leaves his home in Normandy to seek Avalon, a peaceful paradise he has dreamed of, as well as to escape the pressures to become a warrior knight. He is shipwrecked and manages to reach the shore in Cornwall, but he has lost most of his possessions and now he himself is lost. He comes upon a young woman returning home with her servant from a pilgrimage. He shares their road. The young woman is Merewyn, who also is believed to be descended from royalty, and not just any royal, but the blessed King Arthur himself. She now lives in isolated poverty with her crippled and ailing mother, for whose sake Merewyn had been on pilgrimage. Rumon (as Romieux is now called) accompanies her home and Merewyn’s dying mother exacts a promise from him to take Merewyn to her only living relative, an abbess. Rumon grudgingly agrees; he would rather be on his way, and he resents being delayed from his quest. Rumon is always exquisitely attired, and he is artistic, educated, intelligent, and spiritual. Merewyn, of course, is in awe of the elegant and refined Rumon, and soon is hopelessly in love with him. Rumon is above such things, and certainly above the illiterate and shabby Merewyn. He expects great things to happen in his life and yearns to find his Avalon, his paradise. Will he find Avalon? Does it exist? Will he ever return Merewyn’s love? How long will she wait? Here the conventional romance story of (potentially) star-crossed lovers grows into a fascinating historical novel. They arrive at the court of the English king Edgar, where Merewyn is to meet her aunt. Rumon all but forgets Merewyn, and, instead, becomes first infatuated and soon obsessed with Edgar’s beautiful young second wife, Alfrida. Alfrida encourages his interest, but she has other things in mind. Let’s just say she’s not very nice. She does, however, take an interest in Merewyn, and asks her to stay at court as one of her ladies. Nothing goes as either Merewyn or Rumon planned. This is a fascinating, but little known, period of English history. Rumon, Edgar, Alfrida, and Merewyn’s aunt are all historical figures. So I will talk a little about the history, since most people don’t know it, and it’s good to know some of it before reading the book. Edgar died, leaving Edward, the son of his first wife as his heir. A few years later (in the year 978), when Alfrida’s son was about ten to twelve years old, King Edward was murdered. Alfrida was blamed by the chroniclers of the age, in part because it is always convenient to blame a woman. Alfrida certainly may have been part of the plot as her son was then left to inherit the throne, but she certainly was not solely responsible. In this book, Alfrida is pure evil, but in real life, she appears to have been pious and responsible for many charitable acts and donations. That’s not to say she’s sweet innocence. Alfrida’s son, Ethelred, became king (“Ethelred the Unready”), and his reign was a disaster. How much of that was actually the fault of Ethelred is debated. A major incident in his reign was the St. Brice’s Day Massacre. Many Danes and other “Viking” people were living peaceably in England; however, the Danes sometimes still conducted raids in England. Ethelred chose to pay the leaders to stay away, essentially paying tribute. In return, the Danish king left his sister and her family in England as hostages. Then, on St. Brice’s Day in 1002, Ethelred ordered the extermination of the Danes living in England. The Danish king’s sister was among the murdered, and the Viking raids on England began again in earnest. These events and many more affect the lives of Rumon and Merewyn. Their stories are intertwined with the real-life characters mentioned (and Rumon himself is a historical figure, although the early events of the real Rumon’s life are unknown and completely fictionalized in this novel). Many other historical figures are involved as well, including the Vikings Erik the Red (who founded colonies in Iceland) and his son, the explorer Leif Erikson (who explored North America). All of these figures affect the paths on which Merewyn and Rumon find themselves. Except for Alfrida, who is two-dimensional evil, and Erik the Red’s daughter, Freydis, who is an evil pervert, the characters are well drawn and believable. Freydis is herself a remarkable character about whom history has left conflicting stories. There’s no doubt she was one tough cookie. This is a sweeping saga that brings to life a little-known and exciting (sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way) period of history. It seems very well-researched and authentic. It is an intelligent and entertaining read and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys good quality, factually-based historical fiction.

I hate books where everyone always makes mistakes that screw up their lives. And in this book, every character makes mistakes from the minute they are introduced. However, Seton has an excellent sense of the time period and her writing is beautiful.

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