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Sometimes you want a quick, easy read to pass an hour or two on an airplane or a day or two at the beach. THE INVENTION OF FIRE is not that book. Instead, it is an intricate weave of real and imagined events in a London where a child's ears are cut off as punishment for stealing purses, a man is hanged for a petty crime, anyone or anything can be bought for a price, intrigue runs rampant, and commoners and noblemen alike plot against each other and their king. This is a harsh world that opens, appropriately enough, with a "gongfarmer" up to his thighs in foul-smelling waste as he risks his life to clean medieval London's sewers. Amidst the more common waste, he finds sixteen murdered men who have been disposed of as nothing more than filthy refuse.
The literal muck of the opening scenes of THE INVENTION OF FIRE quickly becomes symbolic of the rottenness that spreads through the realm in Richard II's tenth year of rule. The king's trusted advisers may or may not be as trustworthy as he deems them, and France is amassing a naval force that's poised to invade England. Threats from within and without leave England more vulnerable than anyone concerned would like, and the sudden appearance on the scene of the handgonne- a new, portable weapon that even the weakest and most unskilled person can wield with frightening effects - seems to point to destruction on every level.
John Gower, sometime poet and full-time trader in information, finds himself in the middle of this web of danger and intrigue, tasked with finding the person or persons who murdered those sixteen men who appear to have been killed by the new handgonne, and, in the process save both his own life and possibly prevent civil war. As Gower begins his investigation, other threads are woven into the tale, ranging from escaped-prisoners-turned-pilgrims to the life of a young metalsmith. While seemingly disparate, these separate threads do, of course, begin to cross and intertwine until, at the end, Gower and the reader both are able to hold them all in one neatly woven cloth. But getting to that end product is a circuitous, deeply complicated, but ultimately satisfying path.
One of the main pleasures of THE INVENTION OF FIRE is its ability to completely immerse the reader in the world of London in 1386. Holsinger is an award-winning scholar of the medieval period, as well as a skilled author, and his knowledge and research shows in careful attention to details that bring the sights and sounds of the era fully to life. His knowledge of his subject also enables Holsinger to impart a great deal of information in an easily digestible way: there is a lot of history among the imagined events, but it's all presented in a most palatable way.
Equally interesting is the way Holsinger seamlessly weaves those real and imagined events together. John Gower, the main narrator and "detective" was a friend of Chaucer and that, along with any number of other real events and characters, is well-played throughout the novel, as is the moral dilemmas of the invention of and effects of the handgonne around which so much of the action revolves. In the end, it is these moral dilemmas and the ever-fascinating complicatedness of being human that makes THE INVENTION OF FIRE a thought-provoking, deeply involving read.
§ Meredith Frazier, a writer with a background in English literature, lives in Dallas, Texas
Reviewed by Meredith Frazier, April 2015
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