A Secret Alchemy (2) - The Review

At its most basic, alchemy is the quest to turn base metal into gold. At its most basic, A Secret Alchemy is two stories for the price of one. The first, an account of the Wars of the Roses and the murder of the Princes in the Tower told both by Elizabeth Woodville, wife of King Edward IV, the princes' mother and her brother, Anthony Woodville. The second is a contemporary narrative about the Pryors, a totally fictional family of printers seen through the eyes of Una Pryor. Una, an historian has returned from her home in Australia to England to wind up her affairs after the death of her husband. Still grieving, she revisits her childhood home, where a printing-press is the heart and hearth as much as the kitchen range. All members have since scattered apart from Uncle Gareth who is struggling to maintain the Chantry Press, in the face of age, infirmity and dwindling fortunes. It seems inevitable that the press must close and the house sold. When Mark, a non-family member who was an integral part of the family firm, returns he devises a scheme to save the press and in doing so stirs up resentments and old grudges through which the secrets of the past are revealed.

Initially, it would appear that the two narratives have little in common but slowly and almost miraculously the stories begin to echo each other--not obviously, not clunkily, but in ways that delight and intrigue and part of the pleasure of A Secret Alchemy is discovering themes, myths, relationships and emotions that pass between the two stories and the two time-zones in a sort of literary osmosis.

Towards the end of the novel, there is a key conversation in which first pilgrimages and art of creation are discussed. Fergus is a sculptor and has just remarked that when someone looks at a work of art they don't see the process that produced it-- 'the doing of it--as he calls it. "When you're doing it you don't think, I want this to be a new stage in the developing sense of the spatial form. You think, How can I get the bloody thing to stand up or would it work better lying down anyway?"

Una then suggests that he must think about spatial form later. Fergus agrees, then goes on to say: Though other people see things that I haven't seen sometimes. They fit it into a story I didn't know it was part of. But at the time, no. And yet. . . what's more real, more interesting? More true, even? The moment, all-plastery? Or when it fits in a story you didn't even know about then, but can see so clearly when you look back?"

This to me is the central theme of the novel. Darwin is exploring the process of history, the narrative that with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the pattern. When we now read about Elizabeth Woodville we know her fixed place in history and that her daughter, Elizabeth of York is to become the mother of Henry VIII, that the mystery surrounding the disappearance of her two sons will rumble on seemingly forever, views changing so that the Richard III is sen as monster, maligned statesman and monster. She herself has no sense of this, in the same way that none of us knows how the decisions we make will affect ours and others' future.

The complex structure of this novel has not much been discussed in reviews. It's remarkable enough that Emma has constructed three separate narratives, all in the first person and yet so distinctive in tone. However, that isn't all. It is only on the very last pages that we realise that the historical story is far closer to Una's than would appear. I hope I'm not spoiling things when I say that when we are reading the 'historical' sections we are reading Una's novel. So you could also say that this is a novel about the complex process of creating and writing a novel. There are hints of this earlier. For example, in a beautifully lyrical passage, Anthony Woodville, who is being escorted to Pontefract and his death, sees a heron in the reeds and reminisces about the first day he went hunting with his goshawk and how it hunted and killed a heron. Much later, in Una's story she too sees a heron and wonders what it would feel like to hunt it with a goshawk. She spins the beginning of a tale in her mind. She gives the hawk a name and devises a scene but the moment passes and she moves on. But the readers knows that we have read the scene fully formed already, so whose story was it? Una's or Anthony's? I absolutely love this kind of writing. I admire its cleverness; I enjoy thinking about the allusions and following my own thought processes above and beyond what's on the page. It's also very clever and difficult to make it work but work it does. Splendidly.

I say this partly to take issue with the criticism in the recent review in the Independent. (You can read it here.) The reviewer calls 'forced' the scene in which Anthony Woodville converses with a world-weary Sir Thomas Mallory on the eve of battle. Hasn't this reviewer read the wonderful The Once and Future King in which , at the end of the final book, a world-weary King Arthur meets the young Thomas, who later was the Sir Thomas who penned Le Morte d'Arthur. This hugely important work, on which T H White's tetralogy is based was first printed by Caxton and in this novel, most of the Pryor family, also printers, are named after characters in the work. Then again, It matters not a jot if readers miss these delightful allusions and I'm sure I've missed plenty but it's a huge bonus when they do.

Other themes that run through the novel: pilgrimages, journeys, discoveries and quests feature strongly. The myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece re-occurs. The Chantry Press has produced a fine illustrated volume of it and it is mentioned several times. I also noted, whether deliberate or not on Emma's part, that Jason's wife, Medea, a sorceress or witch, infamously murdered her children after Jason's adulterous betrayal of her. Elizabeth Woodville's sons are murdered and some of the most affective parts of this novel concern her grief and sense of guilt. Also, after the death of Edward IV she is denounced by her enemies as a witch. Her story is also that of betrayal between cousins, which again brings us back to the Pryors. And if that wasn't enough, the Golden Fleece is often taken as a metaphor for the alchemical search for gold. And whilst we're talking about alchemy, there is more to it than making gold. It is the foundation of modern science. (Sir Isaac Newton called himself an alchemist.) The novel is about alchemy and is itself is a piece of alchemy for at its heart, is connecting the past and the present, about making connections and creating something new out of what has gone before. But I'd hate to give the impression that A Secret Alchemy is heavy-going or 'learned.' It's not at all. Like all the best novels, it's a story of human relationships, family and naturally, love; love in all its many guises: tender, passionate; erotic. It's all here.

I've hardly touched on the high quality of the writing or the fine portrayal of the main players. but I've written enough and any more would be sheer self-indulgence. I'm not so enamoured of it that I consider it flawless or that nothing niggled. It took me a while to settle into it that I almost faltered at the first hurdle. So many names to remember and all so similar! I had to keep checking the family trees for the historical section to fix who was who and how they are related. The Pryor family also took a bit of sorting out too. Their family tree was almost as complicated. However, I persevered and once I'd got everybody sorted in my head, I romped away.

This is a rich and spicy cake of a novel, full of delicious flavours, both light and more substantial. (Can I detect nutmeg? Oranges? Is that Madeira or sherry?) Whether you're one of those who remove the icing and/or marzipan or eat the outer layers and discard the middle; even if you painstakingly pick out every sultana and leave them on the side of your plate, it matters not. You will still enjoy it. But if, you're like me, wolf it all down, right down to the last lingering crumb.

Enjoy!