The Stockholm Octavo

I enjoy Historical Fiction. Hilary Mantel is one of my favorite authors. Yes, I know that she does contemporary novels but most of them are dull except for Beyond Black which is wilder than any drug fueled book by William Burroughs and more confusing than any Reality Bending novel by Philip K. Dick. While I was reading Beyond Black, I had ten or more possible explanations for what was happening in that book and why it was happening. Anyone of them would have applied quite well at the End.

Miss Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety made the French Revolution my favorite revolution of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century. I like a revolution where the people are committed and the heads roll. Sure Stalin and Mao had the greater numbers of deaths, but they didn't have the Superior Wits to observe and comment on their deeds. The only testimony to their Superior Blood Lettings were just a bunch of scared sycophants or brain-washed used-to-be-someone-in-the-revolutions who were hopefully staring a Quick Death in the face to years in the Gulag or another night in Lubyanka. Stalin did have Trotsky, but the years in Mexico just amplified Trotsky's Envy for Power. Trotsky just knew that he could do it better than Stalin if he had the chance. I read The Russian Revolution. All the reflections on and accurate histories of Stalin's and Mao's Great Leaps in Mass Killings came long after the damage was done.

And Stalin and Mao had Years to do their Worst; Robespierre was a Splash in the Head Bucket or a Spurt from the Guillotine. "Kill Fast and Die Young" was his Motto. "Kill With Poetry" was Mao's Motto. "Just Kill'em" was Stalin's.

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street is the other contemporary novel of Miss Mantel's that I like. I have a half finished screenplay for it even though I don't own the rights or envision that I ever will.

I keep looking for another author who can write good Historical Fiction, because Miss Mantel is just not churning out her work fast enough for me. I gave The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann a try.

The Stockholm Octavo had possibilities. It had a woman character of dubious past and delirious present who read the Tarot cards, just like the protagonist or witch or whatever she was in Beyond Black. And The Stockholm Octavo took place in Sweden in the early 1790's which is when the French Revolution of A Place of Greater Safety was gearing up for its Red Dawn.

I am not familiar with much Swedish history except for the ascension of Napoleon's Field Marshall Bernadotte to the Swedish throne in the early 19th century. I know that from watching Jean Simmons and Marlon Brando in Désirée, another movie where I didn't understand most of the characters' motivations. On a Hollywood level, I understood why Miss Simmons develops a time warp mentality (like a Philip K. Dick novel) and seeks to constantly and endlessly re-live her first blush adolescent love affair with Marlon Brando. Michael Rennie is a Great Bore.

But on a Historical level, I just don't get it. Désirée was a Great Bore, but she had two men of some ability in love with her. I can only assume that neither Napoleon or King Whoever of Sweden cared much for intelligence or discernment in a woman. And neither one of them cared much for food either, so the way to a man's heart is not through his brain or his stomach, it is through his penis. Robespierre was so much better than either of them.

My unfamiliarity with Swedish history made The Stockholm Octavo more suspenseful. I had no idea how the assassination of the Swedish King would go. Would the King Go? Or would the traitors go to the gallows or jail?

I have read a few Tarot cards, and I found the cards and the readings that drive the action in the book incomprehensible and boring. The main male character, a man about town, and the lady card reader's endless discussions of their card readings improved my reading speed greatly. I leaped over them.

Most of the characters in the book were just extraneous. I know that they were butterflies in the chaos of the assassination, beating their little butterfly wings and changing the great things (there was even a butterfly fan in the mix that beat the winds of change into the faces of the characters---have I gone too far with that image?) and showing up in the card readings, but where are the Dickens of Today?

Incidentally there was a lot of snow in this novel. Or the Balzacs? Why couldn't I just enjoy the characters and then later in the novel find out that the street sweeper is a very important character despite his poverty and lack of intelligence (Little Dorrit)? Why did I have to be told and re-told that some fairly interesting or mostly dull character was Important! IMPORTANT! Pay Attention!

The book was adequate, but no Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.